After a huge lifeline in 2023 that enabled us up to keep afloat and even expand our work, Freeplay, like many arts organisations, has not been successful in getting funding to continue our operations this year.
We've been able to build a strong reserve over the last few years that would allow us to either go out with a bang or pivot into something much smaller but sustainable. However, that second option would mean the end of Parallels as we know it.
When we did our last community survey in 2022, you told us that Parallels was the most important thing Freeplay did and it was too important to our community to lose. We want to know if you still feel that way. That same survey told us that the community thought it was really important that we stand up for workers rights and paying artists properly, which is one of the reasons we phased out volunteer work at Freeplay events. We don't want to go back to putting unfair expectations on volunteers again. It's unfair on them and it's unfair on the whole arts community to set a standard that art can only be created if its unpaid.
Our budget runway would allow us to do one more of our major events before tapping out. For full transparency, an event like Parallels now costs upwards of $100,000 to deliver each year, while Angles isn't far behind. These were events we used to be able to deliver for less than $30,000.
Alternatively, we could try to pivot Freeplay and use whatever remaining resources we have to support small independent games organisations across Australia scale up their own events — or we wind Freeplay up after a strong 22 year run and shift our resources and intellectual property to other, larger organisations who are better placed to weather the current economic storm and continue to deliver our programming.
Please let us know below where you think Freeplay should direct its remaining energy and resources under these circumstances.
