Ahead of this week’s Meeting of Cultural Ministers the arts advocacy group suggests emergency plan.

Slashed funding to the Australia Council could see the number of key arts organisations of small to medium scale decimated from 147 nationwide to just 60. This is the damning conclusion of analysis conducted by ArtsPeak, the confederation of peak arts organisations and state arts industry councils, who today urged attendees at the upcoming Meeting of Cultural Ministers (MCM) in Mildura to implement an emergency plan to save the Australian arts ecology from the potentially destructive impact of recent cuts to the Australia Council’s budget.

Almost $105 million has been syphoned away from the Australia Council in order to create the new Government administered National Programme for Excellence in the Arts in a move which has provoked anger, protests and petitions since its announcement. ArtsPeak’s assessment of the disastrous implications of the recently instituted changes to the arts funding infrastructure comes just two days after newly appointed Minster for the Arts Mitch Fifield claimed that “the quantum of money in the arts portfolio is the same,” insisting that the NPEA would not negatively impact any strata of the Australian arts community.

ArtsPeak has approached all...