Cultural Tourism Fund industry briefing transcript

Hello and welcome. My name is Toma Dim and I'm the Director of Grants at Arts Queensland. It's my pleasure to be able to talk to you today about our new fund, Cultural Tourism Fund, which is a refreshed version of the fund that we ran through Grow as part of Creative Together.
This Cultural Tourism fund is part of Queensland's Time to Shine, which is the Government's new 10-year arts and cultural strategy.
So before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which I'm working on today.
We're here, Amber and I, in Meanjin, Brisbane on Turrbal/Jagara country, and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.
And I also extend my respect to the elders of the country that you are joining us from today and to any First Nations people who might be involved in today's presentation.

Purpose of Industry Briefing

The purpose of this briefing is to provide you with an overview of the Cultural Tourism Fund and to clarify the eligibility criteria and fund requirements to assist you to better understand whether this fund is right for you and your organisation.
The information today will be general in nature, so if you have any questions that are really specific to your festival or organisation, you can contact Arts Queensland and the team will direct you to an appropriate person to assist you further. We'll provide some contact details at the end of the presentation.
There are a number of Arts Queensland people on the call today. We have Hannah Clissold, our Senior Strategy Manager, Fenella Hegarty, who's our grants officer, who's looking after this fund, and Amber Miller Greenman, who is a strategy manager, and they're also looking and working on, looking after and working on the cultural Tourism fund. These are the team of people that will speak to you if you have any questions regarding the fund.
So we encourage you to say hello to each other in the chat, tell us the organisation you're representing or festival that you're representing or event and the country you're joining us from today.
The question and answer function is enabled for questions. So, if you think of anything as we go along, please type it into the chat. There may be some questions that you ask there that you find that I answer as part of the presentation, but anything that we don't think has been addressed, we'll look at at the end of the presentation and try and answer them there.
There may be some questions that we either need to take on notice and come back to you with, or there may be some questions that are actually more appropriate to be discussed with you individually, rather than in a group.
Please think about your questions, stick them in the chat and we'll get to as many as possible at the end of this presentation.
And any answers to questions we will include within our FAQs.

Overview – Agenda

So in today's briefing, I'm going to talk you through the fund objectives and the difference between the two funding streams.
We'll look at some of the key eligibility criteria and note the fund supports arts and cultural festivals and events.
We'll also work through some of the elements about how to apply and the assessment criteria and go through some key parts of the assessment applicant, sorry, the application form online. I'll also clarify the approval process and the notification times for this fund. So hoping the briefing will take about 30 minutes of me, after which we'll have a Q&A session. So don't forget to pop those questions in the chat as we go.

Cultural Tourism defined

So what do we mean by cultural tourism? So cultural tourism refers to a visitor's engagement with activities that support their discovery, participation and consumption of cultural attractions, products and /or experiences that are unique to the destination.
It can be the main reason that somebody travels to a destination or a byproduct that enhances and provides additional motivation to travel.
Cultural tourism includes, but isn't limited to, performing arts and live music venues, galleries, libraries and museums, festivals and events, heritage experiences, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and cultural experiences, and outdoor and public art.
However, for the purposes of this fund, we are concentrating on arts and cultural festivals and events from across different art forms, noting that film festivals are excluded from this fund.
So, as mentioned on the last slide, this fund focuses on arts and cultural festivals and events.
Its aim is to supercharge events and festivals, to increase visitation to the region and enhance the cultural profile of Queensland.

The Cultural Tourism Fund

The Cultural Tourism Fund provides grants to support the development and presentation of new programming initiatives within Queensland festivals and events that attract audiences, drive regional growth and enhance the state's reputation as a cultural destination
The Fund supports the delivery of priorities of Queensland's Time to Shine, a 10-year arts and cultural strategy which you can find more details about on our website, including supporting uniquely QLD arts, experiences and transformational arts and culture for Brisbane 2032.
It also contributes to the outcomes of Destination 2045, which is the Government's tourism strategy and its ambition to make Queensland the events capital of Australia.
So the Cultural Tourism Fund is being offered over 2 streams, the new programming stream which offers up to $160,000 / 2 years or a maximum of $80,000 per annum or the new Market stream which has available to it up to $40,000 / 2 years, $20,000 per annum.
Also available through the New Programming Stream only is additional funding of up to $10,000 to support costs associated with increasing access for artists and / or audiences with disability.
So, this is available in the new Programming Stream only.
You can submit an application to each stream that you're eligible for.
This means that if you're eligible for both streams, you can submit 2 applications, one to each stream.
If you are applying under the same ABN, even if it's for different festivals, you can still only apply once to each stream.
Although each stream could be for a different festival, you can be successful in both streams and the maximum funding available is $100,000 per annum or $200,000 / 2 years.

