Two Newcastle city councillors have slammed the decision by the council to defund Newcastle’s noted This Is Not Art Festival, pointing out the festival features prominently in Newcastle City Council’s own tourism plan.

As Crikey reported last week, the nationally acclaimed arts and media festival was defunded by Newcastle City Council and may now not be held this year. Despite an international reputation for presenting innovative media arts and experimental culture, including being listed by Lonely Planet as the No.1 thing to do in all of Australia and the Pacific, the festival lost its funding after 10 years of support in a move Newcastle councillor Sharon Claydon describes as “appalling”.

“This Is Not Art promotes community and place,” Claydon told Crikey. Despite this, she thinks the festival has a better reputation nationally than within the city. “I’ve always said that This Is Not Art is better known outside Newcastle than it is in Newcastle.”

Claydon, an ALP councillor, points out that This Is Not Art is on Newcastle’s “Major Events Calendar” and that the festival features prominently in the council’s 2010-2012 tourism plan.

“Experience Newcastle“, the council’s 2010-2012 tourism plan, formally lists This Is Not Art as a key event in what it describes as the “leisure market event” category, describing events “designed to attract Newcastle residents and visitors from well beyond, many of whom would choose to stay overnight before or afterwards”. The plan appears to place considerable policy emphasis on This Is Not Art, mentioning the festival as a leading event in attracting overnight and longer stay visitors, and in cultural, musical and “funky” categories.

Councillor Claydon also told Crikey the decision to defund This Is Not Art was damaging Newcastle’s reputation at the very time the city had just invested in “Brand Newcastle“, a logo and visual identity rebrand with a budget of $88,000.

Claydon’s comments were echoed by another ALP councillor, Nautali Nelmes, who argues “it really shows a lack of understanding”.

“It’s an extremely conservative, male-dominated council,” Nelmes told Crikey. “Some of them don’t even know what This Is Not Art is.” Nelmes believes “some of the conservative councillors have gone on an anti-community projects crusade”.

One of those councillors may well be independent Aaron Buman, who got involved in a Facebook exchange this week after being tagged in a post by This Is No Art founder Marcus Westbury. “Its success should have seen it was self-funded by now, like many events in Newcastle that make certain claims, they too should also be self-funded by now,” Buman wrote in a post.

Buman refused a further interview with Crikey after finding a question comparing This Is Not Art to fringe festivals in Sydney and Adelaide “extremely offensive”.

“Do [the] Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide councils contribute to the event?” Buman wrote in a post. “And can I also point out that they have a lot more money to spend on event they [sic] we do, maybe they might consider supporting a regional centre.”

But This Is Not Art appears to have fallen foul of powerful enemies inside the Newcastle City Council bureaucracy, not least senior manager Simon McArthur who has been openly backgrounding reporters with comments that This Is Not Art had become complacent and had submitted a poor funding proposal.

Meanwhile, Crikey has learnt that at least one of the key events in This Is Not Art is on the verge of  announcing it is leaving Newcastle for Sydney this year if the festival’s funding issues are not resolved soon.

This Is Not Art is a “festival of festivals”, made up of several related events such as new media arts festival Electrofringe, independent music conference Sound Summit and the National Young Writers Festival. This Is Not Art provides an umbrella to all the events, as well as production, venues and many types of logistical support.

According to Electrofringe director Estee Wah, “it’s tough times all round”. Wah points out that Electrofringe itself faces funding cuts this year after the decision by the Australia Council’s Visual Arts and Crafts Board not to support the event this year.

Another key event in the festival, the independent music conference Sound Summit, has announced it is formally separating its governance from This is Not Art. Sound Summit organiser Kirsty Brown issued a statement explaining that “in order to broaden the festival to its full potential, Sound Summit will cease its formal partnership with TINA and operate independently in 2011 and beyond”, in a decision made earlier this year after “much discussion” with the This Is Not Art and Sound Summit’s funding bodies. With This Is Not Art now losing its funding, Sound Summit will effectively go it alone “and will no longer contribute funds or resources to the broader TINA festival”.

“This will ensure that Sound Summit continues to run smoothly as it expands to encompass even more facets of the independent music community within its programming objectives and to deliver a bigger festival than ever before,” Brown stated.

Sound Summit will still be held in Newcastle this year as usual. But will This Is Not Art?