Donations made to the Double the Score campaign will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the ACF.

Fundraising platform the Australian Cultural Fund, which is managed by Creative Partnerships Australia, has joined forces with Australian music industry body APRA AMCOS to boost the latter’s Art Music Fund. The Art Music Fund is a pool of $100,000 per year used to commission new work from composers and in their new campaign Double the Score, donations from supporters will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $12,000 by the Australian Cultural Fund.

“The Australian Cultural Fund has been facilitating tax deductible donations to the arts for more than 12 years, and music has consistently been one of the most popular artforms for both artists to create and arts supporters to donate to,” said Creative Partnerships CEO Fiona Menzies. “We’re pleased to be working with APRA AMCOS to encourage donations so that audiences here and around the world can see Australian works performed in diverse contexts, from concert halls to festivals, on radio and online.”

According to a statement on the APRA AMCOS website, the Art Music Fund “exists to commission new work that is innovative, displays professional compositional craft and represents a benchmark of excellence in its field. These works must have committed partners to ensure the work is presented multiple times with the intention to create a long artistic life for the work and by extension, its composer.”

In 2016 the Art Music Fund funded 12 established and emerging composers including Cat Hope, Lisa Illean and Mathias Schack-Arnott. It also provided Liza Lim – recently appointed to the staff of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music – with funding for her major work Wayfaring in the Weather World, composed for Ensemble Klangforum Wien and scheduled to premiere in April 2018 at contemporary chamber music festival Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik.

“The Art Music Fund provides resources to support composers which is much needed at a time of generally reduced government funding for individual artists in Australia,” said Lim. “The support of the Australian Music Centre and of APRA AMCOS gives significant industry-level recognition to the field of contemporary classical music encouraging innovation and artistic risk-taking in this area.”

The Double the Score campaign aims to raise a further $100,000 for the fund and will run until March 20. All donations over $2 are tax deductible.

Donate to the Double the Score campaign to boost the Art Music Fund at australianculturalfund.org.au/projects/double-the-score, and the ACF will match your donation, up to $12,000. For more information about the Art Music Fund visit apraamcos.com.au/artmusicfund