Current Assessors

Each assessment panel follows a similar process:

• individuals are contracted to assess a specific investment or development opportunity
• assessors receive an induction to the role
• assessors are provided with online access to application materials
• assessors review the material and individually score each application against the criteria
• assessors usually participate in an assessment meeting in person or remotely (e.g. teleconference or video conference) and have the opportunity to discuss applications and review their recommendations in light of the panel’s discussion.

Assessors must access Creative Australia’s Application Management System to undertake their duties.

Assessor workload

Assessors may be asked to assess between 20 and 130 applications, and will have three to six weeks to complete the initial assessment at home. The volume of applications and time available to assess varies between assessment panels and grant categories.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, meetings are currently conducted remotely.

We will continue to review our assessment processes to ensure we meet current public health restrictions.

All assessors receive a fee and other allowances as appropriate for participating in assessment panel meetings. Any travel and accommodation is coordinated by our staff.

Conflicts of interest are relationships you have with an application or the applicant. When it relates to an application, it could be due to a relationship with the project or someone listed in the application. When it relates to an applicant, it could be due to a relationship with the individual, group or organisation.

At any stage that this comes up you should let your Assessment Officer know, so that it can be managed accordingly.

Conflicts of interest can be actual or perceived, direct or indirect, major or minor. If it is considered major, you might be taken off the assessment round. More commonly, you simply do not score that application or take part in the discussion about that application.

Creative Australia relies on assessors to tell us about any relationships ahead of the assessment meeting. The more potential conflicts of interest we eliminate before the meeting, the better.

For further details about how we manage conflicts of interest, watch this animation.

The Australia Council Board approves experienced and representative artists to a Pool of Peers. These peers are the first people staff contact when forming an assessment panel.

Peers are appointed to the pool for three to four years. They can re-nominate to be a peer two years after their term has ended.

Over 900 artists and creative workers were nominated to join the current Pool of Peers (2021–2024).

We thank and acknowledge the retiring Pool of Peers (2017–2020) for their commitment to the arts. You can view the list of peers in the current pool (2021–2024) and their location by downloading a PDF document, or an accessible Word document.

The names of all peers participating in an assessment meeting are published on our website along with the list of successful applications.

Please contact the Assessment team if you have any questions about this information.

Lucy Byrne, Patricia Adjei, Dr Paula Abood, Travis De Vries and Jake Smithers discuss the First Nations Protocols, highlighting the importance of everyone understanding these protocols to ensure care of our First Nations Intellectual property through appropriate permissions, acknowledgement and consent. This discussion illustrates how everyone can be an ally in holding these protocols up as the national standard to accomplish safe consultation and consent when using First Nations stories and knowledge.