Bellingen Community Arts Council

The Bellingen Community Arts Council Incorporated (the BCAC) has been operational since 1996 when it was incorporated as a non-profit association. The BCAC is a qualified cultural body listed in the Australian Govt. Register of Cultural Organisations and currently has a membership of over 300.
Over the years the BCAC has become a major cultural force in the Bellingen shire. Grant applications for the following groups have been made under the auspices of the BCAC:

the Bellingen Jazz Festival
the Bellingen Global Carnival
Stamping Ground
Festival Flamenco
Wilderness Theatre
Playback Theatre and
many workshops conducted for the youth in visual arts and mixed media.

These grants have been accessed through the Regional Arts board, the NSW Ministry for the Arts and the NSW Attorney-General’s Dept.

Since August 2005 the BCAC has run a year-round program of members’ art exhibitions, both group and solo, at our community gallery, Nexus, at the Bellingen Old Butter Factory. The gallery’s exhibition schedule ( at the NEXUS GALLERY ) is currently booked to 2014. We hold three members’ group shows per year and the remainder of the year features exhibitions by solo artists or groups of artists. The major focus of the BCAC is to make the Nexus gallery available to local artists some of whom may not otherwise have the opportunity to exhibit in a commercial gallery environment. Our three year waiting list of exhibitions demonstrates the success of the gallery.

In addition we organise and present the annual Bellingen Art Prize which has been running since 2003. This is a major art competition offering a prize pool of well over $10,000. We also conduct the Bellingen Youth Art Prize which was introduced in December 2008. The Youth Art Prize offers a major prize of $1,000 plus other prizes totalling $1,250

The BCAC has also been a major presenter of touring musical artists and dramatic productions in the shire such as the Australian Chamber Orchestra with Richard Tognetti in 2007.

The BCAC aims to continue to promote the arts in our area by fully supporting local artists through our exhibitions program at Nexus Community Gallery, and through the Bellingen Art Prize and the Youth Art Prize. All of our endeavours are run entirely by volunteers.