Creative State Commissions

Stage 2 Overview & Guidelines

By invitation only

MAY 2018

Program Dates

Round One - Stage Two of the Creative State Commissions:

Opens:3 May 2018 using the Creative Victoria Grants Portal.

Closes:5pm, 10 May 2018

Round One - Stage Two Interview Dates:

Tuesday 22 May and Wednesday 23 May 2018

Please note: If you are not ready to apply in May 2018, you may be eligible to apply later in the year. Please call Program Staff to discuss.

Overview

Creative State Commissions is an initiative of the Victorian Government’s Creative State strategy. The program will commission major new works by Victorian independent creative practitioners and organisations that are ambitious in scope and scale, that have the potential to create an enduring legacy through widespread audience and community engagement, and that increase tourism to the state.

The program will also support Victorian independent creative practitioners and organisations to develop skills required to plan, resource and deliver large scale commissions. The commissions may be delivered through local, national or international partnerships, and may comprise one or more creative forms that include but not limited to: large-scale performative works including musicals, visual artworks, ephemeral works, literary works, public artworks, design and screen-based works.

Aims

The Creative State Commissions program aims to:

  • Stimulate and support creative ambition, talent and excellence in Victoria.
  • Increase the quality and range of commissioning partnerships for creative works.
  • Leverage investment and financial support for Victorian creative projects.
  • Raise the profile of Victorian creative practitioners nationally and internationally.
  • Generate positive transformative social and economic impacts for Victorian communities.
  • Provide audiences and visitors with unique and surprising experiences to increase tourism to the state.

Priorities

The program will prioritise commissions that:

  • Reflect the culture, diversity and/or geography of Victoria.
  • Are led by Victorian First Nations creative practitioners or organisations.
  • Are developed through new creative collaborations, including international collaborations.

Areas of Support

The program will provide financial support in two stages:

  • The first stage will provide support to shortlisted applicants to develop creative concepts and undertake feasibility studies for large-scale creative commissions.
  • The second stage will provide support to a select number of recipients to produce and deliver their creative commissions.

Eligibility

Creative State Commissions is open to Victorian-based organisations, institutions or creative enterprises/businesses that are legally constituted.

The proposed commission must be led by a Victorian-based independent professional creative practitioner, team or collective.

An individual Victorian creative practitioner, team or collective working outside of an organisational setting can only apply in partnership with a suitable Victorian organisation, institution or enterprise/business. The eligible partner must make the application and not the individual.

The applicant will need to demonstrate a successful record of working in partnership with creative practitioners in the realisation of complex projects of scale; good governance and organisational integrity.

Not Eligible:

  • Individuals
  • Festivals/Biennials/Triennials are not eligible for funding through this program in 2017/2018.
  • Organisations that are not based in Victoria.
  • Activity that fits within Creative Victoria’s existing funding streams or programs.
  • Applicants that have an overdue Creative Victoria (or former Arts Victoria) acquittal.

Funding Available & Requirements

Stage 2: After developing a detailed creative concept and completing a feasibility study, invited applicants can apply for $300,000 and up to $1,000,000 towards the realisation of the proposed major commission (after peer assessment, between one and three commissions will be supported).

Assessment

Assessment Criteria

Each application will be rated against the Creative State Commissions Aims and the following Criteria:

1. CREATIVE MERIT / In assessing this criterion, the assessment panel will consider:
  • The originality, vision and ambition of the proposed major commission.
  • The skill and calibre of the creative team based on current and previous work.
  • The context in which the major commission is being positioned.
  • The extent to which the commission will develop new, or deepen existing creative collaborations (locally or internationally).

2. IMPACT & ENGAGEMENT / In assessing this criterion, the assessment panel will consider public value and the potential for the commissioned work to have:
  • A positive impact on the careers of Victorian creatives.
  • The ability to engage audiences and the public through unique, immersive and surprising experiences.
  • A positive impact on cultural tourism in Victoria, and/or contribute to Victoria’s creative identity through export and market development.
  • An appropriate evaluation framework and documentation process.

3. VIABILITY / In assessing viability, the assessment panel will consider:
  • The applicant and lead partner/s’ capacity and experience to deliver the proposed work, including demonstrated project, stakeholder and risk management competencies.
  • Financial viability of the project, the potential to leverage other funding, realistic and achievable planning and use of resources.
  • Demonstrated cultural competencies and appropriateness of the applicant and partners for the proposed work.
NB: The project budget and financial documents will also be assessed by an independent financial assessor.

Addressing the Assessment Criteria

To address the assessment criteria in Stage Two you are required to:

  • Provide a balanced Budget
  • Provide the requiredApplication Support Material & Documents

Assessment Process and Timeframe

Stage 2: Invitation Only
(up to 6 weeks) / Recipients of Stage 1 funding, will be invited to submit their fully illustrated creative concept and feasibility study via the Creative Victoria online portal. Each proposal will be peer assessed against the Creative State Commissions aims and assessment criteria. Each creative team will have the opportunity to be interviewed by a peer assessment panel on either 22 May or 23 May 2018. The creative teams will be informed of the allocated interview date and time after the Stage 2 closing date.
Between one and three works will be recommended to the Minister for Creative Industries for final approval.

