Australia's arts and cultural sector is in transition. Organisations are making impossible decisions alone - about whether to close, merge, or keep going despite conditions that aren't working. It doesn't have to be this way.

We can name this problem. Now let's solve it, together.

Understand the problem

REGENERATE is a name for the work we need to do together.

  • Name it openly —

    the silence around organisational struggle costs everyone. We break it by talking honestly.

  • Build shared tools —

    so no organisation navigates endings, mergers, or restructuring from scratch, ever again.

  • Change the systems —

    funding, policy, and governance structures that make good transitions possible instead of punishing honesty

  • Hold space for what comes next —

    because endings done well create room for new organisations, new forms, new energy.

Read about Regenerate

We know you are stretched - engage at what ever level works for you

2 minutes - See the pattern
2 minutes - See the pattern
10 minutes - Find where you fit
10 minutes - Find where you fit
40 minutes - Read the full paper
40 minutes - Read the full paper

This isn’t bad luck.

It’s a pattern & it's happening everywhere….

Across Australia, organisations face the same structural pressures at the same time. Declining real funding. Shrinking participation. Exhausted people. And a system that treats each crisis as an isolated case rather than a shared problem we could address together.

  • Dependence on a few funding relationships. When one shifts, the unravelling begins — quietly, over years, invisible from outside.

  • The organisation doesn't close. It continues understaffed, over-committed, running on the goodwill of people who eventually burn out.

  • Mergers or closures pushed through without the frameworks, time, or resources to do them well. More harm, not less.

Nobody talks about it/everyone pays for it.

Organisations can't signal difficulty without triggering the very collapse they're trying to prevent. Funders often see it coming but have no way to help. Government doesn't fund endings. Nobody learns from what's happening because nobody can share it.

The cost is enormous. Knowledge disappears permanently. Community relationships built over decades get severed overnight. Workers are harmed. And every organisation navigates its crisis from scratch - because nobody shared the map.

This can't be fixed by any one group alone.
Each of us holds a piece of the solution.

Funders

You can make honesty safe

Right now, admitting difficulty risks losing funding. You can change that by creating transition grants, supporting endings, and rewarding honesty over performance.

Start here: Fund one transition openly. Show the sector it's possible.

Sector

You can make it normal

Transition is still whispered about. You can change that by building it into advocacy, professional development, and peer networks - making it as ordinary as talking about programming.

Start here: Host one honest conversation about transition at your next gathering.

Government

You can change what's possible

Policy shapes what organisations can even imagine doing. Build frameworks that treat transition as a legitimate outcome - not a failure to be hidden.

Start here: Develop capabilities to hold conversations that enable people to engage with transition.

Leaders

You can ask different questions

A an organisation that measures attendance and surplus will get attendance and surplus. One that asks "are we essential to how our community understands itself?" gets something profoundly different.

Start here: Put one transition question on your next leadership or board agenda. agenda.

Not all transitions are the same. That’s the point.

Healthy transition isn't a sign of weakness - it's a sign of a living system. Endings done well make space for new things to grow. REGENERATE proposes shared infrastructure for all four types of change.

  1. Endings with integrity

    Closing well - honouring history, preserving knowledge, caring for people.

  2. Collaboration & merger

    Coming together in ways that actually work for everyone involved

  3. Recombination

    Taking apart what exists and reassembling it in more sustainable forms.

  4. Emergence

    New organisations and practices growing in the space that good transitions open up.

It's Already Working Elsewhere

We're not starting from scratch. People are building this around the world.

United Kingdom

The Decelerator

Confidential support for leaders facing endings. Over 50 conversations in six months. Proving that good endings are possible.

Europe

IETM & Art Biosphere

Treating arts as a living ecosystem. Supporting the full lifecycle, not just the final product.

United States

Springboard for the Arts

Creativity as community infrastructure. Guaranteed income. Real civic returns from investing in creative practice.

Europe

Cultural Commons

Gielen's framework: shared resources, slow trust, infrastructure held collectively and available to all

The Paper

The thinking behind REGENERATE

This is the foundational case for Australia - the evidence, the framework, and concrete recommendations. Read it in sequence or go straight to the part that matters most to you.

Download the Paper (pdf)
Download the Paper (pdf)

Part 1

  • This structural moment

Part 2

  • The silence around transition

Part 3

  • International evidence

Part 4

  • A framework for transition

Part 5

  • The gaps we need to broach

Part 6

  • Roles in the ecosystem

Part 7

  • Recommendations

Part 8

  • The invitation