Quickstart Fund

The QuickstART Fund was created by Positive Solutions and Brian Tucker Accounting in the early 2000’s and supported over 94 individual artists and cultural enterprises with more than $200,000 of interest free micro loans. Successful applicants included sole traders (visual artists, designers, musicians, artistic directors) and small cultural enterprises (a publisher, bands, theatre and dance companies). Applicants made approaches for a loan from the Fund for the following reasons:

• The need for immediate access to finance due to a new opportunity, e.g., an invitation to attend a residency at short notice
• Projects being ineligible for grant support
• The need for support over and above a grant already received for a project
• A desire to try some other form of funding than government grants
• The difficulty artists have in securing and repaying a loan from a mainstream financial institution

The original capital for QuickstART was passed onto Foresters Community Finance (through Fair Finance Australia) to manage the funds and the organisation continued to deliver no and low interest loans to artists.