MORE than $300,000 was flicked the arts community’s way at Perth city council this week, with councillors unanimously endorsing three big artsy spends.
The Black Swan Prize for portraiture was handed $41,000, with Cr Jim Adamos saying it “is an important part of Australia’s art calendar” and its free events draw people into the city to populate carparks and patronise businesses.
Along with the main show of winners at Linton and Kay Gallery, there’ll be Salons de Refuses (exhibitions of non-winners) around the city.
The Awesome international arts festival scored $100,000 to put on film, dance, visual arts, street arts, theatre and music in the city come October.
The WA Opera was kick-started to the tune of $161,722 for the opera in the park event next March at the supreme court gardens.
The event is simulcast around the state, and Cr Rob Butler said “they do dress up in Kalgoorlie and Port Hedland to go along [to screenings], they don’t just show up in jeans and thongs”.
He said it worked out to spending about $8 per attendee. And apparently the biggest attendee group is the 18-34s.
At the previous meeting councillors agreed to sponsor September’s Perth Fashion Festival for $313,000, though Cr James Limnios winced over the amount.
With the fashionistas picking up Telstra as a naming-rights sponsor this year and getting bucketloads of cash from that, he wondered whether the council’s generosity should be tempered.
Nah, the council reckoned, and even upped it a little on last year. About 35,600 showed up last year, and public relations goblins calculated that provided $67 million of media coverage.
by DAVID BELL
Perth Voice Interactive 
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