Recently, something huge happened for our small but mighty contemporary circus company from Adelaide. At a performance during the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Gravity & Other Myths (GOM) welcomed our one-millionth audience member.
They paid for a ticket, walked into a venue, took a seat and experienced the kind of home-grown, high-impact, sweat-and-soul-fuelled Australian work we’ve spent the last decade making and touring around the world.
One million people. One million moments in mid-air. It’s a milestone that few independent performing arts companies reach – and we are proud.
But this moment of celebration comes with a creeping sense of fragility. Because despite being in higher demand than ever, despite having toured more widely and performed to more people than almost any other Australian company of our kind, we are dangerously close to a point where we can no longer keep going. Not like this.
I think there is another way…
Read: The Moving State of Circus: opening keynote from the Australian Circus Summit
A colleague told me recently that running an arts company is a lot like paddling a canoe just upstream of a waterfall. Sometimes you get a little bit of breathing room, and then a flash flood pushes you (and the entire company of rowers) back down to the precipice… It’s exhausting, seat-of-your-pants stuff that only maintains its security through the blind determination of every single paddle-dipping contributor.
And we’re not alone.
There is a fierce but fragile cohort of Australian arts companies punching far above their weight – producing high-impact, globally resonant work with a fraction of the support their international counterparts receive. We do it with hustle, ingenuity and deep care. But the cracks are beginning to show.
For GOM, those cracks are visible in a single statistic: we need to maintain two full ensembles to deliver our scale of work, but can currently afford only one and a half. The demand is there. The energy is there. But unfortunately – due to the shrinking purses of presenters and the rising costs associated with global travel – the subsidy needed is not.
Until recently, we operated without multi-year funding, relying instead on annual grants and the sweat of a company that built itself like a start-up – agile, responsive, experimental and proud. We were supported by occasional lifelines (thank you, truly, to Creative Australia, Arts South Australia, OFTA [Office for the Arts] and our philanthropic donors), but our turnover has always been driven by bookings, workshops and international presentation fees. In other words: no tour, no pay.
Read: Performance review: Gravity and Other Myths’ The Mirror
Now, for the first time, we’ve secured four-year Creative Australia and Sidney Myer Fund multi-year funding. It will allow us to keep our core team of staff (two full-time and four part-time roles) engaged to figure out how to keep this ship sailing in increasingly turbulent waters.
It’s a transformative moment for us. It will buy us time – but it still doesn’t get us across the line.
To sustain our current output – which exceeds that of many larger, better-resourced companies – we need approximately $900,000 per year just to keep running in today’s market.
That may sound like a lot, but consider that we engage between 25 and 35 artists and staff at any one time to deliver around 330 performances to over 130,000 people annually. In that light, it starts to look like a high-return investment in cultural export and international touring – not a cost, but a catalyst.
To some, these numbers won’t mean anything. But to others, they’ll see just how hard we are hustling, and to what end.
We are radically transparent about our numbers because the risk we carry deserves recognition. We have no wage support for artists. We tour because we are passionate about our work and because audiences want to see that passion. But the cost of taking our work to the world is growing – financially, emotionally and physically.
Our operational funding will keep us just ahead of the waterfall. But unless we find a way to tour more work, I’m afraid maintaining a company of around 20 (almost) full-time artists will slowly slip from our grip.
I also think it’s unfair for companies like ours to gobble up the lion’s share of federal and state arts budgets just to keep running – especially when we already have a strong business case and a decade of receipts to back it up.
Zoom out further and consider the world-class youth circus schools Australia has become known for – and how the collapse of international touring markets may affect the broader arts ecology at home – and the picture for the future of our sector becomes even darker.
I don’t want a motor for my canoe. Nor do I want extra rowers without the determination of our existing team. I want good food in my stomach to burn in my arms and a lick of low-friction paint on the hull.
I love this river and the urgency of this task, but not if the cost of failure is the negative impact on the health, wellbeing and future employment of my ensemble. If that is the cost, I’d prefer to get out and walk.
So – is there another way?
After speaking with countless colleagues, I believe we need a new model for companies that have international touring as their core business. One based on partnership, not charity. On mature relationships, not transactional ones. A model that acknowledges demand, rewards initiative and supports market growth.
What if there were a funding model that matched 30% of guaranteed presenter fees once the tour was confirmed? A model that scaled according to demand: when we book shows, the support grows; when we don’t, the investment shrinks. Rather than asking for large upfront sums (which, in our experience, can dilute urgency and impact), we’d instead use the matched 30% to grease the wheels of cultural diplomacy and stimulate further export growth.
It’s a high-return, low-risk strategy to sustain proven cultural exports.
It’s also an invitation to rethink how we support independent companies that have earned trust, built audiences and are now ready to realise their best work as mid-career artists.
To the funders who’ve believed in us – thank you.
To the audiences who’ve cheered for us – thank you.
To the peers paddling upstream beside us – we see you.
Let’s not let this generation of artists – among the most prolific and in-demand our country has ever produced – fade away because the system didn’t adapt quickly enough to sustain them.
If you’re running a company that would benefit from this kind of support, talk to me. If you’re a funder (public or private) who wants to lead this innovation, GOM is ready to pilot it.
Let’s not wait until the canoe tips.
