MIKE WALSH AM OBE

Multi-award winning television personality, entrepreneur, and businessman Mike Walsh today heads an expanding and successful entertainment business.
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Background

In 1996 Mike Walsh established the Mike Walsh Fellowship to assist young theatre artists with the potential to make a significant contribution to the Australian arts and entertainment industry. A Fellowship enables its recipient to travel abroad and so to obtain a wider knowledge and experience of theatre, perhaps through a formal course of study, or by a self-devised program that might include, for example, one or more of the following (the list is indicative, not exhaustive): a course of instruction; private classes; observation; secondment; meetings; an attachment to a theatre company; attendance at a festival; visiting costume museums. It is expected that a Fellow will take up the Fellowship within eighteen months of award, and will, soon after, return to Australia to a career in theatre.

At the time of establishing the Fellowship Mike’s business interests were all in Sydney, and eligibility was restricted to graduates of any full-time course offered by Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art who had graduated in the previous ten years. The total. value of the awards was $30,000 annually; in the first fifteen years of the awards Mike gave more than $500,000 to NIDA graduates.

Development

In recent years, with the acquisition of Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne, Mike’s interests have spread to his home town. At the same time, many of the productions staged at the Maj have been musicals, and Mike has been impressed both by the number and by the quality of the graduates in Music Theatre from the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts who have graced the productions. These two facts led him to make changes to the Fellowship in 2010.

In 2011:

• the Fellowship was extended to a theatre practitioner who is a graduate of NIDA, or of the Victorian College of the Arts, or of WAAPA;

• the period of eligibility was reduced to exclude graduates who have not had time to establish themselves in the profession; and

• the total amount distributed annually was increased to $50,000.

A further development

Mike now wished to acknowledge the talent and achievement of those theatre professionals who had not studied at a tertiary institution, but who had either taken a non-tertiary training course, or who had simply learnt their craft by experience. From 2018 onward, eligibility was thrown open to all young up-and-coming theatre practitioners, trained or untrained. All remain subject to a time constraint, but the criteria for tertiary-trained and for other applicants differ (see ‘For Intending Applicants’) All applicants – whatever the field, whether formally trained or untrained – compete on an even footing. At the same time as widening the eligibility, Mike increased the amount to be awarded to $60,000, and this year to $70,000. By the end of the 2022, awards Mike will have given over $1,000,000 in fellowships.

Timing

A Fellowship must be taken up and completed within eighteen months following its award; otherwise it will be forfeit, and any moneys paid will have to be returned. An application for extension will be considered on its merits: in the past, an extension has been given on compassionate grounds.

Administration

The Fellowship is administered by director, dramaturg, and composer, Terence Clarke AM, with the assistance of Di Edwards, Mike’s Personal Assistant, and of actor Garry Scale.