Closing time of fund applications

So, applications to this fund are open now and they'll close at 2:00pm (two pm) on Monday the 23rd of February 2026 - not 5:00pm.
The reason that we close it in the middle of the day is to give us opportunity to address any technical issues that you might have.
If we close it at 5:00pm, then there's nobody here to answer your questions and you may have a panic overnight.
So you'll be notified of the outcome of your application by the end of May 2026.

Activity dates

Funding is available for activities that commence after the 13th of July 2026, but the activities must be concluded by the 31st of December 2028.
So noting the activities after the 13th of July, please keep in mind that your case for funding will be stronger if you aren't requesting funding for a festival or event activities that are already publicised as assessors might view this as an event or festival or an activity that's likely to happen without Arts Queensland investment because you're already in market.
So, for example, you would make a better case for a 2027 and 2028 festival happening in August than a 2026 and a 2027 festival.
Although you can apply for activities from that date onwards if you're already in market and if the activity you're seeking funding for is already advertised, assessors are less likely to view it as a compelling case for funding.

Eligibility Criteria

So please, so let's take a look at the eligibility criteria.
There is a full list of eligibility criteria in the guidelines and you must meet all of them, but I wanted to take some time here just to talk about a few examples in particular in a little more detail and provide some useful examples for this.
Fund investment is focused on supporting QLD based organisations and groups who present established arts festivals and events.
This does include local councils. Local councils are eligible to apply.
So this means that your event or festival must be primarily focused on arts activities and you and your festival or event must be based in Queensland.
And while the fund welcomes applications from any area of Queensland, you can apply if your festival is in Brisbane and you can apply your festivals on the Gold Coast.
We will be giving priority to applications from outside of southeast Queensland, so you're absolutely eligible to apply.
Just noting that we might be prioritising applications from more regional and remote areas.
In terms of meeting the definition of being an established event or festival, you need to provide as part of the application three years of program information and three years of visitation information broken down by local, interstate and interstate plus international if relevant.
We also require three years of economic impact reports. Please note that these don't have to be sequential, but they should be recent.
If you're unable to provide this information, it's unlikely you're going to meet the definition of an established festival and you won't be able to apply to the fund.
Your festival must also have received funding in the past from Tourism and Events Queensland and you must also be able to provide evidence of endorsement from your local government area and the regional tourism organisation for the area where your festival or event takes place.
This evidence should be provided on the organisation letterhead and have a name and contact details for the person providing the endorsement.
If you're applying as a local council for your own festival, you should include an endorsement from your mayor or CEO.
The next slides will dive a little bit deeper into eligible activity.
We suggest if you have any concerns about whether you meet any of the eligibility criteria, you raise this when you call Arts Queensland to discuss your application.
Which brings me to the last eligibility point.
You must have spoken to Arts Queensland about your application to be eligible!
We know that applications take a lot of effort, so it really is best that you find out if you're eligible to apply before you commit too much time to an application.
Applicants who don't contact Arts Queensland prior to submitting will not be able to progress to assessment.

