Out of fuel

The international arts marketing website fuel4arts has been “decommissioned” by the Australia Council for the Arts. The site has hosted a network of arts marketers from all over the world and has made available a wide range of research, information and ideas. A spokesman for the Australia Council told AP that the organisation is consolidating its online resources for the arts sector into “a centralised research hub of information”, with a subsection housing the fuel4arts material. Information pertaining to career development will be available at www.artistcareer.com.au, while case studies and articles from New Zealand will be found at www.creativenz.govt.nz.

A new ‘ning’ (social networking) site has been set up where it is hoped that the fuel4arts community will re-establish itself (www.fuel4arts.ning.com). The Australia Council has confirmed that due to privacy laws it is unable to take over the database of 30,000 fuel4arts users from across the world, but says that “recent users of the website will be invited to receive updates from the Australia Council in future”. Its spokesman said that the organisation was “confident that the changes to the way that this content is delivered will be embraced by arts professionals”. The Australia Council thanked the site’s producer, Tess Dryza, for her “extraordinary contribution”