Sector Dispatch
Sector news and advocacy from PACT’s CEO
Sector Dispatch #5: 7 November 2025
Since my first Sector Dispatch six months ago, informing you of the shock news about PACT’s cut in funding, it’s been quite a rollercoaster navigating the ups and downs of running a small arts organisation.
Emerging artists, you might be thinking, “what does cultural policy have to do with me?” but I hope these Dispatches help make sense of the impacts of policy, government program restructure, and the big picture of social and economic pressures on individual artists. Knowledge is power.
These pressures are inevitably making changes at PACT too. We have been doing everything we can to argue for PACT’s survival – we were able to put our case to Arts Minister John Graham personally, and we were chuffed to have Lord Mayor Clover Moore advocate on PACT’s behalf.
As has become clear, however, PACT’s funding situation is emblematic of a broader pattern of arts funding across the sector (see Dispatch #4 below). Resources are shrinking – and we are going to have to get by with less. There is no movement on reinstatement of PACT’s core funding from Create NSW.
The only two ways forward in scarcity are collaboration or competition.
The current system trains us on competition. We duke it out in multiple grant rounds for subsistence funding disguised as “investment” in culture.
But collaboration is our superpower, particularly in the performing arts, where even a solo show is a collaborative endeavour. We are really good at collaboration. It is our modus vivendi.
In response to the sector changes, PACT needs to change. Over the next year, the organisation will remodel itself into the PACT HUB, a collective space for contemporary performance serving Sydney’s small to medium arts sector and independent artists.
We recognise how much PACT’s affordable, creative and flexible venue is needed by the sector – and the venue is about to get even better, with recent news that we have been successful in securing $195,000 in infrastructure funding from the NSW government through a program which redistributes a portion of revenue from gambling into community projects. Together with the $150,000 the City of Sydney is spending on our new roof, this will be the biggest capital improvement project at PACT for a generation!
The contribution to improving our hard infrastructure is gratefully received (and needed! our grid is at least three decades old). But we also recognise how valuable our soft infrastructure is, our fabulous crew of informed and creative arts workers. These are also important resources that PACT provides the community and ones the lack of core funding put at risk.
With reduced funding, PACT can’t deliver the same level of opportunity and program that we have in the past. But we believe the PACT HUB is the best way to support artists and the sector going forward. By embracing collaboration and resource sharing our warehouse theatre can continue to be a vibrant centre for artists to meet and make work, and for audiences to encounter and participate in creative experiences of all kinds. We will be restructuring the organisation to make the venue as accessible as possible to artists, take on resident companies, while maintaining a core development program for emerging artists.
In making this change, it’s worth remembering that PACT was founded as a cooperative in 1964 by a collection of artists who felt they could do more by doing it together. It is in that same spirit that we embrace the idea of the PACT HUB.
Don’t get me wrong – I’d rather not be dealing with scarcity in a nation as wealthy as Australia (that’s a whole other story), but working together with collaborators to make a good sector for our community is a job worth doing.
This week we learned that after sixty years, the Australian Design Centre (also receiving a 50% cut in NSW funding) will close its doors in June 2026. I am sad to be farewelling the ADC and am only too aware that closure is an ongoing possibility for many of us in these difficult times.
The ADC and PACT are both organisations that were founded in 1964, at a time when it was understood that investment in organisations like ours, which bring together many artists in communities of practice – uniting training, artform development, and audience engagement – was the most economic and artistically impactful model to invest in.
One of the many ironies of the NSW Government’s cultural policy named Creative Communities, is how little it understands the notion of community – a social formation which is intrinsically collaborative.
To our artists and colleagues, I say, together we are a force to be reckoned with!
Until next time,
Justine
Sector Dispatch #4: 18 September 2025
Phew! that was a lot of rain last week, wasn’t it? If you have been to PACT anytime in the last thirty years, you know just how atmospheric it can get in our theatre when it rains…
Not for much longer! I’m so excited to let you know that PACT is getting a new roof!!! Thanks to the support of the City of Sydney, the old tin will be coming off in mid-November and a whole new structure going up in its place.
This will be the biggest capital infrastructure project PACT has undergone since our move to 107 Railway Parade in 1988. And since the roof is coming off – this is our once-in-generation opportunity to upgrade the lighting grid at the same time!
Stay tuned for future information about the theatre upgrades coming soon… we have big dreams and exciting ideas which will continue making our venue the creative powerhouse it is for artists. We appreciate the need to maintain the flexible, inspiring space that PACT is known to be, in support of a range of contemporary performance, live music, experimental and interdisciplinary art.
In other news, the long-awaited results of the two-year funding program have been announced by Create NSW – 62 out of 190 applicants were successful, taking the total number of companies receiving two and four-year funding to 144.
