Late last year, there was a palpable tension among Victorian arts organisations. Rumours were that one of the most important arts funding rounds was going to be a bloodbath.
They were right.
A week before Christmas, longstanding arts organisations received phone calls from Creative Victoria, the state’s arts funding agency. Some were told their funding would be drastically reduced. Others had it cut completely after decades.
Meanwhile, morale has cratered in the state’s largest cultural institutions as the effects of the Silver review and the government’s budget crisis rippled through in staff cuts and restructures.
As the new year began, many artists and arts workers were dumbfounded at the change in the cultural landscape. One longtime Victorian arts leader tells the Guardian: “I think the wider cultural shock is [Melbourne] is going to go from the cultural capital to the least funded city in Australia.”
‘We went from $200k a year to zero’
For a long time, Creative Victoria’s four-year funding stream, now called Creative Enterprises, has been the backbone of local non-government arts organisations. It offered rare operational funding, not attached to any particular project, instead providing much-needed cash for things such as salaries, administration, artist payments and programming. Importantly, it provided medium-term stability that allowed arts organisations to plan and grow. For some, that stability is now gone.
In December, Writers Victoria, the state’s 37-year-old literary service organisation, had its $600,000 over four years cut completely. It now faces closure.
Chair Janice Gobey says the decision didn’t make sense. “It seems bizarre that in a Unesco City of Literature you’d cancel the peak writers’ body so that it’s the only mainland state or territory without a peak writers’ body.”
Gobey is not alone in feeling confounded. Members of the arts community who spoke to Guardian Australia say they feel there was a lack of transparency to the funding process and a lack of meaningful feedback from Creative Victoria.
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Suspicions have also been building that the longstanding principle of arm’s-length funding, where peer assessors make recommendations to the minister about what should be funded, had been altered by Creative Victoria.
Contrary to usual practice, Creative Victoria did not release the total value of the funding pool ahead of time. Applications closed before the state’s arts strategy – Creative State 2028 – was released, making it harder for organisations to ensure they met those goals.
Guardian Australia analysis indicates the total funding committed by Creative Victoria to its Creative Enterprises program has fallen from $81.2m in 2022 to $59.4m in 2026. Of the 81 successful organisations, 24 were offered only two years of funding instead of four, some with the possibility of extension, while others had a hard cap.
“We went from $200k a year to zero,” says Justine Hyde, the CEO at Abbotsford Convent.
Hyde says she had been told before applying that Creative Victoria had no concerns with the convent’s performance. Afterwards, she says, “one of the pieces of feedback they gave us was that [our application] was too closely aligned strategically to the principles of the grant stream. Which is like – isn’t that what we’re meant to do in the application? It was kind of laughable.”
A Creative Victoria spokesperson said the Creative Enterprises program was an “open, competitive program” subject to a “robust” application and assessment process. “This assessment process is the same as the previous round of the Creative Enterprises Program,” they said.
The successful organisations included eight Indigenous-led organisations, and focused on programs that give opportunities to children and young people in line with the Creative State strategy.
“In all communications, Creative Victoria made it clear to all applicants that this round was expected to be highly competitive, and no applicants should make future plans based on an assumption they would receive funding. A history of having received previous funding was not one of the assessment criteria,” they said.
‘A devastating shock’
“I think the arts are in a really sad, grim place,” says Anne Virgo, the CEO of the Australian Print Workshop.
APW has an international reputation. It has worked with artists such as Fiona Hall, Mervyn Street, Patricia Piccinini and Judy Watson, and collaborated with the British Museum. Now, for the first time in its 44-year history, APW will no longer receive government support.
“This was completely a devastating shock for us,” Virgo says. “It tears my heart out.”
APW asked for feedback on their unsuccessful application but received no clear answers. “It’s just unfathomable. They couldn’t really give us concrete, real reasons,” Virgo says. “There was one comment in particular that was if they’d read someone else’s application.”
