NPEA blamed for postponement of major arts disability event

Arts Access Australia (AAA), the peak national body for arts and disability has blamed the turmoil caused by the introduction of the National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA) for the postponement of its major conference for 2015.

AAA’s Meeting Place event was to have taken place in Adelaide on 23rd October.

However, in a statement on their website, AAA said the sector-wide chaos caused by the introduction of the NPEA was the primary reason for the event’s postponement.

The statement read “over recent months, the arts and cultural sector has been thrown into turmoil resulting from the Federal Government’s decision to remove $108.5 million from the Australia Council for the Arts to support a new National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA).

“For Arts Access Australia, this has meant that much of our time has been taken up with advocacy: both for the reinstatement of funding to the Australia Council and to ensure that the NPEA will meet the needs of people with disability as artists, arts leaders and assessors.”

Simultaneously, AAA’s Program Officer, Caitlin Mcmorrow, resigned from her role, having secured work outside the arts sector.

The statement added “as a result of our diminished staff capacity at this time, and the fact that we are now in the position of unexpectedly needing to submit an application for four-year funding to the Australia Council by 1 December, the board has taken the difficult decision to postpone the 2015 Meeting Place event in Adelaide which was to be held on 23 October.

“This decision has not been made lightly. We appreciate that many delegates have already made travel, accommodation, and access arrangements to attend the event and that the decision to postpone may mean that people will have to pay fees for making changes to bookings.”

At least 80 delegates had already been confirmed for Meeting Place 2015, with another 100-150 people expected to have joined the event via a live web stream, as per Meeting Place 2013, which was held in Hobart.

New dates for Meeting Place, which is now expected to be held in Adelaide in early 2016, have yet to be confirmed.

For more information go to www.artsaccessaustralia.org 

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