Program guidelines
The Contemporary Music Fund (CMF) Development Program supports career changing opportunities for individuals, bands and music industry professionals.
The program offers up to $20,000 funding for professional development, sector development, international, national, and regional touring/showcasing opportunities, and recording and promotional activities.
For the purpose of this program, contemporary music is defined as music that is currently being written and recorded and/or performed, with priority given to music that is broadly understood as popular.
The CMF Development Program is designed to complement existing Creative Industries grant programs.
Applicants must clearly demonstrate how the opportunity or activity will develop their career and why it is particularly timely.
The CMF Development Program is open twice per year for extended periods. The key dates calendar has opening and closing dates. You can have two attempts per financial year but can only receive one CMF Development Program grant per financial year.
Applicants are encouraged to speak with a Project Officer prior to commencing their grant application by calling 08 6552 7400 or emailing grantsprogramsca@dlgsc.wa.gov.au
Please apply using the Online Grants web portal.
More information about how to apply can be found in the application manual.
To be successful, your application should align to one or more of these objectives.
Who can apply?
Your ‘Activity Start Date’ must be at least 28 days out from the date you submit your application. This restriction is because it takes the department 28 days to complete the application process from submission date to applicant notification date. You are encouraged to submit your application earlier wherever possible, and we encourage you to speak with a project officer prior to commencing your application.
Your ‘Activity Start Date’ must the date you require funding from, for example to start planning or purchase flights. This date should NOT be your event date (where applicable).
Please note: If you commence your activity before notification and/or your application is ineligible or unsuccessful, the department is not responsible for any costs you incur.
Processing of grant payments to successful applicants will not start until after the grant contract is signed and returned. Depending on the provided activity start date, we cannot guarantee notification and/or availability of grant funds before the activity begins. We encourage applicants to give themselves as much time as possible for the processing of grants and payments prior to their activity start date.
This program may fund up to 80% of your activity costs. You must demonstrate at least 20% income, which can include in-kind contributions, or your application will be ineligible.
Your funding request will be the difference between your expenditure minus your income in your application budget.
More information on how to apply can be found in the application manual.
Each component plays a significant and distinct role in creating a whole picture about your activity.
Your answers to the core application questions should give assessors an overview of your activity.
Each question has a 1500-charcter limit including spaces (about 220 words). You can extract a copy of your draft application in Online Grants at any stage to share with others for their feedback.
Remember to save your work regularly in the Online Grants portal.
If you need more information on how to prepare your application, please read the application manual.
Describe your opportunity, explain the artistic or career significance, where you will undertake it, who has provided the opportunity, who you will be working with and how they will contribute if relevant.
Explain the importance of undertaking this activity at this time. Demonstrate the relevance, timeliness and impact of the activity in the context of your practice.
If this activity involves a repeat attendance at an event, you must show how this proposal builds upon the outcomes of that previous activity.
If your activity includes travel out of WA, you must describe the national or international significance of the event or opportunity you need to attend or participate in, and you must demonstrate that the activity will have a long-term impact for your practice.
List the direct outcomes you hope to achieve from your activity. These may include developing your skills, performing or touring new work, accessing promotional or networking opportunities, reaching new audiences or markets, or engaging with specific communities. Briefly explain how you will measure or evaluate your expected outcomes.
Provide a timeline with key milestone dates outlining what will happen at each stage of your activity. The timeline should begin and finish with the ‘Activity Start Date’ and ‘Activity End Date’ you entered at the beginning of your application. Your ‘Activity Start Date’ and the first date of your timeline should match and should be the date you require funding from (for example, commencing your planning or purchasing flights), not your event date (where relevant).
Marketing includes audience and sector engagement, promotion and distribution strategies. Describe the different methods you will employ to market your activity or promote your product to your desired audience, client, consumer or peer group if relevant. Activities that do not include a clear public outcome should still include some plan for engagement of peers and promotion of your practice. Briefly outline how you will document your activity, keeping in mind this documentation will be essential when completing your acquittal report if your application is successful.