Funding Uses – New Programming and New Markets Stream

Well, first we're going to look at the new programming stream.
So eligible activities will be assessed on their ability to attract new audiences and grow visitation and economic impact.
Eligible activities might also include the presentation of new work that will attract new audiences and market segments, driving visitation and audience expenditure.
So for example, you currently present a festival that attracts a majority of adults while your event is all ages and you haven't been able to crack the 'family's market'.
To support reaching and attracting these audiences, your application might seek to establish a program that's targeted at families with younger children.
Eligible activities also include the enhancement of existing programming and events to improve audience experience.
Examples of this might be that your event is currently largely daytime, so you seek support to extend your programming into the evening to encourage visitors to extend their stay overnight.
Or if your festival has a signature work or activity that each year is oversubscribed and overcrowded, a program to improve the experience for existing audiences, as well as to enable the event to grow and attract new audiences.
Or you want to present a component of your festival twice, and you're seeking funding to support that.
I guess the key thing with this type of activity is that you need to remember that the stream's focus is on programming and initiatives.
So an application may include adding more toilets to your venue, to improve audience experience -
While it might actually improve the audience experience, it's unlikely to be considered an eligible activity because it's not about programming and initiatives, that application is about infrastructure.
So again, please make sure you speak to Arts Queensland about what your project wants to do before you submit an application.
Eligible activities also include new arts programming or initiatives that will increase the scale of a festival, event or experience.
So for example, you've been successfully holding a music festival in a regional location, but you've been unable to attract a big name to grow your audiences and add that special something to your event that also encourages more press attention.
To support this, your application could be support for a major headline artist and through that support you demonstrate that you can increase your audiences by more than 10%, increasing the scale of your festival or event.
And finally, you can also apply for collaboration with a nationally or internationally significant artist or company to deliver any of the above activities.
An example might be engaging a renowned international company that specialises in a specific art form to work with local artists and create a spectacular opening event for your three-day festival.
This collaboration will also generate national press attention and build the company's reputation to draw visitors to the festival.
You can also apply in the new programming stream for additional access costs, and this is related to the engagement of people with disability or who are deaf as artists, arts workers, performers or collaborators, or to support audiences or participants with disability to access your activities.
So eligible costs include, but aren't limited to, transportation to support workers, sign language interpretation, captioning or audio descriptions, Braille or large print materials, hearing induction loops, temporary ramps, specific technical equipment.
It also includes support for hidden disabilities such as low sensory or chill out spaces or easy to read program or event information.
Again, you need to be able to demonstrate how those access costs are directly related to improving access for performers and artists and art workers or for your audiences with a disability.
Next, new markets, the new market stream.
This stream supports organisations to invest in new targeted and strategic market development activities that extend beyond regular marketing activities.
The activities should show strong potential to drive new visitation to the event, specifically by unlocking new target markets and market segments with the potential to increase visitation or visitor spend.
So eligible activities here include engaging a specialist contractor to advise on new targeted interstate or international market development initiatives or marketing and public relations costs directly associated with the delivery of new initiatives.
This stream will not support business as usual marketing or public relation costs that are not clearly related to the new initiative only.
You need to be able to show how the initiative is different to what your usual marketing or PR is, and that the budget for this initiative is in addition to what you usually spend and not subsidising your existing marketing and PR costs.

How to apply

Now, how to apply? Well, applications need to be made via Smarty Grants.
If Smarty Grants doesn't meet your access needs, please contact us as soon as possible about an alternative.
You can also choose to supply some support material in Smarty Grants and answers to some questions as audio or audiovisual files rather than written work, if that's easier for you.
When it comes to questions that require a text response and you're not doing an audio visual response, we recommend copying the questions into a separate document and working on them offline.
This will reduce the potential risk of your of losing your work if any issues occur with Smarty grants or any connectivity issues that might happen.
Particularly our original colleagues. We know that Internet can sometimes be troublesome in more remote areas. So yeah, work offline where possible.
It's also much easier to spell check outside of Smarty Grants.
So yeah, use your usual word processing program to do that and then copy the information into Smarty Grants.
We also recommend regularly saving the application form, such as after every question or document upload.
Again, it's really so disheartening when you have to do work twice.
Save early, Save often!
Please note that any questions you see in the application form that are marked with an* are compulsory.
If you don't answer these questions, the application form won't be able to be submitted.
The form uses skip logic depending on your answers.
For example, you'll be asked for slightly different responses and support material if you're applying to the new market stream compared with the new programming stream.
So please read through the application early to make sure you understand what's going to be needed for your particular application.

