By arts editor HELEN MUSA

The patrons of Canberra’s literary organisation MARION, Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello and Craig Cormick, have launched a strong protest over a cut to the organisation’s funding, despite the ACT Government’s recent boast of a 25 per cent boost to arts funding.

In a strongly worded statement headed “Canberra Region Writers Under Attack”, the two patrons say MARION’s funding request has been cut by 35 per cent, raising concerns about the organisation’s longer-term sustainability.

“Literature accounts for less than 2 per cent of the ACT Government’s Arts Organisation Investment Program, and such a drop represents a level of funding that threatens MARION’s longer-term sustainability and survivability,” Cormick said.

Co-patron Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello has called on Arts Minister Michael Pettersson to restore MARION’s funding to what she described as a sustainable level, allowing the organisation to continue supporting Canberra’s writing community.

Cormick and Martiniello argue that the ACT and region’s writing community “hits way above its weight”, pointing to authors who have won the Miles Franklin Award, Children’s Book Council Awards and the NSW State Library’s Biography Award over the past year.

Others have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, while books by regional writers have also been adapted for television.

The patrons point out that thousands of writers are active across the ACT community, working in areas ranging from social history, poetry and fiction to family history, children’s literature, journalism, playwriting, speculative fiction, military history, screenwriting, documentary writing, essays and editing, as well as First Nations and multicultural writing.

Cormick said many writers were already angry about the way artificial intelligence is being used to exploit or marginalise their work, and that the funding cut added to a growing feeling that the ACT Government was devaluing their contribution.

Martiniello also criticised what she described as a failure by ArtsACT to recognise MARION’s achievements, the quality of support it provides to members, and the organisation’s financial strength and recovery, “demonstrating a clear failure to know the organisation and its operations”.

The protest comes as the ACT Government promotes a major increase in overall arts funding, with the government describing its latest investment as a 25 per cent boost to support the territory’s arts and cultural sector.

Boosted funding to the arts in ACT

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