Speaking from experiences of the Audio Foundation, Zita is quite right on how these things can work.
At first Alt.music needed to be quite pro-active at finding out who was visiting the main Australian festivals (Liquid Architecture and What Is Music primarily) and managed to poach a few artists at short notice to play Alt.music too. Eventually we have been able to reciprocate on a couple of occasions by bringing an artist into the region and then sharing them with Oz, or making a small contribution to the internaitonal airfare. But often it is a bonus for the Oz organiser to be able to offer some additional NZ dates and artists are keen on extra opportunities, even if we don't have massive festival fees and flash hotels to offer. We are now quite well acquainted with the key people organising things there and they often contact us in the first instance when they start planning a tour to see if they can include NZ, and having this kind of warning is important. And then there have always been personal connections; international artists contacting local artists they already know because they are thinking of coming this way, or using those networks to invite people over. As Zita notes, establishing these relationships doesn't help much if you don't have resources to then accept a reasonable number of tours, but AF has always had Alt.music as a kind of Visiting Artist Fund. Someone reminded me last night that this kind of thing is ideal for CNZ's Quick Turnaround funding, and (for a speaker rather than a concert) would only require a trans-tasman airfare and a few domestic flights (maybe some per diems) if an institution in each city could provide a modest speaking fee and accomodation, and artists often enjoy the personal touch of being billeted by interesting people rather than being stranded in a hotel, but it pays to be careful not to assume too much about expectations. Not much of a funding request at all. Another reciprocation issue is trying to get NZ artists booked into the Australian events so it isn't just one-way trafficking, and that takes a lot more work. Incidentally, it is looking quite likely that Douglas might be in NZ mid-late next year so watch this space. AC ----- Message from [email protected] --------- > + this is a broader question of how to coordinate getting people here > in general, financially + organisationally, and a bit of a bugbear of > mine - something i go on about without really acting on. > > In my list of things I'd like to spend money on, having a fund + > coordination to be able to bring people over the ditch and round the > country is a pretty high priority. I envisage something like altmusic > for digital / media art, where ADA could connect with friendly > institutions around the country to set up a tour for someone. We > cobbled one together for Alessandro Ludivico last year mostly thanks > to the generosity of Victoria University + Auckland University for > flights + the hard work of Douglas Easterly + Alex Monteith to arrange > those. That was a bit of an institutional fluke though and not easily > replicated. > > I think there are a couple of things we need here: > > - A connection with Australian organisations to maybe mention with > enough warning if someone we might be interested in is coming to Aust > - and a willingness to let us borrow them over here without > contributing to the international flights! (we did have amazing > cooperation from the writers fest in Newcastle that were hosting > Alessandro on that last year). We do have a good relationship with > ANAT, and it would be relatively easy to have this conversation with > them at least. > > - but that would be useless unless we can actually organise money for > flights etc and institutional support. It's awkward and embarrassing > having to go 'oh hang on while we work through all these different > possible channels to rustle up a really tiny amount of money' to an > organisation that has just spent thousands on that person in the first > place. That rigmarole does nothing to dispel any ideas of us being a > pretty useless poor cousin... > > I would love to have an ADA fund for touring speakers that we could > activate for exactly these kinds of possibilities, but to apply for > money for that purpose we would have to know all of the details of > speakers + their costs up to a year in advance, basically, and that's > really not that practical or possible. > > hmm, I guess I should get on to that cnz strategic plan submission... > > _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
