The Sydney Festival board has suspended funding from international governments and their cultural agencies following an independent review conducted in response to a damaging boycott by artists earlier this year.
The boycott, which disrupted almost 30 shows and events in January, was sparked by the festival’s decision to accept $20,000 from the Embassy of Israel to stage Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin’s work Decadance.
Ahead of the program launch for next year, festival chair David Kirk apologised to everyone affected by the controversy that dogged director Olivia Ansell’s debut event and conceded it had dented the reputation of one of Sydney’s iconic cultural festivals.
The board announced what it described as a range of measures “to improve the decision-making process around partnerships and sponsorships”.
As well as immediately suspending all international government funding, these measures include developing a funding and sponsorship charter, strengthening its sources of advice on social and cultural issues and contributing to a wider conversation about the sources of financial support for the arts.
“There’s no doubt the arts are chronically underfunded in Australia,” Kirk said.
The board committed to accepting key findings of the review into “the role of international government investment”.
The organisers of the boycott said the partnership with Israel made the festival unsafe for people of Arab backgrounds and would “contribute to the normalisation of an apartheid state”.
Read the article by Garry Maddox in The Sydney Morning Herald.