You are required to provide relevant project outputs. An output is a specific measurable thing that is generated by your project. This information will be considered as part of your application and provide further clarity about your project for the assessor. The outputs also provide important data for the department for research, analysis and advocacy purposes.
You only need to provide outputs for the categories and items relevant to your project.
Refer to the application manual for an explanation of the project output questions.
If your application is successful, you will be required to report against your planned project outputs in your acquittal report.
Please contact us if you have any questions.
This program may fund up to 80% of your activity expenditure. You must demonstrate at least 20% income, or your application will be ineligible.
Your budget should provide us with an overview of your major costs to undertake this opportunity and include any anticipated income or in-kind contributions where relevant.
The financial information in your budget helps to demonstrate that all elements of your activity have been considered, thoroughly researched and costed. A good budget also provides confidence for the DLGSC that your activity will be a sound investment for the Western Australia Government.
You should indicate which expenditure items you want the DLGSC to support. List those items in the ‘Additional Notes’ section of the application budget page.
Your budget should not contain any costs that fall before your provided activity start date.
If you are registered for GST, you should not include GST in the budget figures. All amounts should be in Australian dollars.
Your funding request is the difference between your expenditure minus your income. To ensure this amount is calculated accurately, seek quotes for all expenditure items (whether or not you intend to include these as support material) and include all costs associated with the activity, even if they are supplied in-kind.
Many activities will include in-kind contributions in the form of offering something for free or at a discount. More information on in-kind expenditure and income as well as an example of how to demonstrate your in-kind support follows this section.
For each expenditure or income item you add to the budget, use the notes area alongside the item to explain how that item relates to the delivery of your activity and how the cost was calculated.
Expenditure items can vary significantly from one activity to another. Any legitimate expense that is eligible can be included in the budget.
Do not duplicate costs in the budget form. For example, if you receive a quote for advertising which includes design, do not add an additional item for design. Simply use ‘advertising’ as the expenditure item and add a note explaining that the cost includes design.
Make sure you check the list for ineligible items.
Expenses related to the management and administration of the activity for example telephone/internet, insurance, postage and stationery. Eligible expenditure items in this category may also include audit costs and accessibility costs (expenditure associated with making your activity accessible to participants or audiences with a disability).
Costs associated with marketing to your target audience. For example, information, promotion and audience engagement activities, advertising, graphic design, merchandise, photography, videography, public relations and production of marketing collateral.
Eligible items may include venue hire, lighting hire, manufacturing and merchandise costs (as long as they are offset by sales), recording fees, rehearsal space hire, props and audio-visual costs.
Expenditure in this category should include salaries, fees and allowances for all key personnel, with separate components itemised in the budget notes. We support appropriate rates of pay for all people involved in your activity.
Refer to the following websites for information on industry standard payment rates:
If these standards do not apply to your activity, then you must outline how reasonable rates have been calculated. For long-term activities, it may be appropriate to pay artists a rate based on a yearly salary for a similar kind of work. If this is the case, you need to clearly explain the rationale for the pay rate in your budget notes. All rates should be relative to level of experience.
Costs associated with transporting people, equipment or goods. Eligible items may include fares (ground transport, flights etc.) tolls, land or air freight, and vehicle hire.
This program does not fund 100% of your activity costs so you must demonstrate at least 20% income, which may include in-kind support, or your application will be ineligible.
May include payment to present at a conference, performance fees, ticket sales, product sales, royalties, or merchandise sales. For performances, this amount should factor in the number of performances, average ticket price and projected venue capacity.
Ensure that you provide contingency plans, for any large amounts of unconfirmed income, in your budget notes. This is important for the assessor to know when scoring your application against financial responsibility and good planning.
List any income received through sponsorship from corporate bodies or businesses. Income received through government sponsorship should be included in the relevant government income category.
May include contributions from fundraising, crowdfunding, donations, gifts and bequests.
Australia Council, other Federal Government, other State Government, local government.
All grants and sponsorship being sought from local government, State Government, Federal Government, the Australia Council, and other government sources must be included, whether or not this support has been confirmed. Please ensure that you provide a contingency plan for any large amounts of unconfirmed funding.
Do not include the department grant funds being requested as part of this application.
