As a result of the funding changes that followed from the Nugent Report on the major performing arts sector, the small to medium performing arts sector (SMPA) lobbied for similar consideration and attention to their circumstances. In 2000, the Cultural Ministers Council commissioned ‘an examination of the factors influencing the artistic and financial position of small to medium sized performing arts organisations’.
The SMPA report complimented the sector on its ‘great diversity, a focus on new creative endeavour, a slim administrative structure, a large volunteer workforce and a commitment to artistic production’. However, it noted that the financial situation of the sub-sectors was ‘finely balanced’ or ‘in decline’, ‘raising questions about the sustainability of organisations in [the music and dance] sectors in both the short and long term’.
The report noted that although the SMPA sector was hoping for increased government funding to alleviate its precarious situation, the working party suggested, ‘there are other solutions which also need to be considered’. The included:
clarification of governments’ expectations of the SMPA sector either towards greater self-sustainability or excellence in artistic development (by either supporting fewer organisations or targeted increases to specific organisations);
strengthening the administrative capacity of the SMPA sector to provide a more stable business and operating environment (by training, board membership, resource networking across the sector, audience development, and fundraising);
improved inter-governmental communications and co-funding arrangements; and
enhancing the role of the SMPA sector in promoting Australia’s culture in the international arena by facilitating international tours.
The report was published in 2002 but, unlike the Nugent Report, no new financial arrangements resulted. This led to widespread resentment within the SMPA sector who believed that, although it was the ‘research and development’ incubator for experimentation and innovation in Australian performing arts, the SMPA sector was languishing while the less efficient, larger and more conservative major organisations were receiving generous recurrent funding and enjoyed favourable financial arrangements with increased subsidy. Little has come from the SMPA report although it initiated the collection of data on the characteristics of the sector.