Council sends BighART to Rotterdam

The City of Sydney has unanimously approved sponsorship to community charity to attend and open the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam.

Council unanimously approved the $15,000 grant to send almost a dozen people to open the international festival.

Spokesperson for BighART Scott Rankin said the grant reflected the international appeal of BighART’s work.

“Big hart has been doing this sort of work for about 20 odd years,” he said.

“Australia is far ahead of Europe in the sort of Community Cultural Development work we do …  They have asked us to take our work over there because we are a long way ahead of the rest of the world.”

BighART’s work involves creating shows or films with specific communities of people aiming to motivate social change and highlight areas of inequality such as the Northcott project – a narrative about the troubled Northcott public housing building in Surry Hills.

“[Lord Mayor] Clover Moore and the city were really supportive of the Northcott project”, Mr Rankin said.

“And now with their help we can bring that work and works like it to the rest of the world, we really couldn’t have done it without them.”

“We are incredibly excited, there are people coming from Canada, Africa, and all over the world and the Australian contingent is opening the festival.”

Mr Rankin said the application was made to Council because of their speed of response.

“Obviously we can apply for a grant to the state government but the really good thing about local councils is that they can respond so quickly,” he said.

“If we had to wait for larger government, who move more slowly, the opportunity might have been gone.”

By Simon Black