Budget

Next budget. There's a budget table in the application form and the budget totals will auto fill when you put your planned budget in.
We again, we recommend doing your budget early on in the application process that so that you have time to speak to us if you're having any issues.
The form does have a troubleshooting guide for common issues, but please call us if you're experiencing issues.
And please don't wait until the day of submission to discover you have budget problems. Do your budget early.
There are several pieces of documentation that you might be asked to upload depending on your responses as I mentioned earlier.
Please look through the whole application early in the process to allow yourself enough time to gather or develop any documentation that you may not already have.
The guidelines also have that list of compulsory support material.
So again, if you have any questions about support material, please ask when you call Arts Queensland.
You'll be able to access your submitted form through Smarty Grants after you've submitted it, but we also recommend that you download a PDF of the form for your reference.
We can't review your applications.
We can give general guidance as Arts Queensland, but we can't tell you what to put in.
We can help or Smarty Grants also have a technical team if you're experiencing technical difficulties.

Assessment Criteria

Okay, so this is the assessment criteria. This is what we're looking for in your application.
The application will need to demonstrate that your project delivers against all the relevant assessment criteria included in the high quality, strong impact and sustainable value categories.
Broadly speaking, this is about articulating the value of your project, giving confidence that it's going to be well managed and backing up any claims that you have with evidence.
It is about telling a consistent story highlighting how your project will meet the purpose of the fund and drive visitation and spending in the region.
The strongest applications will have a very clear thorough line from the activity they want to do, to increasing visitor numbers, length of stay or visitor spend with evidence to support why it will work.
So again, it's about that consistency of the narrative across all of your questions and all of your support material.
Let's look first at 'high quality'.
The first criteria should be inclusive of the strength and clarity of the creative idea or concept for the festival or event and the calibre of the artists involved.
So do you have a clear idea of what you want to do and what success looks like?
We also ask that applicants have a track record of successful delivering high-quality festival or events.
You need to provide us with three years of program history and this will help peers assess the quality of your past activities.
We're also looking for an applicant's proven ability to maintain or grow audiences, bringing visitors to the region and/or encouraging extended stay and spend.
So tell us, how has your festival or event driven economic impacts for your region?
You will need to provide us, as we've said before, with your last three economic impact reports and the visitation stats for those years.
We'll talk a bit more about that in the next slide, but we're looking for festivals or events that have at least maintained visitation over that.
You're unlikely to be successful if you're expected attendance and economic impact are tracking consistently downwards across the period.
So maintaining or growing your visitation.
And finally, the skills and experience of the professionals involved, including collaborators and partners.
Do you have the right people - internal and external partners to deliver on your goals?
How will your partners and collaborators add value to what you do?
So the potential for strong impact.
The first criteria here is the potential for the planned activity to further grow visitation and markets for the festival and event and to build Queensland's cultural reputation.
The next part of the criteria askes the application to demonstrate that the planned activity will deliver sustainable economic and social benefits to its region in Queensland.
So these criteria are really critical as they're at the heart of the objective of the fund.
In new programming, these criteria will relate to the strength of the idea, but in both instances, it's also going to relate to your marketing plan.
We'll talk more about the marketing plan in the next slide.
The next criteria is that the planned activity will create employment and career development opportunities for Queensland artists, creatives and arts workers.
Hopefully that's pretty self-explanatory.
And finally, if you're requesting additional access funding, you'll also need to meet the criteria that the funding requested is clearly aligned to the impact of the planned activity and the targeted artists and/or audiences.
While improving access generally is a good thing, Arts Queensland wants to make sure that applicants have given thorough consideration to their plans and are not just tacking on the funding requests because it's available.
Consider how you'll be able to demonstrate that people with disability have been involved in developing the plans for the activities that you're seeking access support for.
What are the specific needs of the artists or the audiences and how are you meeting them?
If you're seeking funding to support audiences with disability, your marketing plans should very clearly show how these audiences will be targeted and engaged.
The final criteria area is sustainable value.
Here we're looking for a budget that's viable and realistic, including contingency and appropriate fees for the professionals involved.
We'll talk about budgets a little bit more in a later slide, but our expectation is that artists and arts workers are paid at least the minimum recommended industry rates.
Next, it's that your application shows a strong and achievable delivery plan, including understanding potential risks and their management.
Assessors want to be as confident as possible that the project will be delivered as planned and as written in your application.
So as well as having a clear project plan that allows adequate time for the planning and the delivery stages, you also need to demonstrate that you understand and have a plan to manage the key risks associated with your project, not just the festival or event overall.
What is your Plan B?
Don't forget to address any financial risks, not achieving project income or increasing costs in your risk assessment.
And finally, the applicant will demonstrate best practice and appropriate cultural competencies in working with diverse communities, if relevant to that festival or event.
It may not be relevant to your festival or event, and that's OK.
However, if you are planning to work with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities or artists or with Indigenous intellectual and cultural property, you should demonstrate you've had respectful and meaningful consultation and have appropriate permissions and support of Elders who can speak for that community.
Having appropriate cultural competency is also true if you're planning to work with a particularly culturally diverse community or stories from communities that aren't your own, or with working with people with disability.

