Since 1979 The Boite has believed in the importance of music in storytelling, cultural identity, and community resilience. We have now curated and presented over 5,000 performances where audiences have experienced the intimacy and connection that only a live music setting can provide, and our artists have been given a platform to share and develop their art and traditions.

On June 1st 2024, The Boite celebrated it's 45th Birthday with a huge concert at Collingwood Town Hall to a sold out audience featuring artists spanning it's 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 not-for-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's from 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 your donations our offer would be a shadow of what you know The Boite to be.

Here is what your donations help to achieve:

This August the Boite Schools Chorus will return to Melbourne Town Hall for a very special program titled Los Niños (The Children), featuring songs from around the world about our natural environment and climate change. Thanks to your generous donations in December 2023, we have been 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 more children and assist them to participate in music.

In 2023 our second Portfolio, emerging artists program, supported fourteen culturally diverse artists to develop their business and performance skills. Several of these artists are establishing themselves in the industry, 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 The Boite's Portfolio program.

In 2024, Portfolio received less funding and is supporting seven unique and highly talented artists, with their final showcase featuring in Yarra’s Leaps and Bounds Festival on July 28th. 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 landscape.

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 female-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.

Thank you for your ongoing support!
No amount is too small. All donations over $2 are tax deductible

Let's unite communities through music and art, and create a more harmonious and compassionate world. 
Help us to keep this cultural icon alive for the next 45 years and beyond!