The Artists’ Benevolent Fund makes funds available for visual arts practice recovery after disaster or emergency.

The Artists’ Benevolent Fund hopes to provide modest but useful one-off financial artistic practice assistance to Australian visual artists in crisis as a result of fire, flood, storm, serious illness, major accident, declared state or national emergencies, or some other unexpected catastrophic experience.

It is not intended that the Fund should be used as a means of coping with current financial needs, to pay outstanding debts or to fund a project. Rather, the aim of the fund is to support artists to pay living costs, studio costs, medical costs, or disaster recovery/repair costs, in order that artists may regain capacity to practice art.

The Fund might receive requests from:

• Artists whose studios and/or entire bodies of work have recently been destroyed (e.g. as the result of fire, flood, storm, earthquake)
• Artists who have recently suffered a major injury in their studio 
• Artists suffering illnesses that impact on their ability to maintain their artistic practice 
• Artists severely impacted in their practice by a recently declared state or national emergency.

Funding available

The Artists’ Benevolent Fund will offer eligible artists a one-off payment of $2,000 to provide immediate assistance following a disaster or catastrophic event in their lives. Applications will be assessed at the beginning of each month. Pending the capacity of the Fund, the panel may consider larger amounts as appropriate to the need of the beneficiary.