Playing Australia FAQs
In this category a national tour is three or more locations outside of the home state of the proposed work. The itinerary must include regional or remote locations.
This Australia Council for the Arts uses the Accessibility Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) to determine the regional and remote classification for each town. The ARIA considers a range of factors, including distance to services, to group all locations in Australia into 5 ARIA Code areas. To find out if your project meets the eligible criteria (i.e. inclusion of venues with an ARIA rating of 1-4) and search for the relevant ARIA codes, please download this form.
Yes, you can include metropolitan locations provided you meet the eligibility requirement of including regional and or remote locations in your itinerary. There is no quota or ratio required for regional and remote versus metropolitan locations. However, the purpose of the program is to support regional and remote touring.
The ‘home state’ of the work is the state in which the work was originally created or produced, or where most of the artists involved are based. Some projects might have performers based in various states or engage a tour coordinator from a different state or territory. For the purposes of this fund the ‘home state’ of the proposed work should be nominated to calculate the interstate versus intrastate costs. Please discuss your proposal with an Artists Services Officer if you are unsure about the appropriate ‘home state’ for your application.
The Australia Council encourages applicants to propose alternative models of regional and remote touring (as a response to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic).
Itineraries may reflect concepts including residency models with a live performance outcome, or tours that place community engagement and participation as a central part of the development and touring process.
Proposals may include activity where a work is developed or re-staged with local artists or community through a residency process with visiting artists; or hybrid models which enable artistic collaboration across regions. There must be a live performance outcome as a result of the residency or collaboration. You may require additional funding sources in order to make such a model viable.
Where relevant, tours may include a period of development working with identified local communities prior to the presentation of a touring work.
Community engagement strategies should reflect your process. You are encouraged to supply letters of support from key community members which support this process.
In touring digital presentations, applicants may seek funding for any eligible Playing Australia costs (for example, technicians’ travel and accommodation to bump in/bump out, or freight for equipment). A digital tour may be presented in conjunction with, or independent to, a live performance tour.
Applications reflecting alternative touring models must consider the four assessment criteria: Region, Quality, Engagement, Viability and respond within the application as appropriate.
Yes, annual programs of touring are eligible. A proposal can identify blocks of touring across the year for the same work or for a suite of works. Your application should reflect a logical itinerary and viable budget, providing clear context for your planning.
Shorter touring blocks are a valid response when considering the mental health and wellbeing of artists engaged on extended tours.
Yes. Tours may engage dual casts or crew to support the overall health and wellbeing of the company undertaking an extended tour; for annual touring programs, and for companies who have specific support needs. Your application should reflect a viable budget to support this approach and provide clear context for your planning.
A professional production is one for which the performers and artistic personnel are paid at the appropriate recognised industry level.
To be eligible for this investment, the work/s needs to be produced by an Australian company or produced by an artist or collective of artists who are Australian citizens or have permanent resident status in Australia. The content of the work, the writer, composer or choreographer are not required to be Australian. An eligible work could also include a percentage of international performers as part of an Australian co-production.
Yes. Your itinerary can include activities that offer additional opportunities for the community to engage with the touring party or work, which reflect the engagement strategy provided in your application. As the focus of this fund is live performance, additional activities should be scheduled in an efficient way within the itinerary.
You can use the investment for any of the following:
- A reasonable portion of costs associated with remounting a work. In your application and budget please ensure you clearly outline these costs. You should provide a viable budget and convincing rationale for the remount costs, including any impact on presenter fees.
- Interstate net touring costs. Base these on current prices and add a reasonable contingency to each item.
- Tour coordination fees, which are set at a fixed rate of $550 per venue.
- Activities which reduce the environmental impact of the tour. Your application should reflect a viable budget to support this approach and provide clear context for your planning, which may include a cost benefit analysis.
- Wellbeing programs (for example, employment assistance programs) or other activities which provide support for the touring party whilst on tour.
Yes, you may request costs to support accessibility needs for your tour. These may be for members of the touring party (e.g. costs associated with travel requirements) or for presenters (e.g. Auslan or Audio Description services), If requesting access costs, please provide explanatory notes in the application form as to what you are seeking costs for. Please speak to a member of the Artists Services team if you would like further advice.
- accommodation, travel fares and transport costs for the touring party
- relevant industrial award rates for travel allowances for the touring party
- freight costs for the set and production elements.
The touring party is defined as the performers, crew and other personnel required to deliver the work. In the application outline the members of your touring party.
This fund provides support to cover travel allowances at the rate set by the appropriate industry award plus contingency for scheduled increases. Productions that pay above the award rate or have their own certified agreement will need to find alternative sources to cover the difference.
The tour coordination fees support the cost of managing the tour logistics and travel bookings, providing a contribution towards those costs at a set rate of $550 per venue. The rate is automatically provided in the budget form. Applicants are only eligible to receive the tour coordination fee for venues outside of the home state of the proposed work.
No. You may apply for a proposed tour with an unconfirmed itinerary. If you chose this option, your application will be more competitive if you are able to show an ongoing relationship or active conversation with your proposed presenters, community partners including their intentions to commit to the tour, pending financial support.
Once notified, you will be required to provide a finalised itinerary within 6 weeks, and prior to receiving payment. Itineraries will be reviewed and approved prior to payment. Tours which do not meet published criteria will not be supported.
You may wish to consider whether this approach is best suited to your tour. (If it does not suit, you can provide a confirmed itinerary.)
Against the criterion ‘Region’, there is the opportunity to discuss the regionality of your proposed itinerary. This may be evidenced by discussing your proposed presentation partners and your relationship or active conversation with them, within your application.
Proposed tours will still need to have already undergone a high degree of planning to enable you to accurately project budget expenses. No additional investment will be available after approval of your grant.
If your tour is interrupted, for example, due to natural disasters or touring costs being significantly impacted by inflation, please contact us to discuss your circumstances. We will work with clients on a case-by-case basis with regards to any potential support.
We welcome national touring applications from all forms of professionally produced live performance.
The Australia Council also offers the Contemporary Music Touring Program which funds tours to regional and metropolitan locations. Applicants may apply for $5000 – $50,000 of funding depending on the locations of their tour, based on the respective ARIA code rating. Tours funded through the Contemporary Music Touring Program may be limited to metropolitan locations, whereas Playing Australia tours must include regional or remote locations. Please contact Artists Services to discuss your application.
Yes, if relevant. If your project has an environmental impact, you should provide evidence of an environmental impact plan which may include cost-benefits. Arts On Tour’s Green Touring Toolkit and Green Music Australia’s Sound Country provide provides detailed information and resources for artists and arts organisations on how to mount a sustainable tour.