Because APW has “hard-earned cash reserves” and was able to buy its own building with donor help 20 years ago, it will continue through this calendar year. Beyond that, Virgo doesn’t know.
Freeplay, the national support organisation and event host for games makers and interactive artists, is also facing closure after 22 years, having failed to receive enterprise funding.
“There’s only so long you can continue to be cutting edge without collapsing every time you try and do something new,” board director Travis Jordan says.
‘It’s not a business, it’s a cultural institution’
Creative Victoria is also responsible for nine major arts organisations, funded as government agencies. As redundancies and restructures whittle down an already straitened workforce, many remaining staff say they feel their institutions are increasingly led by bureaucrats.
At the State Library of Victoria, staff last year accused management of undermining the 171-year-old institution’s core purposes in favour of flashy, tourist-oriented “digital vanity projects”.
The library abandoned its proposed restructure after public outcry but staff told Guardian Australia they remain concerned about staffing and strategy.
The State Library refused to respond on the record to concerns raised by staff, instead pointing to a statement it made in December, which said the library had withdrawn the restructure proposal “so that we can refine our approach and ensure it best supports our community, our staff and our long-term vision”, and that “any revised proposal will be informed by what we have heard throughout this consultation”.
Meanwhile, morale is at an “all-time low” at Museums Victoria, insiders say, with rolling staff cuts since July. Despite visitor numbers being at a record high, visitor engagement officer roles have been slashed and the department merged with security. Staff and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) have argued the move damages visitors’ experience of the museum and does not serve the public.
Staff who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity felt management was losing sight of the purpose of the organisation. “It’s not a business, it’s a cultural institution. We have a mandate to bring the collection to the people of Victoria,” one said.
A Museums Victoria spokesperson said the organisation had been required to make “difficult decisions about our workforce structure to match changing visitor needs and ensure continuing sustainability” in 2025 but that visitor satisfaction was “at the highest level we have experienced over the past 12 months”.
“Museums Victoria remains deeply committed to our cultural mission, bringing our collections, joy and wonder to all Victorians,” the spokesperson said.
‘Damaging and destructive’ cuts
The opposition has taken up the issue, with the Liberal shadow minister for arts, David Davis, raising a motion in the legislative council in early February, supported by the Greens.
Davis describes the funding cuts as “damaging and destructive” and tells the Guardian he feels Creative Victoria is “out of touch with the Victorian community and the arts community”.
“This should distress every Victorian, that key organisations that add to our cultural life and are an important part of our economy are being sapped by Labor,” Davis says. “And this is very unsophisticated, what they’re doing. There appears to be no logic or rationale for what they are doing other than that they’re in serious financial straits of their own making.”
The minister for creative industries, Colin Brooks, was approached for comment.
Jane Crawley, an executive at Creative Victoria until 2022, says “a distrust and a degree of bad faith” had recently developed between the government body and the arts sector.
Creative Victoria has also been hit by public service cuts. At least 20 people took separation packages in the first round and more are expected to leave by the end of December. The CPSU reports that for those remaining, morale is very low.
The Creative Victoria spokesperson said that “like many parts of the public sector” the agency, along with the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions in which it sits, had “recently undergone an organisational change process”.
Four-year funding was an investment in the foundation of the arts sector, Crawley says. “To go from that to nothing … that, I believe, is inconsistent with past Victorian governments’ or any jurisdiction’s policy approach.”
“It’s clearly about the money. So why not tell the truth? … Why didn’t they simply say to people: everyone knows we’re in strife, we’re not going to run a Creative Enterprises program, we’re going to wait two years?”
There is also fear throughout the sector that being openly critical of Creative Victoria might jeopardise future funding opportunities.
“One of the things I really dislike about the arts community is that we kowtow to people who hold money over us,” Gobey says. “Does it sound like a partnership when people who are receiving funds from you are scared to speak out?”
