Thank You!

To everyone who was part of Future/Forward both online and off. 

To all of our speakers: Dr Matilda House, Peter White, Richard Bell, Patricia Piccinini, Dr Fiona Foley, Nick Mitzevich, Dr Oliver Watts, Justine van Mourik, Kelli McCluskey, Abdul Abdullah, Michaela Boland, and Nicholas Pickard. To all of the ARIs who came together to strengthen what’s possible, making a powerful statement on the place of artist-run space for the contemporary arts. To Gabrielle Sullivan from Indigenous Art Code. To the NGA for hosting our first day. To Justine van Mourik and her Parliament House collections team for making us feel so welcome. 

To the Copyright Agency, our major funder, huge thanks. To the state governments of WA, SA, TAS, VIC and ACT, thank you for your ticket and travel subsidies that made sure artists from across Australia could be there. And thank you to NSW and QLD state governments for your ongoing program support.

Future/Forward was about what it’s going to take to make a contemporary arts sector that’s ambitious and fair. Together, we all had some big conversations; we listened and responded, stumbled and recovered, challenged and disagreed and articulated anew. 

In the new strategic plan we launched on the first morning, we’ve set the bar pretty high for what NAVA’s role needs to be: advocacy, policy and action for a contemporary arts sector that’s ambitious and fair. We’ve set out our priorities for artists, for the sector and for the public. Revising the Code of Practice, and ensuring its thorough and consistent implementation, is core to this work. 

We’ll be making some research and collaboration plans in coming months on the update and the Code. We’re going to need you.

We would really appreciate it if you filled out a survey about what we did well and what we missed. We'll be closing the survey on 1 September.

Thanks again, 
NAVA Team