Community Arts Hubs, Practices, Skills and Value: Reflections from Wadawurrung Country
Driving Past Lake Tooim by Wayne Elliott
Wayne Elliott
This blog was first presented as an address to the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Barwon Heads Art Council (BHAC) on 5th April 2023. The BHAC, located in the Victorian coastal town of Barwon Heads on the traditional lands of the Wadawurrung First Nations people, is an incorporated not-for-profit organisation that:
manages the Barwon Heads Arts & Community Hub and the Bellarine Arts Trail;
coordinates a yearly small-events program;
participates in events such as Mountain to Mouth;
represents local artists - visual, literary and performing.
When I was asked to speak at the AGM, I reflected on what has occurred since the Barwon Heads Arts Council first raised the concept of an arts Hub back in 2012. In that time, committee members, BHAC members, and members of the community have committed many voluntary hours towards the establishment and success of this Arts hub.
The Arts hub provides a springboard for the community to engage in the Creative arts, making the region a better place to live and encouraging diversity and voice within the local community.
The BHAC and community should be applauded in developing this space. They have been proactive in organising and facilitating many events over a number of years. These include the Bellarine Arts Trail, theatre workshops, exhibitions, writers’ workshops, life drawing, opera, ceramics workshops, and creating aspirational opportunities especially for young people with the chance to interact with creatives.
The Barwon Heads Arts Council mission statement provides an inclusive place for arts and community in Barwon Heads and the Bellarine peninsula to improve access to the arts, strengthen and support local creative practice and improve community connectiveness. This enhances local identity and uniqueness. In my view these things are at the heart of the benefits that creative arts provides to the local community.
Creative Places
Creative place making enhances the community through:
“physical environment such as place-relevant public artworks, ‘furniture’, installations, popups, markets and arts-related businesses, events, theatrical performance, art installations, storytelling or artist-led workshops” (Lew, 2017; Zitcer, 2018),
The Arts Hub provides a space for this magic to work, and is the vehicle which brings the community to life.
The Bellarine Arts Trail is a perfect example that provides an opportunity for artists to promote their arts practice to a much wider audience. It provides a platform for a myriad of conversations before, during and after which shape the nature of the event for a diversity of people in the local community and beyond. People want to experience the uniqueness of the local community, to see their point of difference and interact. It is far more than an economic benefit to the community.
The Arts Hub provides the opportunity for local creatives to showcase their practice, to develop further their practice through workshops, to collaborate with other creatives or community members. To innovate, to test their craft, the possibilities are as limitless.
It is a place-based response where local people understand their needs and aspirations for the future health of their community. The arts are inclusive, providing all individuals the chance to tell their own story.
In Understanding the value of the creative arts: place-based perspectives from regional Australia, Mackay , Klaebe , Hancox & Gattenhof (2021) outlined that:
Value too comes from a sense of community. “Each local community critically draws on their unique local heritage and place identity to create arts-led programmes and events, and use local collaborations and networks to engage individuals and intrinsically augment value collectively for the whole community. This augmented “intangible value” seems to move beyond just cultural, and may include sense of pride, belonging, wellbeing, skills-development, employment, tourism, all of which may speak to the “liveability” of a place”.
Creative practice establishes connections to culture, place, community, wellbeing, and what it is to be human. Never has this been more obvious than in the last few years where the COVID-19 crisis has created isolation, uncertainty, and illuminated how much we rely on interaction and connection with people. These connections provide a conduit for creatives to be meaning makers. The arts hub creates a space for this interaction, it’s those conversations that can ignite opportunities and clarify one’s own thoughts.
At the heart of a creative community are the creatives themselves. I have always been intrigued by the number of hidden creatives who work alone at home, or who have a day job but continue to pursue their artistic journey. Enriching their own lives as they search for their own identity and make sense of the world. Many of these people would not have the opportunity to exhibit or develop their craft if it wasn’t for spaces like this. Young creatives, emerging creatives, unknown creatives and established creatives can all find a voice with the walls of this Arts Hub.
Yeperenye Emily Gap by Wayne Elliott
Creative Learners
The arts places emphasis on the creative as a learner, to explore and discover for themselves. It is the experience of observation and sensory engagement that feeds one’s inner being. Walking, creates a connection forward in an explorative way through spaces that are illusionary, virtual, manufactured, (un)real, and spaces within spaces. I constantly use the example in which: I can tell you what is down the end of the road but it is better for you to walk down the road and discover what is there yourself. You may get lost, you may take the wrong road but it is better for you to explore and come back and tell me. Learning is explorative and engaging through the learner’s identity.
