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It’s no secret that 2020 was a year of devastation for the arts industry and the individuals working within it. As audiences disappeared overnight, the sector had to adapt quickly to find new ways to reach them to keep artists afloat.
Two organisations that were successful in that pivot were the Wollongong Writers Festival and the Feminist Writers Festival, which both presented smart digital programs to their at-home audiences. Unfortunately, despite these very big wins in a very hard year, both organisations have since announced their closures, citing a lack of funding support.
Since its establishment in 2013 Wollongong Writers Festival sought to do things differently, with founder Chloe Higgins highlighting from the outset that the annual celebration would be guided by the principles of diversity, access and participation. Her final program, delivered digitally, tackled the challenging theme of ‘writing and the body’ in a way that was innovative, intersectional and sensitive, with trans bodies, sex worker bodies and traumatised bodies unpacked by a mix of established and emerging writers. The program sadly turned out to be an extraordinary swansong. In March 2021 it announced the festival was closing, having lost funding from its major supporter, Create NSW.
Feminist Writers Festival appeared on the scene in 2016 with an innovative organisational model—rather than being location-based, they would be an agile, national festival. Across five years, they delivered events in partnership with Melbourne Writers Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival and Geelong Library and Heritage Centre among others. They also collaborated with non-literary organisations including the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion (Sydney), the Centre for Democracy (Adelaide), NORPA and Southern Cross University (Lismore) and the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre (Melbourne).
Through all its activity, Feminist Writers Festival advanced the feminist conversation in Australia in a bold new way. Their aim was not to educate people on feminism, but to engage and enlighten an audience of feminists. Its 2020 program, funded for the first time by Creative Victoria, was a triumph of digital programming. Combining essays, podcasts and live discussions, the festival’s invited writers and thinkers explored the nuances and uncomfortable truths around subjects such as violence against women, and the failings of the health industry.
The Wollongong Writers Festival and the Feminist Writers Festival both presented smart digital programs to their at-home audiences in a very hard year.
Unfortunately this too proved to be a swansong, with the Feminist Writers Festival announcing its closure in March. ‘The resourcing required to push through an (ongoing) precarious situation is too much’, it said; it could not in good faith continue relying on the volunteer labour of the already-stretched women and non-binary people who ran the organisation.
So, how did these losses come about and what will be lost with these closures?
Speaking on the closure of the Wollongong Writers Festival, Writing NSW’s Program Manager Julia Tsalis tells me she is worried to see the loss of such a successful event—from both the literary landscape and the geographic one. ‘The whole community benefits from this amplification of any funding that the festival receives. This community includes those who attend the festival, local booksellers, cafes, and those writers speaking at the festival.’
While most organisations do not seek funding to cover the full costs of the work they are undertaking, what funding does is enable them to establish a secure (or, in the case of literature, semi-secure) base from which to undertake the work of generating the rest of the income needed to cover expenses such as artist fees, venue hire, production, marketing and communications, organisational management and staffing.
While I was Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival, only 25 per cent of our income came from Creative Victoria triennial funding, which contributed to staff and overheads, enabling us to securely hire the arts management professionals needed to generate the other 75 per cent of income through more grants, ticket sales, sponsorship and partnerships revenue, ad sales and philanthropy—not to mention putting on an amazing show. And as a long-running institution, MWF had some reserves which could occasionally be drawn on during lean or challenging years.
In small and newer organisations, juggling this mix of income streams is even more precarious. In regional areas, for example, it is not always feasible to charge the kinds of ticket prices that a capital city writers festival can. And many new organisations simply don’t have access to the same organisational funding that others do—rather, they are applying for programming grants which cover important things like artist fees and production, but not staffing and overheads.
While the arts broadly are suffering due to ongoing funding cuts compounded by the pandemic, literature is facing an especially difficult time; festivals, journals, writing and book publishing rank very low on the national arts agenda. Literature as an art form only receives 7 per cent of all ‘grants and initiatives’ monies allocated by the Australia Council. This is despite the same government body finding in its 2019 Arts Participation Survey that one in five Australians attend literary events, and 79 per cent of Australians read books—an art form bested only by listening to music (97 per cent).
While the arts broadly are suffering due to ongoing funding cuts compounded by the pandemic, literature is facing an especially difficult time.
It is telling that both the Wollongong Writers Festival and Feminist Writers Festival referenced the broader sector challenges in their closing statements, with the former noting their peers in the literary community who have had their funding applications recently denied, and the latter noting a beleaguered industry with overworked arts organisations.
‘It was tricky for us because we sat outside of a traditional writer’s festival model,’ Feminist Writers Festival Director Nikki Anderson tells me. ‘We were niche. It was definitely a more political offering—we were trying to speak to and work with more marginalised audiences and trying to amplify voices that weren’t in the mainstream.’
Anderson says this non-traditional focus made securing funding difficult for the organisation. ‘Because we had the very specifically gendered focus, arts funding often didn’t apply.
‘I don’t think there is a lot of space for more niche organisations that are not purely about the arts. But then, if all the money is going to established organisations, there is a real loss of that diversity.’
It is this diversity that must be protected. Just over a decade ago, I had a non-traditional start to my festival directing career, my passion sparked through independent publishing and attending artist-led, DIY-focused, and sometimes very weird, events and festivals including National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle, Adelaide’s remarkable (and now itself sadly defunct) Format Festival, and the Emerging Writers’ Festival which was at the time a small and plucky newcomer on the Melbourne scene. The notion that this diversity of experiences may be lost in the coming years is troubling. The question is, what can be done?
The notion that this diversity of experiences may be lost in the coming years is troubling. The question is, what can be done?
Funding bodies including the Australia Council and Creative Victoria are advocating for increased collaboration and partnerships, for organisations and artists to join forces, merge or work together for shared outcomes. And I have no doubt that the individuals and organisations within the literary industry will embrace this (in some cases) new direction with creativity and verve. But beyond this, the arts industry needs a massive cultural reform—it needs a bold vision and someone to lead it.
One such vision is being offered by the independent arts and culture think tank A New Approach, whose report ‘Australia’s cultural and creative economy: A 21st century guide’ was released in September last year. The report presents eight recommendations, and particularly calls on the Australian Government to develop a National Arts, Culture and Creativity Plan to inform more coherent policy settings and investment across all levels of government. Whether the Australian Government will step up to lead this vision is unknown—and won’t help address our sector’s immediate and dire needs.
So, sadly, despite knowing that some of Australia’s best minds are working furiously against it, I fear that the closure of the Wollongong and Feminist writers festivals are the harbingers for the disappearance of the niche, the independent, the hyperlocal, the marginalised and the experimental segments—in other words, the best bits—of our sector. Vale.
