The WDC submission round is over. Now Donna goes before her landlord — the OWCT Board — at 5:30pm on Tuesday 19 May. Get your submissions in by 12pm so the Board has time to receive them.
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Dear OWCT Board,
My plea to the Board is to genuinely acknowledge and endorse the benefits my presence has and continues to bring to the Historic Precinct. My passion for this community and the Arts have inspired me to invest decades of my time and energy — and what little money I have earned — into creating a very unique experience for both locals and visitors to enjoy, to be inspired by, and to lure others to come and experience thereafter.
I know that it has resonated deeply with a huge number of people locally, nationally and internationally, and the amount of recent positive feedback concerning potential closure has astonished me and further endorsed my wish to continue here.
I look at the Events Centre project where supporters have raised $17 million dollars, and the Forrester Gallery where $6.5 million was raised by staff and volunteers, and can't help wondering why the OWCT — who claim to acknowledge and appreciate my value and contribution — can't support my tenancy by seeking assistance from funding agencies, trusts and individuals instead of insisting on trying to get more blood out of the stone that is my commercial capacity.
It is incredibly challenging to make an unsupported living as an individual community artist. I have to make, curate, sell and administer a huge space, come up with affordable ephemera, and try to maintain artistic integrity in a hyper-critical environment. In the current neo-liberal political spectrum, culture is too easily regarded as a nice-to-have, when it is more and more integral to our social and community cohesion — especially with all of the cost of living pressures capitalism continuously and exponentially demands of us.
I have always celebrated the Trust's collaborative approach in encouraging and maintaining my position as an artist in residence in the area, bringing many benefits to us both. It breaks my heart to be suddenly reduced to a purely financially defined rent resource for them, even though I know well that my economic benefits to the Precinct and wider area are massive and barely quantifiable.
I urge the Board to rethink this approach and find a way to enable me to continue to survive and thrive here, bringing more colour, joy, community and passion to this place I love belonging to.
Sincerely,
Donna Demente