Donate to The Boite

As you are probably aware, The Boite has just celebrated our 45th birthday with a huge concert at Collingwood Town Hall featuring artists spanning our entire history. For 45 years, The Boite has enriched and broadened Melbourne and Victoria’s live music landscape with truly representative programming, and continues to challenge assumptions around the boundaries of genre, culture and tradition. This is an extraordinary achievement for a small non-profit organisation, and it is thanks in no small part to the dedicated and discerning community we have nurtured, and the support you have provided, so thank you.

As the financial year comes to a close we are asking for your support once again. We have a few funding streams, however it is only through the generous donations of our community that we are able to fully develop our programs, explore new pathways, and offer genuinely meaningful opportunities to our artistic community. Without donations our offer would be a shadow of what you know The Boite to be. 

Here is what your donations help to achieve:

In August the Boite Schools Chorus returned to Melbourne Town Hall for a very special program titled Los Ninos (the children), featuring songs from around the world about our natural environment and climate change. Thanks to generous donations in December 2023, we were able to provide direct support for 75 children from schools with financial barriers, or with no access to a music curriculum, to participate in this life changing experience. With your help we can continue to remove barriers for children and assist them to participate in music.

“I will be honest, before the show I felt like I wanted to bury myself. I wanted to hide from the world, but when I started singing I felt like I was flying. I felt like this because when you let people do something, especially if it’s a group thing, people feel less shame. They feel stronger because they know others are standing with them, doing the same thing. I thank you for letting us feel strong and proud, the fact that we got to sing Torres Strait islander songs is just wonderful.” Allina - Boite Schools Chorus Maiem participant, 2023

In 2023 our second Portfolio emerging artists program supported 14 culturally diverse artists to develop their business and performance skills. Several of these artists are now making regular festival appearances and releasing professional recordings. One act, Burmese-Chin band The Seventh, who arrived in Australia as refugees, were recently sought out by ABC International for inclusion in a documentary as a direct result of the work they did with Portfolio.

In 2024 the Portfolio program has received less funding and is supporting 7 unique and highly talented artists, with their final showcase featuring in Yarra’s Leaps and Bounds Festival on July 28. With your support we will be able to expand this program again in 2025 and continue to provide a launchpad for emerging culturally diverse artists to build careers that will enrich Australia’s music offer.

The Boite is always at the forefront of reframing assumptions around culture and performance, and is a leader in elevating the less seen or less considered areas of music. Our sold out intercultural collaboration The Music Between in 2023 featured new works developed by four artists of Iranian, Italian, Indian and Indonesian background. The support of our community enabled us to reprise this performance again at Melbourne Recital Centre last month to another sold out house, where new audiences gained a unique glimpse of the intersection of these four cultures and music traditions.

In December we presented Bold and Brilliant at Fairfield Amphitheatre, showcasing performances by six woman-led Indian ensembles. By placing women at the centre of an often male led music tradition, the concert presented a new perspective on India’s rich cultural heritage, and gave the artists a rare opportunity to share female stories and traditions with a wider audience.

These are only a few of our recent projects. We have many more exciting developments underway, however we are only able continue representing the under-represented, the unique and the most diverse artists in our music community with your support, and so we are asking for your donation. 

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