After a high-profile coordinated campaign by the large number of regional galleries and RADOs who missed out on four-year funding, 50% of funding this round is going to the regions. Their campaign was highly successful, with NSW’s investment in Visual Arts doubling with this round’s funding – much higher than any other artform.
Figuring out the broader impact the organisational funding result will have on the sector is much harder. OMG so hard!!! My head hurts!!! So many spreadsheets and sleuthing through old email attachments and searching parliamentary tabled documents and calling colleagues… Sometimes, let’s just say, having that research PhD pays off.
You would think it would be easy to figure out who has been defunded, what the overall increases and decreases are, or how artforms might be affected differently (because, public money, right?). But there is a growing lack of transparency from Create NSW about both process and outcome. Doing our best in these circumstances we crunched the numbers, and the story looks pretty bleak, people – it is clear that the NSW multiyear funding result puts the sector in further financial stress.
While the NSW Government is celebrating 22 new organisations receiving core funding for the first time, looking back at those funded in multiyear 2021-25 and the previous three rounds of annual program funding shows 45 organisations previously receiving core funding were cut completely (most previously funded through the annual funding program).
Cuts are across every artform but are not equitable. The Minister has sacrificed small orgs, disproportionately cutting annually funded orgs in the move to the new funding program. Of the 62 organisations coming from multiyear funding in 2025, only 5 (8%) received a cut in funding, compared to 18 (39%) of the 46 organisations coming from annual funding.
Funding levels are overall very low. Only 11 organisations received $300k pa or more – given the top amount that could be requested was $600k, that means only 7.6% were funded above the median. In contrast, 105 organisations received $200k or less, meaning 73% were in the bottom third of the possible funding range.
What’s more, of the 144 organisations, exactly a third (48) have received $110k or less, an amount roughly equivalent to one FTE employee on the average Australian wage – what could scarcely be called subsistence funding.
In fact, most of the organisations who received the same or small increases in funding are also unhappy; given multiyear funded organisations cannot apply for project funding anymore, they too are facing less funding in real terms, with less if any project funding to support paying artists.
Create NSW’s states that the government’s investment will “create a lasting positive impact to everyone who engages with arts and culture in NSW, increasing vibrancy and inspiring communities for years to come,” and that, “the move from annual to multiyear funding for so many of these organisations is so welcome.”
Woah. Can anyone say Spin, baby, spin? Feedback from the sector, Minister: we’re not feeling positive.
Let’s not even talk about the trauma of the grants process; instead, I’ll just remind you that NSW organisations began Stage 1 of the application process for this funding round on 3 April 2023 – you read that right, 2 years, 5 months, and 14 days ago. After what can only be described as an endurance multi-stage commando-style obstacle course rife with misinformation, it’s hard to be told this is something “we” have welcomed (wait, there is a word for that, isn’t there?).
The latest news is it appears the NSW funding program has run out of funding and the upcoming Cultural Access and Creative Steps grant categories due to close in October have been cancelled. Meaning no new work grants for artists, and no possible stop-gap organisational funding for the 128 companies who were unsuccessful in the two-year round (including the 45 who previously received core funding but are now cut loose).
So, what’s the wash up?
In the end, the negative impact will be greatest for artists already reeling from less opportunities for and space in which to practice. Losers too are our NSW communities who deserve access to cultural participation as part of well-lived life and confident society.
The irony is that the organisations emblematic of the multiyear program’s worst cuts – PACT, the NSW Writers’ Centre, and the Australian Design Centre who all received the most severe funding cut of 50% – are the kinds of companies that work with large communities of artists. This is where the value of $1 goes the furthest… and where the loss of $1 has the most detrimental effect.
The NSW Arts Minister wants a booming night-time economy. Byron Writers, Newcastle Writers, Cementa, Parramatta Lanes, New Annual, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and the Sydney Fringe are all getting increases or new multiyear funding (some at doubled levels or more). Hosting the Sydney Fringe as we are at PACT right now is a case in point – it's a great partnership that is a buzz of diverse kinds of performance and audiences – from Yalgali, the First Nations Hub in its second year, to prize-winning shows touring under the Made in Sydney (and Canberra and Wollongong) banner. But we are part of the same creative ecology, and festivals cannot run without the artists who make and perform the work, PACT's theatre, and the technicians and other cultural workers that PACT trains to help realise the work.
With so many organisations "funded to fail" by the NSW Government over the next two to four years, even the Minister's night-time economy is on the chopping block.
Until next time,
Justine
Sector Dispatch #3: 8 July 2025
Rarely are the arts front-page news in Australia but the last week has seen the sector repeatedly in the headlines – albeit not for great reasons!
Analysis and opinions are still shaking out after the release of the review into Creative Australia’s handling of the Venice Biennale commission. I join many of my colleagues in rejoicing in the reinstatement of Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino; but I also agree with arts critic John McDonald who wrote yesterday that the wealth of commentary has overshadowed a “far more troubling topic… the NSW government’s systematic undermining of regional arts.”
