Wind-up of Creative Arts Alliance

After our most financially successful year since our beginning in 2018, the Board of the Creative Arts Alliance (CAA) has made space for new energy in the arts and cultural service space in SEQ. Our last day of trade was Wednesday November 30^Th.  As per our constitution, our surplus funds have been transferred to a registered charity, in this case Sunshine Coast Arts Foundation (SCAF) for use in arts and cultural programming by the Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance (SCCA) – the entity from which we emerged. We encourage you to add to this fund with a tax-deductable donation.

We are incredibly proud of the contributions and collaborative support CAA has provided to the regional arts in SEQ community over the last 4.5 years, alongside our many wonderful partners. Of particular note is CAA’s work that has helped grow First Nations practice, provided meaningful support to the music sector and paid local artists to help regional communities understand their place and local identity.

CAA proudly led the establishment of the first phase of RASN for the six regions of Gympie, Moreton Bay, Noosa, Redland, Somerset and the Sunshine Coast and helped build a range of innovative, connected arts programs. The latest iteration of RASN designed by Arts Queensland for 2022-25 sees changed boundaries with most of the 6 SEQN RASN regions now aligned with CQUniversity, who have responsibility for administering RASN across 25 LGA’s.

The Directors of CAA would like to thank all the partner organisations we’ve worked alongside, the artists, supporters and past directors for their contributions to this company’s success. We would especially like to thank those who worked for us, our fabulous Managers Katie Edmiston and Mandi McIntyre and project officers Wallea Eaglehark and Lisa Fuller. We are also grateful to law firm McCullough Robertson for their pro-bono support of CAA since our inception.

I’d personally like to thank my amazing fellow directors: (co-founder) Dr Susan Davis OAM, Libby Anstis, Ant McKenna and Aunty Deb Bennet for their wisdom, guidance, incredible hard work behind the scenes and on-going friendship. Our fabulous bookkeepers KBAS also deserve recognition for their work as does accountant Initiative Group.

Rather than helping to bridge the gap between metropolitan and regional arts practice in Queensland (as we had hoped to do), we have seen an increasing polarisation with more state-funded arts organisations in Brisbane and the Gold Coast than ever. The practical impact of this means there is currently not 1 arts organisation to receive organisational funding within an 800km radius of Brisbane and South East Queensand (refer diagram) and only 6 outside of SEQ. We remain hopeful that this will change in time because the regional nature of Queensland means that we need a distributed, localised network of professional arts practitioners and entities.

Yours sincerely

Phil Smith, Director CAA Ltd

(on behalf of the CAA Board)