John Butler’s Seed Fund announces 2014 grants and initiatives

John Butler’s not-for-profit Seed Fund has announced its three grants and two initiatives for 2014.

Celebrating its decade run, The Seed Fund has brought back its annual ‘Management Workshop’, which took a year off in 2013. Held to advise Australia’s emerging artist managers and self-managed artists, The Seed Fund will provide flights, accommodation and meals to the 25 successful applicants. Apply here.

The ‘Money For Managers’  grant will offer three artist managers, who attended a past Seed Management Workshop, income of up to $5000 during a period of heavy workload and limited commission. Apply here.

Laura Wallbridge, Manager of Gossling, Guineafowl and Oliver tank at Walls & Bridges, was awarded the grant last year. She said: “The Seed’s ‘Money For Managers’ grant has literally allowed me to move through one of the most important times of my career to date.”

The third grant will award just three applicants. ‘It’s All About The Song’ will see three Australian artists work with a producer to deliver a recorded, mixed and mastered track. Applicants must submit a song here. The Seed Fund has brought on Steve Schram (The Cat Empire, San Cisco), John Castle (Kate Miller-Heidke, Vance Joy, Megan Washington) and Tony Buchen (The Preatures, Gin Wigmore) as consulting producers. Apply here.

The Seed Fund’s 2014 initiatives include three-day workshop “Bush Bands Business’ where mentors partner with MusicNT to guide remote musicians in the Alice Springs, and ‘Song Cycles Inbound’, where urban industry professionals visit Australian Indigenous community festivals to address issues within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) music and performance communities. The Seed Fund’s Inbound project is a partnership between APRA AMCOS, Indigenous Culture Support (ICS) – Ministry for the Arts and Skinnyfish Music.

The Seed’s Co-founder and Director Danielle Caruana (aka Mama Kin) told TMN the project overshadows the initial dream her and husband John Butler had first envisioned.

“Ten years in and The Seed Fund is a testament to the generosity that exists in the Australian music community,” she says. I” feel like the proudest Mum about what this project has turned out to be, and how many people it has been pivotal for. I can’t believe we are ten years in; we were so green when we started this, we didn’t really know what we were getting into but we had a little dream, and now we see the reality of what it is ten years later and that completely dwarfs the dream we had.”

Applications close Monday April 5.