Attendance history table and application form

Now I'd like to take a little bit of time to talk about the attendance history table in the application form.
So you'll see the image on the left, you'll see when you go into the application form.
Applicants to both streams will need to complete this table.
The table will help you to demonstrate the criteria relating to your track record in maintaining or growing audiences and attendance.
The information that you put into this table should be found in the economic impact reports that you have and that you attach as your compulsory support material.
Please make sure that the data here matches the data in your economic impact reports.
So in the first row of this table, you can see year of event.
Please indicate which calendar year the data below is from.
The oldest data should be in the left-hand column and your most recent event data should be in the furthest right-hand column.
I've mentioned, if these are non-sequential, please contact us or talk to us about this.
When you talk to Arts Queensland about your application, we may ask you to explain why there are gaps in between the years and it might be because of adverse weather and we can make allowances for it, but we just need to have a chat with you first.

Attendees v unique attendees

Then we're looking at total attendances.
This means the total number of attendances across the festival or event, counting each time an individual attends if they attended multiple times.
Unique attendees means the number of individual people who attended the festival, where each individual is counted only once.
The primary purpose data that's split down relates to those who have travelled specifically for your event or festival and it's broken down by within Queensland, the rest of Australia and overseas.
Again, this information should be in your economic impact report, put it into the table as well.
So we also require:
- the economic impact total and direct total
- direct and incremental expenditure in region (from your economic impact report)
- your Net Promoter score.

Marketing and Project Plan

So next I'm going to talk about the marketing and your project plan.
First of all, your timeline and activity plan, as it's called in the application form.
Now this appears in the new programming stream only.
Your timeline and activity plan should include the key steps and activities in delivering your project.
This section demonstrates the criteria regarding a strong delivery plan.
It will also help assessors see that you know what needs doing at a high level and have allocated sufficient time to planning and delivery to achieve the best possible results.
So if you look at the first image where there's a yellow circle around the word maximise, when you first look at the form in Smarty Grants, if you click on that maximise button on the top right hand side of the table, it will show you the whole table across your screen, which is the image below.
So click on the maximise and then you'll see the image below which has the whole table on one screen.
It just makes it a little bit easier to fill in.
Unfortunately, if you're trying to do this on a phone or on a tablet, you probably won't see the full table, but you probably will on a computer screen.
So enter all your key project activities on separate lines in the table with their start date and end date, and then the location the activity will take place in.
You can include planning and key logistical dates, but please don't include your marketing activity.
This will be captured separately in your marketing plan and I'll talk about that later.
The location column has a drop-down menu of common locations.
We're after the town name in this instance rather than the suburb, so if you start typing in the box, a list of matches will appear.
If your location isn't on that list, then choose Other and enter the name of the town.
Please also give the post code.
There are a surprising number of towns with the same name in different parts of Queensland.
You can also select No location for admin tasks and Digital Only For digital broadcasts or streaming of performances.
Only enter activities that are relevant to what you're seeking Arts Queensland's funding for.
Please don't include all the performances at a festival or event.
If the activity has a public outcome, you need to record that in the highlighted green column.
So to be clear, performances, exhibitions and workshops have public outcomes.
Marketing activity and consultation with the public or with stakeholders are not classed as public outcomes.
Performances and exhibitions have attendees, that's the pink column.
So if you put something in a performance column, you're going to have to put something in the attendee's column or something in the exhibition column, you're going to have to put something in the attendee's column.
Workshops have participants, so that's the orange columns.
If your planned activity includes artist talks or panels, then these would count as performances in the table and would have attendee figures against them.
Public outcomes should always have attendees or participants against them, otherwise they're not really a public activity.
Please don't count staff or artists working on the project as participants.
It is just the people involved in those public workshops.

