2024-25 Creative Control Artist Art Incubator

Submissions are now being accepted. Submissions close at 10:00AM 7 April 2025 (AEST).

 

IMPORTANT: Please read information below to assist you in completing your application online.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Welcome to the City Of Gold Coast online application service, powered by SmartyGrants.

You may begin anywhere in this application form. Please ensure you save as you go.

For queries about the guidelines, deadlines, or questions in the form, please contact us on email cultural@goldcoast.qld.gov.au and quote your submission number.

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Creative Control Arts Incubator Guidelines 2025

Program purpose

The purpose of the Creative Control incubator pilot program is to bring together artists, creatives, and collectives to develop greater business acumen. This is done by bring artists and groups together to participate in the Build Your Business Program is delivered by Edgeware Creative Entrepreneurship (Edgeware).

The goal is to establish sustainable creative business practices that enable participants the capacity to create innovative content that achieves positive social, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts, whilst bringing together artists, creatives and groups to form strong bonds and a sense of belonging through a shared learning and skills development experience.

The Creative Control incubator pilot program has been developed with the following principles:

  • Relevant and flexible – the workshops and supporting material are tailored to the needs of individual participants.
  • Personalised – the approach is founded on the values of trust, respect, and mutuality, as well as the importance of relationships, caring and humour.
  • Practical – training is about practical business skills and competencies learned and tested by doing it, not theories and opinions.
  • Enjoyable – participants experience a training process that is engaging, thoroughly unique, personally meaningful, and potentially transformational.

The Creative Control objectives are to:

  • promote leadership and encourage creative risk taking in a peer supported creative incubator environment,
  • build connection, belonging and collaboration amongst artists, entrepreneurs, and creative groups within the Gold Coast’s creative sector,
  • support a diverse local creative sector, grow community engagement, and contribute to the city’s vibrant lifestyle,
  • support the creative sector to lead the interrogation of processes and programs that develop greater business acumen, establish sustainable creative business practices, and support their ability to develop new work,
  • work towards supporting the creative sector to develop content and new work for the Cultural Olympiad, the cultural program leading up to the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and
  • continue the City’s long-standing partnership with the Queensland Government in delivering innovative and distinctly Gold Coast arts and cultural experiences.

Categories

Creative Control has two streams. Both streams are suitable for any artform:

  1. Artist Incubator – for individuals looking to evolve their personal practice into a sustainable creative business.
  2. Group Incubator – for groups, collectives and arts organisations wanting to start and/or improve their business acumen.

Key dates

  • Applications open: Wednesday 19 March 2025
  • Information sessions: Thursday 27 March 2025
  • Applications close: Monday 7 April 2025 (10:00am)
  • Interview notification: Thursday 10 April 2025
  • Online interview: Monday 14 April 2025
  • Applicant notification: Wednesday 16 April 2025
  • Artist Incubator: every Saturday - 26 April to 24 May
  • Group Incubator: every Saturday- 31 May to 28 June

Eligibility

To be ELIGIBLE to apply, all applicants must:

  • Be available for an online interview on 10 April 2025 (shortlisted applicants only); and
  • Commit to 100% attendance*; and
  • Commit to completing all course requirements*; and
  • Be a resident of the Gold Coast, groups must be based on the Gold Coast; and
  • Be an Australian citizen or permanent resident; and
  • Be, or engage, practicing artists or arts professionals; and
  • Have uploaded relevant compulsory support material as part of the application; and
  • Have no overdue acquittals from a funding and/or professional development program delivered by the City of Gold Coast Council.
  • Not be a current employee of City of Gold Coast.

*Limited to 10 places per incubator. As this program is in high demand, applicants must commit to 100% attendance. You may be required to pay applicable fees for non-attendance or non-completion.

Eligibility exclusions

Applicants who are current employees of Experience Gold Coast ARE ELIGIBLE to apply. Your application must include a letter from your employer (CEO/Senior Management/Chair) stating that your application is not associated with the duties of your role at Experience Gold Coast.

Compulsory support material

All applications must be submitted via SmartyGrants.

To be eligible, applications must include all relevant support material as requested in the application form.

If the application does not include all compulsory support material, it will be deemed ineligible and will not progress to assessment.

Eligibility Checks and Assessment Criteria

City officers will review all applications for eligibility. If your application is deemed ineligible, you will be notified and provided with feedback and guidance. Ineligible applications will not progress to the assessment stage.

Applications are assessed as they have been submitted. Additional supporting material will not be accepted after submission.

Applications will be assessed for eligibility and against the assessment criteria by Senior Arts Officers and Edgeware. City employees involved in the assessment and approval process comply with the City’s Code of Conduct, Conflict of Interest for Employees Policy and Benefits and Gifts Policy including declaring any conflict of interest.

All eligible applications are assessed against the following criteria:

  • Quality - about yourself, your current creative practice/ business and how long have you been practising.
  • Merit – about your aspirations for your creative practice/ business.
  • Awareness – about the challenges you are experiencing in your creative practice/ business.
  • Benefit – how relevant is the opportunity to you and the further development of your creative practice/ business.

Reporting/Acquittal

Successful applicants will be required to complete a Culture Counts survey. Links will be provided to you by Edgeware on the final day (e.g., Artist Incubator 24 May and Group Incubator on 28 June).

 

The Regional Arts Development Fund is a partnership between the Queensland Government and the City of Gold Coast Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.

 

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NAVIGATING (MOVING THROUGH) THE APPLICATION FORM

On every screen (page of the form) you will find a Form Navigation contents box, this links directly to every page of the application. Click the link to jump directly to the page you want.

You can also click 'next page' or 'previous page' on the top or bottom of each page to move forward or backward through the application.

SAVING YOUR DRAFT APPLICATION

If you wish to leave a partially completed application, press 'save and close' and log out. When you log back in and click on the 'My Submissions' link at the top of the screen, you will find a list of any applications you have started or submitted. You can reopen your draft application and start where you left off.

You can also download any application, whether draft or completed, as a PDF. Click on the 'Download PDF' button located at the bottom of the last page of the application form.

SUBMITTING YOUR APPLICATION

You will find a Review and Submit button at the bottom of the Navigation Panel. You need to review your application before you can submit it.

Once you have reviewed your application you can submit it by clicking on 'Submit' at the top or bottom of the screen or on the navigation panel. You will not be able to submit your application until all the compulsory questions are completed and there are no validation errors.

Once you have submitted your application, no further editing or uploading of support materials is possible.

When you submit your application, you will receive a confirmation email with a copy of your submitted application attached. This will be sent to the email you used to register.

If you do not receive a confirmation of submission email then you should presume that your submission has NOT been submitted.

Hint: also check the email hasn't landed in your spam or junk email folder.

ATTACHMENTS AND SUPPORT DOCUMENTS

You may need to upload/submit attachments to support your application. This is very simple, but requires you to have the documents saved on your computer, or on a storage device.

You need to allow enough time for each file to upload before trying to attach another file. Files can be up to 25MB each; however, we do recommend trying to keep files to a maximum of 5MB – the larger the file, the longer the upload time.

COMPLETING AN APPLICATION IN A GROUP/TEAM

A number of people can work on an application using the same log in details as long as only one person is working at a time. Ensure you save as you go.

SPELL CHECK

Most internet browsers (including Firefox v2.0 and above; Safari; and Google Chrome) have spell checking facilities built in – you can switch this function on or off by adjusting your browser settings.

If you need more help using this form, download the Help Guide for Applicants or check out Applicant Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)