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Issue 24, December 2015
CEO'S MESSAGE
Season's Greetings I am thrilled to be writing this update, my first as the Chief Executive Officer of The Ian Potter Foundation. I have been lucky to have had nearly eight weeks working in a formal transition with outgoing CEO, Janet Hirst. This time has allowed me to get to know the wonderful staff here at The Ian Potter Foundation and to meet and interact with the individual members of the Board of Governors. I have also had the chance to visit a number of grantees and learn about the work they are doing in the community. I am extremely grateful to have had Janet’s assistance through this transition period and the opportunity to benefit from her great depth of experience and knowledge of what constitutes effective philanthropy.
As exciting as my new role is, I do have a strong sense of responsibility to continue to build on the legacy of Sir Ian, the outstanding contribution of the Board of Governors, and to harness the enthusiasm of an impressive staff working at The Ian Potter Foundation. Our focus as a team will be to present the Board of Governors with outstanding philanthropic programs in our core Program Areas, to practice ‘good philanthropy’, and to ensure we adapt our grant making to changing times and evolving community needs. I am also very keen for The Ian Potter Foundation to continue to support major projects at significant institutions and organisations, and to help outstanding people to turn their ideas into reality for the benefit of many Australians. I will attempt to discover and support excellence, and will encourage my Program Managers to do the same: whether this resides in a local community, in rural or regional Australia, or in our metropolitan centres, it is our duty to seek these opportunities out and support and nurture those capable of impacting many Australians in a positive manner. I would like to thank the Board of Governors for the wonderful opportunity they have presented to me, and commit myself to enhancing the legacy that is The Ian Potter Foundation. Together with the staff of the Foundation, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and rewarding New Year. Craig Connelly Chief Executive Officer
ROUND UP
21 grants, $7.4 million At our recent Board Meeting, the Governors considered invited applications in our final funding round for 2015. Twenty-one new grants were approved totalling $7.4 million, including $3 million to Monash University to boost the capacity of ClimateWorks. ClimateWorks is an independent organisation that advises Government, business and industry on climate change action. This funding will help them scale up their team and provide more comprehensive programs, an objective that is even more critical following the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. In the Arts, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory was awarded $300,000 to digitise their collection of 30,000 items and make the information available to the public. In Community Wellbeing two grants were made: $300,000 to YWCA NSW for their Pathways to Independence Program, an innovative project that aims to prevent homelessness for women over 50, and $300,000 to help establish CareerSeekers, a new organisation that aims to provide employment pathways for migrants and refugees, based on the successful model created by CareerTrackers, which targets Indigenous Australians. Three grants totalling $510,000 were approved in the Education program area. Among these was $150,000 over three years to Teach for Australia (TFA) to support the deployment of a Teaching and Learning Advisor to enhance leadership and teaching practices, and improve educational outcomes for students in four schools in Kalgoorlie, WA. This is the first grant the Foundation has awarded to TFA and it will directly impact at least 3000 students. Northside Enterprise was the sole grant recipient in Health & Disability this round, receiving $100,000 to consolidate and grow the successful Bushlink program,which provides training and open employment support for people with intellectual disabilities through a site maintenance enterprise in school grounds. The complete list of our recent grants can be found on our blog.
CULTURAL TRUST
Welcome to 23 New Grantees In this round we awarded $157,000 in Ian Potter Cultural Trust grants to 23 emerging artists to assist their professional development. As always, grants represent a wide array of art forms, with nine visual artists, eight performing artists, three classical musicians, one jazz musician, two dancers and one fashion designer in the mix. Laura Fanning from Caroline Springs in Victoria has received a grant of $7,000 to undertake a Graduate Diploma in Fashion at Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, and is aiming to be the first RMIT graduate to obtain a place in the coveted Master of Fashion course at this venerable institution. Laura’s Honours thesis focused on the cult of ‘high fashion’ in celebrity culture and how it impacts negatively on everyday women’s wear. Henry Andersen from Fremantle in WA is an emerging composer and visual artist working in the area of sound art, and focusing on interior and domestic spaces and the limits of language. His practice is conceptual and multi-disciplinary. He is one of eight international students who have been invited to undertake a Masters in Fine Arts at the Royal College of Art (KAST) in Ghent, Belgium. The complete list of the new grantees can be found on our blog.
