Applying for a grant
Many grant programs now use significance to guide decisions on funding. Application forms ask applicants to set out the reasons why their item or collection is significant enough to warrant funding under the program guidelines. Applicants may be required to prepare a statement of significance using the assessment criteria. Comparison with similar items or collections as part of the significance assessment helps to make the case for funding.
Community Heritage Grants
Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association, an Indigenous-owned, non-profit organisation based at Milikapiti, a remote Aboriginal community on Melville Island, Northern Territory, applied for a Community Heritage Grant in 2008 and was successful. How did Jilamara Arts and Crafts make the case for its collection’s national significance?
Kitty Kantilla
Pupini Jilamara circa 1990s
Ochre on bark
Reproduced courtesy of Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association
First, Jilamara Arts and Crafts provided information about the nature and history of the collection. Here is a summary.
The organisation has operated since 1989, and represents, or has represented, the interests of prominent Tiwi artists, including Raelene Kerinauia, Timothy Cook, Pedro Wonaeamirri, and the late Freda Warlapinni and Kitty Kantilla, Tiwi artists associated with Jilamara have also exhibited internationally, in Hamburg, Germany and The Hague, Holland.
In 1989 a ‘keeping place’ for the Milikapiti community, the Muluwurri Museum, was established within the arts centre complex. It includes artworks and ceremonial items created by living and deceased Tiwi artists. The museum’s collections include a major group of carvings consisting of nine hand-tooled large scale Pukamani poles, and twenty smaller works depicting ancestral figures and birds carved from ironwood, a eucalyptus species indigenous to the islands, and painted with locally sourced ochre.
Next, Jilamara Arts and Crafts wrote a statement of significance that sums up the key values of the collection.
Click HERE to see the statement of significance.
[1] Margie West carried out the significance assessment on this collection and her comments have informed this statement of significance.
