Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) Awards

For the second year running Art in Public Places 2008 has won the Australian Business Arts Foundation State Award in the Toyota Community category. This prestigious award recognises the unique contribution that Art in Public Places makes to furthering partnerships between businesses and artists in the community. The award was excepted by Tania Blackwell and Janet Dawes, representing Hobsons Bay City Council, Julia Dunn representing the artists and Elliot Daniel representing the businesses. The business and artist representative were drawn out of a hat, as a democratic method of selecting representation to attend the State awards night from 51 artists and 38 businesses participating in 2008.      

The State category award winners were:
VIC - Western Region Artists, Hobsons Bay Businesses and Hobsons Bay City Council
NSW - Law firm Freehills and Company B
WA - Halls Head Community Bank and Mandurah Performing Arts Centre
SA - Adelaide Bank and Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts
Tasmania - Aurora Energy and Tasmanian Theatre Company

All of the State winners will be judged at the National awards in Melbourne with the winning project announced on the 16th of October.    

Annette from Annette's Coffee in Altona, artist Maggie Smith and Tania Blackwell accepted the Award on behalf of the 38 partnerships that were created within Art in Public Places.

The other state category winners were:
Telstra and the Australian Ballet
Foxtel and the St Kilda Festival
Web Prophets and Gasworks Park
Big congratulations to all the artists and businesses that participated!

For more information on the AbaF awards please visit www.abaf.org.au