In the most high-profile example of the recent Create NSW cuts, three out of four regional public art galleries lost four-year funding (eek, glad I wasn’t in that meeting!).
It could be said to be an assault on the regions, but it appears that nothing so coordinated is behind the axing. Established galleries from Mosman to Penrith, our friends at Firstdraft and the Australian Design Centre also missed out on funding.
Neither is it just about the visual arts, or who was or wasn’t funded. It is increasingly murky just who the “winners” of NSW’s funding program are… Many four-year funded orgs are receiving brutal cuts, like PACT’s 50% cut on already bare-bones funding, or otherwise “funded to fail” while being congratulated on our success.
Just what went wrong? Where is the money going? (or, dare I say, what was remotely faster, simpler, or fairer about Create NSW’s new approach?)
Whether it is because of a dramatic increase in spending for one-off festivals as the SMH postulated this week, or capital project spending as John McDonald claims, there is undeniable unease about the lack of transparency in how funding was allocated beyond the peer assessment process and concern for the catastrophic hollowing out of the sector that is ahead.
The Minns government has committed to passing on savings from the recently announced staff cuts at Create NSW to frontline arts and culture programs, a promise I hope they honour. But given the haphazard way in which the new funding program has been delivered so far, will it be too little too late?
Until next time,
Justine
Sector Dispatch #2: 29 May 2025
Since the NSW government announced the outcome of organisational 4-year funding last week, it has become clear that many well regarded and important orgs in the sector received cuts or received no funding at all. As I’ve been hitting the pavement around town, I get the sense that there is a feeling of deep concern about what is coming down the line (I’m with you, people)...
In these times, one of the things I can offer is a viewpoint from the ground as I go about my work advocating for artists and supporting sector knowledge building. I take this part of my role seriously and will therefore be writing to you regularly this year in a series of ‘dispatches’ as I navigate the halls of (albeit low-level) power. I recognise that PACT’s most important stakeholders are our community of artists and supporters, and I will keep you all updated with as much openness as I can.
Just after emailing you the other day to let you know about PACT’s 50% funding cut and the lack of response from the Arts Minister’s office… we got a meeting! We really appreciated the opportunity to put PACT’s case to Minister Graham’s Arts Advisor and the acting CEO of Create NSW.
The most important message we wanted to get across is PACT’s role in the sector ecology – that providing a sustainable level of support for PACT is supporting the 370+ artists that use our venue each year (amazing!) and the many other organisations that rely on our facility and our hardworking technicians (go team!).
We know that PACT is one of the only remaining theatres that is affordable enough for artists and companies in the small-medium sector to engage with; 65% of the greater Sydney performing arts organisations funded in the recent 8-year and 4-year funding rounds use PACT for development and performances (humble brag) – and that figure doesn’t even include annually funded orgs, NFP orgs, community groups and, of course, individual artists.
PACT is the place where you get to try things out – make, renew, experiment, experience as a creator and audience member. We’re here for artist, artform and sector building – and we have been for almost 61 years.
The meeting was… in their own terms, “disappointing.” While they love PACT (aw shucks, we’re so loveable!) they could only say that the funding program outcome is decided by the peer assessors.
The larger impact of this funding round – what appears to be a shrinking sector despite an increase to the arts budget – is not something they would comment on, although there will be an upcoming review of Create NSW’s new funding program which will be open for feedback (of which there will be plenty). There is more work to be done to understand how this result has come about.
We also met last week with our other stakeholder investor the City of Sydney, and were buoyed by their knowledge of our work, informed concern for the sector and their offer to have more internal discussions about the situation.
The current fiscal, political and social environment is tough at the moment, it can feel like we are getting pummelled from all sides. But, to our emerging artists, I want to reiterate ARTMAKING IS VALUABLE. Remember that the Australian public (stats show) value the work you do! And the social context always fuels incisive, important art for our times.
In the meantime, PACT continues to overflow with community and artists treading the boards… the fight is not over and we’ve got artmaking to do!
Until next time,
Justine
Sector Dispatch #1: 22 May 2025
Yesterday the NSW government announced the recipients of its 4-year funding program for organisations.
Although we at PACT were lucky enough to gain multiyear funding (yay us!), the amount we received is less than half of our current annual funding (booo).
We recognise this was a super tough round and that many of our colleagues in the sector are facing hard decisions. The level of funding we received will make it extremely difficult for PACT to deliver the level of arts opportunity and service to the sector that we have been, that we put forward in our application to the NSW government, and that our other main stakeholder the City of Sydney expects from us.
We wrote to Minister John Graham on 29 April but so far, we have had no reply.
As an organisation with a sixty-year history championing young people in the arts, we cheered Minister Graham's recent announcement about how he wants more young people on arts boards – but we really wish his vision extended to support for, you know... the next generation of artists and the orgs who nurture them.
Until next time,
Justine
