The Andrews Labor Government is continuing to support Ballarat and District Aboriginal Cooperative with the infrastructure it needs to grow and thrive.

Member for Wendouree Juliana Addison and Member for Buninyong Michaela Settle today announced three separate grants for BADAC to support the organisation’s work with local Aboriginal artists and community.

BADAC secured a grant of $200,000 through the Andrews Labor Government’s Living Local Fund to create a BADAC owned and operated Aboriginal community art gallery. The gallery will be located in a large heritage building on Mair Street in the heart of Ballarat’s performance, dining & entertainment precinct. The project will enliven the precinct and provide local Aboriginal artists with a place to display and sell their art.

Additionally, BADAC were successful in their application to the Andrews Labor Government’s Creative Neighbourhoods Infrastructure Support Program, securing a $144,000 grant to activate two creative spaces at BADAC’s Main Road premises.

The project will install a six metre modified shipping container for an outdoor cultural and creative workshop, install a mobile shop-trailer for a ‘pop-up’ creative shop for BADAC creatives and community partners, and modify and equip a music-making room to enhance community creative practice.

BADAC’s Main Road location is dedicated to a new cultural and therapeutic program and is a creative, healing and accessible space that supports vulnerable community members to gain healing, confidence and life skills. This funding will allow for an expanded range of creative artforms and cultural activities as well as enabling music creation, recording and storytelling.

The Living Local – Regional Grants Program is a competitive grants program open to eligible rural and regional local governments and incorporated not-for-profit organisations/associations. Applicants may seek a minimum of $20,000 and maximum of $200,000.

The Creative Neighbourhood Infrastructure Support Program is open to micro to medium sized creative organisations and businesses, creative individuals and collectives as well as non-creative businesses and community organisations. Grants support small to medium capital works, digital infrastructure upgrades, equipment purchases and installation.

Ms Addison and Ms Settle also announced that BADAC had been successful in the most recent round of the Andrews Labor Government’s Regional Health Infrastructure Fund.

With the Aboriginal community rapidly growing in Ballarat and the surrounding region, BADAC aims to double its medical clinic footprint to employ sufficient medical practitioners to meet the community’s health needs. The $201,000 grant will support architectural drawings and costings, QS report, soil and Geotech tests, and community consultation to bring the project to ‘shovel ready’ application stage.

The RHIF was established in 2016 and the $790 million fund provides vital Government funding to rural and regional health services and agencies across Victoria.

Quotes attributable for the Member for Member for Wendouree Juliana Addison

“This new BADAC gallery in the heart of Ballarat will promote and celebrate Aboriginal culture, provide opportunities for local artists to thrive, and encourage Indigenous tourism experiences for locals and visitors. It will also provide social, economic and cultural benefits for our community.” 

Quotes attributable for the Member for Member for Buninyong Michaela Settle

“Art is an expression of identity, culture, and relationship to Country. This new art centre will play a fundamental role for local Aboriginal artists, and I am so pleased that it will bring stories of ceremony and creation to life for everybody to learn from and enjoy.” 

Quotes attributable to BADAC CEO Karen Heap

“We are delighted that the wider community will now have the opportunity to buy genuine, unique local Aboriginal art and cultural crafts created by our Western Victorian artists.”

“Our Aboriginal Art Gallery is such a welcome and much-needed project. At last our artists will have somewhere to display and sell their art and cultural crafts. This will enable them to purchase paints and canvases for new works, and to pay bills and meet living expenses.”

“Art is a connection to, and expression of, Aboriginal culture. Art is a way the whole community can connect to Aboriginal stories and our ways of seeing the world, in all its richness and variety.”