Country Australia First awarded 1995 | Presented by Vibe Australia Last awarded 2013 | |
Awarded for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievement Official website www.vibe.com.au/deadlys | ||
The Deadly Awards, commonly known simply as The Deadlys, were an annual celebration of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievement in music, sport, entertainment and community. The first Deadlys were held in 1995, at the Boomalli Artist Co-op in the Redfern suburb of Sydney. The Deadly Awards originated as the Deadly Sounds music and culture radio show at the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-op in Redfern in 1993. They stemmed from an idea of the late Gavin Jones (1966-2014). Later venues included The Metro Theatre, the Hard Rock Café, Home in Darling Harbour and Fox Studios; since 2001 the event has been held at the Sydney Opera House, hosted by Vibe Australia and broadcast by SBS Television. There were later additional venues in other states.
The awards expanded beyond their original music focus, to include sport, entertainment, the arts, health, education and training in the Indigenous Australian community. Winners are nominated and voted on by the public. The word "Deadly" is a modern colloquialism used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to indicate "cool, rockin', fantastic".
Cancellation
In June 2014, the Deadly Awards' funding was cut under coalition budget measures designed to reallocate funding to indigenous education programs with 2014 Deadly funding phased back to $1 million and no funding provided for future years.
On 12 July Gavin Jones was found dead: it is not clear whether his death was related to the cuts.
On 14 July 2014, Vibe Australia announced that the 2014 Deadlys were cancelled and that all Vibe projects concluded on 30 June 2014. After a story was run on Triple J's Hack program on 15 July 2014, a groundswell of community support for saving the Deadly Awards began. A petition on Change.org attracted over 26,000 signatures and a Kickstarter campaign reached $6699.