From the AMPAG archive — restored from a 2012 news clipping in the AMPAG in the Media file, originally published in The Australian.
News coverage in The Australian in 2012 — drawing on AMPAG’s Tracking Survey data and follow-up commentary from the major performing arts companies — found that the post-GFC mining boom had become a meaningful contributor to the financial health of the major performing arts companies. The article was widely cited at the time and entered the AMPAG In the Media archive as one of the more economically substantive pieces of arts journalism produced during the post-GFC period.
The article’s argument was that the surge in resource-sector profitability through the 2009–2012 period had translated into substantially increased corporate sponsorship of the major performing arts companies, with mining and energy companies — Rio Tinto, BHP, Woodside, Santos — emerging as significant new patrons of the sector alongside the traditional financial-services and professional-services sponsors that had dominated the pre-2008 corporate sponsorship base.
What the data showed
The AMPAG Tracking Survey data the article drew on showed combined corporate sponsorship across the major performing arts cohort had increased by approximately 18 per cent across the 2009–2012 window — the period during which the post-GFC corporate sponsorship base in most other industry sectors was either flat or declining. The increase was disproportionately driven by resource-sector entrants who had not historically been substantial arts patrons.
The article noted that the mining-boom contribution to the arts was geographically concentrated — the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, the West Australian Ballet, the Western Australian Opera Company and the Western Australian-based touring partners had been the largest beneficiaries, with the Queensland-based companies (Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Queensland Theatre, Queensland Ballet) the second tier.
Why this matters in the longer arc
The mining-boom contribution to the major performing arts proved to be relatively short-lived. The 2014 collapse of resource-sector commodity prices — and the subsequent contraction of the resource-sector corporate sponsorship base — produced a sharp reversal in the corporate sponsorship trajectory through 2014–2016. The sector’s structural shift to private donation rather than corporate sponsorship that the AMPAG Tracking Survey was tracking through the same period proved to be the more durable trend; the mining-boom corporate-sponsorship surge was an interesting episode rather than a sustained pattern.
Original news item: The Australian (2012), “Mining boom buoys the arts”; archived in the AMPAG In the Media file. Restored from the AMPAG site Wayback Machine archive.
