NAVA’s Penelope Benton and Leya Reid outside the Fair Work Commission for the Case Management Hearing for Variation on the Commission’s own initiative – Amusement, Events and Recreation Award 2020 (AM2024/37), 2025. Photo: Supplied / NAVA.
The National Association for the Visual Arts, the peak advocacy body for the visual arts, craft and design sector, has welcomed a provisional decision by the Fair Work Commission that would see the arts explicitly recognised in the title of a federal modern award, and visual arts work more clearly reflected in its classifications.
The current Amusement Award covers a wide range of workplaces and employees across amusement, events and recreation, including museums, galleries and cultural centres. However, the Fair Work Commission’s review found that its existing classification structure does not adequately reflect the work performed by arts workers.
Alannah Sue is a journalist, writer and theatre critic with a passion for arts and culture and all that glitters. She relocated to Melbourne in 2025 after spending over a decade embedded in the Sydney arts landscape and finishing up her tenure as Arts & Culture Editor at Time Out. In addition to contributing to ArtsHub and ScreenHub, her freelance portfolio also expands to editorial and copywriting for lifestyle and arts publications such as Limelight and Urban List, cultural institutions like the Sydney Opera House, and marketing and publicity services for independent artists.
She is always keen to take a chance on weird performance art, theatre of all kinds, out-of-the-box exhibitions, queer venues, and cheap Prosecco. Give her half a chance, and she will get on a soapbox when it comes to topics like the magic of musical theatre, the importance of rigorous arts criticism, and the global cultural implications of the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise. Connect with Alannah on Instagram: @alannurgh.