Major Grant to Queensland Ballet
Raising the barre Earlier this month we announced that Queensland Ballet had been awarded a $5 million grant to overhaul their premises in the Thomas Dixon Centre. This grant is the largest The Ian Potter Foundation has ever made to a Queensland-based organisation, and sits within our 10 largest grants. It is our third largest Arts grant. The Ballet's current facilities are stretched to capacity and this funding will enable a refurbishment that will include overhaul of four studios, two new studios, a dedicated dancer wellness centre and upgraded production facilities, wardrobe workroom and administration spaces. This will allow the company to accommodate a larger ensemble of dancers, expand dancer training programs and enhance community initiatives. The grant was announced at a Queensland Ballet press conference at the Playhouse in Brisbane where the company is currently performing The Nutcracker. At the conference, Queensland Premier and Arts Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk, also announced new funding of an additional $1.2 million annually for the Ballet's expansion and, importantly, extended the Ballet’s contract at the Thomas Dixon Centre in West End for another 50 years, giving them scope for this refurbishment. Read more about this grant
SUMMER HOURS
IPF Office Closure The Foundation’s office will be closed for a Christmas/New Year break from 5pm on Tuesday 22 December, re-opening at 9am on Wednesday 6 January, 2016. Our next funding round opens on Monday 29 March, 2016. All details can be found on the home page of our website. We wish you all a Merry Christmas, a very happy New Year and, if you are taking a break, a safe, enjoyable and relaxing holiday.
ANNUAL GRANTS REPORT 2014-15
Next Chapter We are pleased to present our 2014-15 Annual Grants Reports. The links below will take you to the online versions of the reports, which include video reviews from Janet Hirst, as well as details of the $30.7 million in approved grants and activities and priorities across the Foundation's program areas, and $679,000 in grants from the Cultural Trust. The Ian Potter Foundation Annual Grants Report 2014-15 The Ian Potter Cultural Trust Annual Grants Report 2014-15
News
Program Areas
Changes afoot At a recent Board Planning meeting, changes were made to the objectives, application processes and minimum grant amounts in a number of program areas. These include clearer guidelines focusing on biodiversity and water/land management in Environment & Conservation, and an emphasis on larger multi-year grants supporting high quality research in our Science program area. We have also reinvigorated our Community Wellbeing International Learning & Development program, which now offers grants of up to $20,000 to help senior staff of not-for-profit organisations to spend a period of time overseas to learn international best practices in their area of interest and, upon return, disseminate what they have learnt throughout their sectors.
News
Research & Evaluation
Culture Counts How do you know if an arts program is successful? Of course, you can measure audience numbers but how do you measure other elements like quality? One of our previous grantees, Access Arts, participated in the Queensland government’s pilot of a new arts evaluation program called Culture Counts Their final report was exceptionally strong, and covered measures of intrinsic value. Given the strength of their outcomes measurements, the Foundation has decided to pilot the Culture Counts evaluation program with four more grantees: The Australian Book Review, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Windmill Theatre and the University of Tasmania: Arts. Each of these
Further details can be found on the relevant program area pages on our website.
organisations will have a year’s access to the Culture Counts online surveys, frameworks and training. Across the Arts sector, there is excitement about the potential to be able to
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benchmark performances (for example, across small dance companies or large art museums). We will be excited to report on the outcomes of this pilot in one years’ time. Read more about this initiative on our blog.
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We produce this quarterly e-newsletter to keep our friends and associates up to date with all the news and recent grants made by The Ian Potter Foundation.
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