At last, and after an energetic three-year journey, Cementa Inc has purchased the old town hall building at 71 Angus Avenue in Kandos.
A message from the Cementa team:
We can confidently say that Cementa has secured (or cemented) its future as a regional art space. It’s been an exhilarating ride from what was an idea that became a possibility through to completion, and now Cementa Inc holds a unique position, owning our building. This will give us a permanent foundation from which to build our future.
LET US RECAP:
• We ran a public fundraiser and we witnessed such an incredible groundswell of support from our community who donated a total of $55,000
• The NSW State Government very generously supported us through their Creative Capital grant with $90,000
• Our art auction raised a further $30,000.
• This has left us with just a $15,000 stretch target, which we’ll aim to achieve but in the interim we’ll lean on our reserves.
But the end result is that we have the ability to proceed with the purchase of the building and we settled last Thursday.
IT IS DONE. WE OWN THE BUILDING NOW.
WE HAVE ONLY ONE MORE THING THAT WE MUST DO.
WE MUST SAY THANK YOU TO ALL THE AMAZING PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS HAPPEN!
First and foremost a heartfelt thank you to the previous owner’s of the building, Ken and Vicki Hopkins. It was originally Ken’s idea for Cementa to purchase the building. He was keen to see the building remain open to the community and worked closely with us to ensure the building wasn’t turned into a weekender or worse. Ken and Vicki were incredibly generous and patient, they gave us time to develop our strategy, and importantly they held the price at its original value even as real estate prices in Kandos escalated after COVID. Without these two heroes, this project would have never happened.
We also want to thank artinvestor.net.au who supported our art auction pro-bono. The auction went off without a hitch, and the team at Artinvestor.net.au were world-class in supporting us in delivery an effective auction result, working tirelessly to resolve any issue as it arose. Thank you as well to Artist Profile and Art Almanac for helping us promote the auction.
A huge thank you to Chris Connellan for his patience and understanding as our pro bono solicitor on the transaction, and to Kelly Reiffer our pro-bono corporate advisor who was invaluable in the development and delivery of each of our strategies.
T big shout out to all the artists who donated to our auction, Tony Albert, Dale Collier, Liz Day, Rox De Luca, Karla Dickens, Blak Douglas, melanie e khava, Maddie Gibbs, Phil James, Jumaadi, Deborah Kelly, Fiona MacDonald, Fleur MacDonald, Adam Norton, Halinka Orszulo, Katy Plummer, Joan Ross, Alex Seton, and Jason Wing
And finally thank you to everyone who gave to our fundraiser.
This was truely a collective effort and perhaps the most gratifying part of this whole adventure has been the broad support from our community, confirming the value of our little festival to the artists and local community.
If you would still like to contribute, we are still accepting donations to help defray the $15,000 stretch target in our campaign to purchase WAYOUT ARTSPACE.
All donations over $2 are tax-deductible. So please consider supporting Cementa by clicking ‘Donate Now’.