Arts Hub, Richard Watts
25 March 2022

“With a Federal election looming, it’s time for the sector to get serious about lobbing local MPs and promoting the importance of the arts.

This coming Sunday 27 March is World Theatre Day, and TNA – together with 15 other arts and culture peak bodies – is encouraging its members to flood social media with simultaneous messages at 10am AEDT Sunday, to help drive awareness of the importance of arts and culture.

A second campaign, encouraging artists and individuals to contact their Federal MP and providing them with the tools to assist in lobbying their local member, has also been launched by TNA.

‘They’re separate but interrelated campaigns that are mostly driven by our members and what our members wanted,’ explained TNA General Manager Joshua Lowe.

With TNA members expressing their desire to engage more directly with the Federal election, but also noting they are often time poor, the organisation has created a range of tools designed to help people lobby and campaign about the importance of the arts. These resources are freely available on the TNA website.

‘Sunday’s messaging campaign came from a meeting and conversation we had with 15 other national peak bodies to create some unified messaging from the art sector, which is a sector that’s traditionally been quite diverse and really not unified,’ Lowe explained.

‘From a political perspective, it’s really easy to dismiss people who aren’t unified or who are quite splintered. So we’ve decided to kind of try and present a more united front as a sector to the political arena.’”

Click here to read the full article.