When Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke announced that $3.42 million in arts education funding had been allocated to four arts companies as part of the Labor Government’s Revive National Cultural Policy, he emphasised that ‘arts and culture belong[s] to everyone – no matter where you live, where you go to school, or your background’.
‘But I was lucky,’ Quilty says. ‘My mother was the first in her family to go to university and she brought us up to see a university education as a real possibility. So, if we wanted to, we could pursue something other than a trade, which is where a lot of high school education in the outer suburbs is targeted.’
