Tony Yap
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Tony YapGrant category
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Well I’ve been in the dance area - theatre dance, physical dance for 25 years now. I started off as a visual artist and slowly went to performance art, physical theatre, and then slowly dance.
First I discovered I had a certain audience that particularly like my work. Later you're split between marketing and trying to sell your work or just finding your audience. Australia Council, Arts Victoria, Asialink, any area, the City of Yarra, City of Melbourne we are all kind of connected.
I remember when I first applied I was a little afraid that my English wasn’t very good and I feel a lot of people with non English backgrounds have that fear. Later I found out that maybe articulation, it's not so much what words I used, but more clarity of what I want to do. But of course I had a lot of help - Multicultural Arts Victoria was a great help.
Multicultural Arts Victoria gives us a perspective. I think the initial time about 10 years ago or so when it was just starting, Multicultural Arts Victoria had an image of cultural dancers - nothing contemporary, but I remember thinking then why don’t we change it. Change from very traditional dancers to a diverse platform where they actually support a whole different lot of artists from different mediums, from contemporary to traditional. It also makes one feel that you're not alone. Thank goodness there was this support, thank goodness that there is an area you can go to. It's not so much how to, sometimes it 's a spirit thing, just to feel relevant in what you're doing.
Sometimes I think in grant applications one shouldn't express passion, one should express clarity. One can assume you have passion in what you want to do, but in an application it has to be clear. Sometimes I read applications of friends and it's so passionate you don’t know what they are talking about. You just feel that they want to say 'give me money please' that is kind of passionate, because I really want to do it - it's important. But if I feel it's important, I say this is important to me and why. You have to say why because it can be important to anybody but the why is interesting - it might give an idea of something more individual about you the artist, because everybody is passionate in the arts I think.
First I discovered I had a certain audience that particularly like my work. Later you're split between marketing and trying to sell your work or just finding your audience. Australia Council, Arts Victoria, Asialink, any area, the City of Yarra, City of Melbourne we are all kind of connected.
I remember when I first applied I was a little afraid that my English wasn’t very good and I feel a lot of people with non English backgrounds have that fear. Later I found out that maybe articulation, it's not so much what words I used, but more clarity of what I want to do. But of course I had a lot of help - Multicultural Arts Victoria was a great help.
Multicultural Arts Victoria gives us a perspective. I think the initial time about 10 years ago or so when it was just starting, Multicultural Arts Victoria had an image of cultural dancers - nothing contemporary, but I remember thinking then why don’t we change it. Change from very traditional dancers to a diverse platform where they actually support a whole different lot of artists from different mediums, from contemporary to traditional. It also makes one feel that you're not alone. Thank goodness there was this support, thank goodness that there is an area you can go to. It's not so much how to, sometimes it 's a spirit thing, just to feel relevant in what you're doing.
Sometimes I think in grant applications one shouldn't express passion, one should express clarity. One can assume you have passion in what you want to do, but in an application it has to be clear. Sometimes I read applications of friends and it's so passionate you don’t know what they are talking about. You just feel that they want to say 'give me money please' that is kind of passionate, because I really want to do it - it's important. But if I feel it's important, I say this is important to me and why. You have to say why because it can be important to anybody but the why is interesting - it might give an idea of something more individual about you the artist, because everybody is passionate in the arts I think.
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