If you are making a cash contribution, or someone is providing cash to the activity, list this item as a cash contribution or similar. Include any other income source that does not fit within any of the above categories and provide enough detail to identify the income source.
In-kind expenditure and income
Some expenses may be offered to you for free or at a discount. This might be borrowed equipment, the use of a rehearsal space, donated or discounted goods or services, volunteers (including you), negotiated discounted fees and allowances. Anything given to your project at no expense to you is considered in-kind.
All in-kind items must be included as a budget item under the in-kind expenditure category. The corresponding recognition of in-kind income is created automatically in your online application, and you do not need to enter any in-kind income budget items. The total in-kind expenditure must always equal the total in-kind income.
If, for example, you are hiring a venue, which would normally charge $2000, and you have successfully negotiated an $800 (40%) discount, you would include venue hire fee as a budget item under the expenditure category of $1200 and $800 under the in-kind expenditure category.
This section of the budget provides an opportunity for you to detail any additional information you feel may help to clarify items within your budget. For example, for fees and salaries you can indicate in this section how you calculated your amount.
You should also use this section to indicate which expenditure items you want the department to support.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) considers any grant payment to be taxable income for the purposes of your annual income tax return. You are encouraged to discuss your tax implications with your tax agent or the ATO prior to applying for a grant.
If you are registered for GST, you must show your expenditure items exclusive of the GST component. For example, you have been quoted $550 including GST for lighting hire. In your expenditure budget you would only show lighting hire of $500. If your activity is funded, the department payment will include a 10% GST component to cover those items on which GST is payable.
If you are not registered for GST, you must show your expenditure items inclusive of the GST component. For example, you have been quoted $550 including GST for lighting hire. In your expenditure budget you would show lighting hire of $550. If your activity is funded, the department payment will include the GST component for those items on which GST is payable.
Support materials are crucial to a successful application and are essential for assessors to fully gauge the value of your activity. It is highly recommended you pay close attention to the support material you choose and make sure it offers the best support for your application. Your choice of support material should help to demonstrate the 4 assessment criteria: quality, reach, good planning and financial responsibility.
Your application will be ineligible for assessment if you do not provide any eligible support material.
Suggested support material:
Up to 10 pages of text:
Links to support material using file sharing services such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive will be deactivated and not viewed.
Weblinks to text and image information online will be deactivated and not viewed by the assessor. Files and links in ineligible formats will be deactivated and not viewed by the assessor.
If you are submitting audio and/or video files you must upload them to file streaming sites like Vimeo, YouTube, Bandcamp or SoundCloud that do not require an account or log-in to access. Do not use Spotify.
As an Online Grants portal user, you must upload your support materials with your online application. Individual files cannot exceed 5 MB.
Please note: the support material formats and limits are requested to ensure equality between applications in competitive programs. If you exceed the support material limits, the assessor will only watch, listen or read up to the specified limit.
Please use Word and PDF for text and image support material (images can also be uploaded individually as .jpegs).
Formats that are not eligible are: .pages, .zip, .excel, MP3s (or similar) and .eml (however screenshots of emails pasted into Word or PDF documents are okay).
You can find instructions on how to use these sites at the following links:
More information about how to submit your materials can be found in the application manual.
Applications to this funding program are assessed by department staff.
All applications are assessed against these 4 criteria:
Each has a subset of dimensions and weightings which can be found below. More information about the dimensions and definitions, which have been developed by artists and creatives representing their sector, can be found in the application manual. You are not expected to address all dimensions and definitions, only those most relevant to your application.
Your activity must meet at least one of objectives of the category to be successful. Assessors will consider your application against the relevant dimensions and definitions and allocate a weighted score for each of the four criteria.
See the application manual for more information about how your application will be assessed. Final approval of successful applications depends on available budget and approval by the Minister or delegated authority.
Weighting 40%
Quality refers to the level of artistic and cultural significance of the opportunity. Quality may be demonstrated by, but not limited to, examples of previous work, sector support, timeliness of the work and a strong history in your area of practice. It may also be demonstrated through the skills and experience of the people involved in the activity, and the alignment of those skills and experience to deliver the project.