Marketing Plan

Now I'm going to talk a little bit about the marketing plan. For applications to the new programming stream and the new market stream, you need to upload an outline of your marketing plan and a budget that relates to it, including any planned specific interstate or international activities at the end, included in the marketing plan.

What are the intended outcomes?
So a strong and competitive marketing plan will include the following details:
- the brand and your positioning
- your marketing objectives
- an announcement calendar
- ticketing structure - including any travel partners or on sale dates
- target audiences - including segmentation and key markets, local, interstate, international, different locations and different demographics.
It will also include paid media approaches and channel strategies and anything that you're doing on channels that you own, so social media, EDM's website, etc.
It should include any broadcast or media partnerships with an estimated reach and opportunities.
It should include:
- your marketing budget - what is your spend by channel and location or demographic details of any event packaging and travel partners (if that's what you do)
- event marketing that you'll do to leverage opportunities including for talent to promote the event or the host destination.
- any international opportunities.
So this list of suggested inclusions is in the application form, so please refer to it.
This document is absolutely critical for you to be able to demonstrate the value of your project and remember you will need to demonstrate the potential for your planned activity to grow visitation and markets, as well as Queensland's cultural reputation.
The marketing plan is key to this and as such, for applications to the new programming stream, your marketing plan should reflect the programming.
So for example, if you're asking for support for a program to attract the family market, your marketing plan should show how you would target and engage this audience.
We spoke before about the having a consistent narrative across your application and your support materials, and that's a good example of that for applicants to the new market stream.
Your marketing plan also provides evidence that you meet the criteria of having a strong delivery plan because your marketing plan is in essence your delivery plan.
So a strong marketing plan is absolutely critical in both streams to giving assessors confidence that you'll achieve your goals and that you're therefore, a good investment of public money.

Budget

We recommend that you do your budget as one of the first things that you'd complete in your application.
So don't include the budget for the whole festival in the budget table of the application form.
Please only include the budget for the specific project that you're applying for.
You will have opportunity to upload a whole festival budget as support material.
Use whole dollar amounts in the table. Don't use any commas.
Step one is to complete the Item Description and Amount columns in the Expenditure section for your project's costs.
All of this information is in the application form, so please re-read it.
If you have any questions about completing your budget, please, please, please give Arts Queensland a call.
So next, you're checking the budget total sections to make sure you've allocated the exact amount of the Arts Queensland funding request, across the lines in the contribution column and that you haven't requested 100% of project funding from Arts Queensland.
Budget information should be realistic and we recommend you provide current quotes for significant expenditure items in the supporting materials at the end of this section.
You can also provide support information that details how you have arrived at income or expenditure projections to give assessors confidence that income targets in particular are achievable.
Finally, double check that your narrative and your supporting material aligned with what's in your budget.
Different figures create questions in assessors' minds and undercut your applications credibility.
Almost there.

Assessment Process

So once you've submitted your application by the due date on time by 2:00PM, the assessment and approval processes take place.
Arts Queensland will then assess the eligibility of your application.
Eligible applications are then assessed by an independent panel of peer assessors.
Peer assessors are independent artists and arts workers who represent the diversity of Queensland communities with regional experience
They may also include representation from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and/or people who identify as deaf or have a disability.
Each peer assessor individually assesses each application against the assessment criteria and then the peers come together as a panel, moderated by Arts Queensland staff and discuss their assessments to make final funding recommendations.
Making funding recommendations is a complex process.
The peer assessors aim for balance and diversity across art forms, applicants from different types of groups, as well as the geographical location of applicants or activities.
Their recommendations then go to our Director General for approval, so applicants will be notified of the outcome of their applications by the end of May 2026 via email.
We will also publish successful applicants on the Arts Queensland website.
Thank you very much for your attention and for attending this event with my lovely colleagues.

