The Hard-Won Potential of this Moment

For most of 2020, musicians couldn’t make live music with or for other people.

“ The connections that creativity enables awaken us to ourselves and to those around us – a compelling antidote to the numbing feeling of being overwhelmed by the world.”

Here in Australia, a country privileged to avoid much of the tragedy of the pandemic, populations bunkered down, public gatherings were banned, venues shut, festivals cancelled, tours aborted, and the normal modes of sharing live arts and culture disappeared almost overnight. Through the first pandemic year, cultural activities were declared inessential work, and the necessary behaviours that we collectively needed to adopt to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 meant that musicians’ livelihoods, like those of so of many others, were decimated. Destabilising the situation further, new legislations came into play that financially punished those wishing to study arts and