How to Apply

Before applying, you must speak to program staff.

To prepare your application, you should:

  1. Register for access to theCreative Victoria Grants Portal.
  2. Read program information and guidelines thoroughly.
  3. Contact program staffwith any questions.
  4. Draft your application using the following tools:
  • Creative State Commissions application drafting tool.
  • Creative Victoria Budget Drafting tool.
  • Creative State Commissions Concept Development and Feasibility Study Guide
  1. In the online Grants Portal, you will need to register as a user, then copy and paste the content of your application from the drafting tools into the onlineCreative Victoria Grants Portal

(please note: the system will cut text off at 2,000 characters, so always check your character count before pasting information into the portal).

  1. Upload your Application Support Documents (files or links) – see the tables below for detailed information on types/limits.
  2. Submit your completed application closing datevia the Creative Victoria Grants Portal.

Application Supporting Material & Documents

Providing relevant supporting documents is crucial to your application.

  • Not all types of application support documents will be appropriate for your project. Please ensure that you select material that is most relevant to your application and best supports your proposal.
  • You can upload and submit up to 10 files and/or 10 URLs (external links).
  • URLs must be publicly available (and/or include login/password requirements) and should link directly to the material you want to submit.
  • Attached files can be no more than 25MB in size each.
  • It may be necessary to combine supporting material into one document in some instances, eg. multiple images or letters of support may be compiled into one PDF or PowerPoint file.

The following file types are accepted:

Documents / Word (.doc .docx); Excel (.xls .xlsx); PowerPoint (.ppt .pptx); Acrobat (.pdf)
Images / .jpg .png .tiff
Audio / .mp3 .wma
Video / .mp4 .wma .avi .mov

For more information about the kinds of support documents and creative support material, refer to the table below.

Application Support Documents for Stage Two

Application Support Documents provide information to strengthen your proposal. All applicants must provide the following documents.

TYPE / DESCRIPTION / LIMITS
Creative Brief and Creative Support Material
(All applicants to provide) / Description of the proposed major commission.
Relevant creative material that will give the panel a good sense of the commission and skills of the lead creatives.
Refer to the Creative State Commissions Concept Development and Feasibility Study Guide (contact Program Staff). / 10 pages, including 5-10 images and/or audio/visual material
Feasibility Study
(All applicants to provide) / Refer to the Creative State Commissions Concept Development and Feasibility Study Guide (contact Program Staff). / 30 pages
Budget and Budget Notes
(All applicants to provide) / In addition to providing the summary budget in the application, applicants must submit the detailed budget for the proposed major commission as an attachment, with further budget detail, breakdown of costs and explanation/notes.
NB: Budgets must include appropriate fees for creatives. / 2 -3 pages
Partner/ Presenter Confirmations
(All applicants to provide) / Letter of confirmation from creative and delivery partners. These should be scanned into one attachment. / 1 page per partner
Annual Report
(All applicants to provide) / For not-for-profit organisations: Most recent annual report of the lead organisation, institution or creative enterprise. This needs to include audited financial report of the current and previous years. Hyperlink to the online annual report is preferred, especially if the annual report is more than 30 pages. The annual report with the financial report should be in one attachment/hyperlink.
NB: For profit organisations, contact Program Staff to discuss. / 30 pages
Letters of Support / Written endorsement/s of the organisation or project from relevant industry professionals, communities or peers. These should be scanned into one attachment. / 3 pages
Community Consultation Plan, including projects involving First Nations cultural material/ content/communities / For the protection of First Nations arts/creative practice from misappropriation, moral and copyright infringement, appropriate documentation must be submitted if you propose to work with First Nations stories/cultural material that is not your own. / Call Program Staff to discuss.

Responsibilities

If your application is successful, please be aware that as a recipient of Creative Victoria funding, you will be required to:

  • Notify Creative Victoria of any proposed changes to your funded project. This may include changes to creative personnel, itineraries (dates, venues etc.) and expenditure of approved funding. You will be required to contact Music Works programstaffto discuss any proposed changes before they occur, where possible.
  • Acknowledge the funding support by including the Creative Victoria logo deviceon all public promotional materials produced by the grant recipient in relation to the funded activity. Text acknowledging the Music Works program funding should accompany the Creative Victoria logo. Logos and text acknowledgement details are available on the Creative Victoria website.
  • Give permission toCreative Victoria to access and use relevant samples or images of your project/work in our publicity and marketing activities, reports and other not-for-profit government uses. Creative Victoria will consult with you in the first instance before publishing any publicity and marketing activities.
  • Acquit your grant in Creative Victoria’s online grants portal by completing an online written report on the outcomes of your funded activity within 30 days of completion. Failure to satisfactorily acquit funding will make you ineligible for future Creative Victoria funding and may result in action to recover the grant. For further details about acquitting a grant, visit the Creative Victoria acquittals webpage.

Please note that conditions of funding will be detailed in a common funding agreement.

Contact

To find out more or discuss your application, contact Creative Victoria.

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