Wrap up

Have there been any questions while I've been talking?

Hannah C

I'm not sure Toma, but there's a few things that I did pick up that I'll just clarify before everyone has the opportunity to ask questions.
For the purposes of this fund, we are welcoming applications from arts and cultural festivals and events from across Queensland, but priority will be given events located outside of South East Queensland.
Please refer to the funding guidelines for the definition of Southeast Queensland.
Also, one thing to note with the budget for everyone is, you might wonder how to enter this if you are applying for two years of funding.
It may be that you have an idea, but it might be a flow on from the first year of the project and you don't know the detail for the second year.
That is ok - but please add as much detail as possible.
If you are successful, you will be required to provide additional budget information to support the second year of your application during a progress report.
So that might be something that thinking, oh Gosh I don't know what that is.
And the other thing is that is different from this fund to the first iteration of the fund is around matched funding.
And whilst matched funding isn't required, you, you can't request 100% of project support through the funding and not contribute any funds.
So, you do need to show that you are contributing in some way, shape or form to whatever you are applying for.

Toma

Thanks, Hannah.
So, the recording and a recording of this will be available on the Arts Queensland website.
This will include the slides and my voice, and we will also include a transcript.
Do we have any other questions... no other questions, everyone's good.
I don't see anything coming through the chat, but if there is anything, please drop it in the chat or come directly to us via email.
Finally, you need to call Arts Queensland.
It is part of your eligibility.
We really look forward to speaking to all of you.
The contact is listed in the slides.
Email details are reception@arts.qld.gov.au, that is centrally held and make sure if anybody's on holiday that that information is going to go to the right people.
And then we'll get back in touch with you to arrange for you to speak to one of the teams.
Thank you very much.

Questions

Q1. When is Christmas close down?

The last day Arts Queensland is in the office is the 24th of December 2025.
So we work right up to Christmas.
And we're back in the office on the 2nd of January 2026.
So no rest for the wicked people at Arts Queensland where we just have that week between Christmas and New Years.

Q2. When can I expect a call back? – I called yesterday?

We generally get back to people within a business day, depending on the time of day that you called.
So in answer - you can expect to call back today.
We are in a very busy period at the moment, just with lots of other funds going through their moderation and assessment.
Generally, we get back to you within a day.

Q3. Where's the information about the definition of southeast Queensland?

It's in the guidelines.
On Arts Queensland's website there is a page for the Cultural Tourism Fund, and that information is contained there.
Basically it is outside of the Greater Brisbane area.
Just so you all know, we are getting a lot of inquiries and by a lot, I mean a lot.
If there has been something that's missed, you can just follow up with me via email.
And if we are getting consistent questions, we will add them to the frequently asked questions on the website. We do encourage you to read the guidelines, read the frequently asked questions as they contain a lot of useful information.

Q4. So can you apply for a non-equal amount across the two years in order to bed the activity and grow it?

Yes you can, but you are limited to $80,000 maximum in each year and $160,000 in total.
If you request less than the maximum amount of $80,000 in year one, you can then apply for up to $80,000 in the second year.
You cannot ask for more than $80,000 in either year.

Q5. Can you apply for more than one location?

If your festival or event takes place in more than one location, yes - you can include more than one location.
However, you can only apply under one ABN.
As with all applications, if you have any questions, please contact Arts Queensland to provide specific information, so we can provide you with better advice.
If, for example, you hold a component of your festival in one location and are looking to take it to a second location in your region, to enable new audiences to experience the event than funding could potentially support this.
Just have that discussion with Arts Queensland.
And a reminder that you can only submit one application per stream per ABN.
You can't apply from one ABN for two applications in the same stream.

Q6. Who is on the panel?

So the panel is an independent panel.
It's not Arts Queensland.
The panel has representatives with the relevant and independent expertise to be able to assess.
So that may include Tourism Events Queensland, it may include people from the sector, but at Arts Queensland - we just do the eligibility.
We don't get involved in the assessment.
Thank you very, very, very much for your time.
Best of luck with your applications.

Last updated:: 23 December 2025

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