Weighting 30%
Reach refers to the level of impact the opportunity is likely to have. Reach may be demonstrated by including information for; networking opportunities, relevant marketing and promotional strategies, number of participants and the potential increase in audience or markets.
Weighting 15%
Good planning refers to the level of consideration which has been given to practically undertaking the activity. Good planning can be demonstrated by, but not limited to; carefully considered preparation, confirmation of key personnel, a realistic timeline and achievable outcomes, documented research and/or consultation, and a process of evaluation.
Financial responsibility refers to the sound management of the budget. Financial responsibility can be demonstrated by but is not limited to; efficient use of resources, reasonable expenses and an accurate and comprehensive budget. Other sources of income have been considered and included where appropriate, and the activity goes some way towards self-sufficiency.
See the application manual for more information about how your application will be assessed.
Note: final approval of successful applications depends on available budget and approval by the Minister or delegated authority.
If your application is successful, you will be required to fill in an acquittal report when your activity has finished. An acquittal report details your activity and how you spent the grant. The acquittal report will be available for you to access in Online Grants, via the Edit/View Report button or Reports tab on the Home page, once a copy of your signed funding agreement has been received.
Your acquittal report must be submitted within 90 days of the activity completion date as specified in your funding agreement.
You will need to answer the following questions:
The acquittal report will also include your activity budget, and you will be required to enter all the actual figures against each budget item and add any additional items not in the original budget. Variations between budget and actual figures are acceptable; however, you must provide an explanation for large variations in the Notes for that item. As you enter actual figures, the activity profit/loss will be automatically updated and displayed at the top of the Financial Information page.
Support Material: You must upload relevant documents, images and/or videos that substantiate the delivery of the activity and that may demonstrate the impact and outcomes achieved.
Consider including receipts for your major expenditure items, any reviews or feedback from attendees or stakeholders, examples of your work, photographs or video documenting the process or presentation, evidence of box office or sales where relevant, examples of any promotional material produced, and any evaluation related documents.
As a rough guide please refer to these formats and limits for your acquittal report support materials:
Do not use zipped files, or file sharing services such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive to submit your support materials, or any streaming services that require a log-in to access, such as Spotify.
You may use links to websites as acquittal report support material where relevant, for example if you were funded to create or update your website.
Refer back to your application’s activity outcomes for guidance in selecting suitable material.
If possible, please provide your support material in one PDF document for text and one document for images. Please note there is a 5MB size limit for documents. Audio and video material must be supplied as separate URL links directly in the Online Grants portal.
The funding acquittal report also includes the option to provide feedback to help us to continually review and improve the service we provide.
Assistance for applicants
Project officers are available via telephone and email to answer queries about applications and suitability of activities to specific programs.
If you need extra assistance due to disability, language barriers or any other factor that may disadvantage you in completing your application, please contact us.
The advice provided by project officers does not guarantee the success of your application.
Due to the high number of applications received, each funding round is highly competitive.
All applications are considered on their own merits and against the assessment criteria and program objectives.
For assistance using Online Grants or to report any related technical issues, contact the Online Grants Support Team: onlinegrantsupportca@dlgsc.wa.gov.au
For enquiries relating to this funding program, including advice or assistance with your application, contact a project officer: Telephone 61 8 6552 7400 Toll Free (Country WA callers only) 1800 634 541 Email grantsprogramsca@dlgsc.wa.gov.au
The department is committed to supporting applicants with disability. Information can be provided in alternative formats (large print, electronic or Braille) upon request.
If you require special assistance in preparing your application, please call 61 8 6552 7400 or toll free for regional WA callers on 1800 634 541.
Family, friends, mentors and/or carers can attend meetings with you.
If you are deaf, or have a hearing or speech impairment, contact us through one of the following:
For interpreting assistance in languages other than English, telephone the Translation and Interpreting Service on 13 14 50 and ask for a connection to 6552 7400 or 1800 634 541.
Toll Free (Country WA callers only): 1800 634 541.
Email the project officers: grantsprogramsca@dlgsc.wa.gov.au