In a world that is rapidly changing, we seek clarification that provides an understanding of how we perceive, as well as why and what is unfolding before our eyes. We live a much fuller life if we can engage with our environment.
Engaging others in this process allows for conversations to flow and new understandings to be revealed, much like how walking, conversations, reading, and writing clarify thoughts and transpose the reimagined narrative to the canvas. It is not that someone provides the answer, it is more about embracing a capacity to articulate one’s positioning.
Vital Arts and the Value of Learning Through Creative Practices
There is value in the creative arts that needs to be illuminated. Creatives develop many skills and attitudes as they pursue their practice. This is applicable to young people whose arts practice can provide a springboard to develop their 21st century skills.
These can be grouped into four broad categories:
ways of thinking (including creativity, critical thinking, problem- solving, decision-making and learning);
ways of working (including communication and collaboration);
tools for working (including information and communications technology and information literacy); and
skills for living in the world (including citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility).’ (ACER 2013. p.5)
If we think about a creative arts practice and all the skills needed to start, develop and continue that practice, it would include many of these skills. Yet at the moment we place very little emphasis upon this in the context of an arts practice. The arts are engaging for young people which can provide ways to develop the resilience to pursue their passion. The Arts Hub assists in developing these skills in the context of the local community. Providing the space to explore activities which will develop and support these 21st century skills.
Vital Arts is a collaborative research project between universities, arts organisations and other stakeholders that I have been working with. The project is developing micro credentials for young people in the arts industry. Micro-credentials are much quicker and cheaper than most formal qualifications, which means young people can upskill quickly.
By locating this micro credentials project in diverse fields of creative practice, with diverse and different populations of young people, we can both contribute to a more critical and productive interjection into these debates about skills, capabilities and young people’s education training and employment pathways, and co-produce a series of micro-creds that can create and capture the value of these capabilities for young people, educators, arts organisations and the wider economy. The project team has discussed these things in greater detail here.
These micro credentials will provide young people with recognition of their qualities, competencies, literacies and skills they have developed within the creative arts field.
Full Moon Over Warumungu Country by Wayne Elliott
My Creative Practice
My arts practice is not a reproduceable template, each ‘walking’ step is a unique journey.
Walking invites individuals to pay attention to their senses by slowing down and being aware of one’s surroundings and one’s experiences. Walking allows us access to experiences that are multi-layered, sensory, and affective which help us to reach beyond the personal to social understandings. I attempt to imagine all aspects from above, the flow of a river as it meanders, the colouring of the soil, the density of the vegetation, and the nature of the cloud formation. I search for forms, patterns, lines, flows, and colours as movements of expression that transpose to my canvas.
Process is at the heart of my arts practice; it is a series of steps that never pre-empts what is to come next. This creates the opportunity to re-imagine the landscape, prioritizing key elements to capture the essence of spatiality and narrative.
These movements, encounters, and interactions inform and place the artist at the centre of the learning process: “it is a process of invention rather than interpretation, where concepts are marked by social engagements and encounters” (Springgay, 2008, p. 8).
This is immersive and provides the conditions for me to capture the essence of a landscape through walking, observing, exploring, reflecting, and re-imagining a narrative. One does not know initially, one must do to know.
Each moment moves forward, it can be chaotic but never linear. This knowing is illuminated through the process of movement, placing the creation of knowledge through the vehicle of one’s own senses. In many ways I am painting my feelings not the pictorial view of the landscape.
I have a set process which allows me to respond. In fact, it is important to forget everything I know and come with fresh eyes, the painting evolves over time both in the landscape and then in the studio.
I act tactically on the ground, while thinking strategically from a ‘bird’s eye’ view above, I constantly switch between the multiplicity of perspectives. These multitude of perspectives I represent in my artworks challenge the viewer to interpret my reality.
Movement provides the vehicle to interact and immerse oneself in the landscape. Absorbing like a sponge, flying like a bird, crawling like an insect or swimming like a fish, one navigates the landscape.
Exploring the paths, roads, trails, rivers, oceans, creeks and back roads which open new possibilities for exploration and reflection. It is this reflective practice that is at the heart of my process. Being aware of your reflective places is important, driving the car, listening to music, or walking. I always have a A5 notebook handy to write down any of those reflections. It is a problem-solving exercise.
I recently paddled through the mangroves on the Barwon River, manoeuvering through a maze of channels. These “intertwined paths” give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. One then reflects on the experience to try to make sense of the day. Using the event as a catalyst to create an art work which reflects the reality of the day.
Finally, the most amazing part of creating is that there a part of this process that no one can articulate, it lives in some intermediatory place, this is the joy of creation.
References
1. “Determining and representing value in creative placemaking” Josephine Vaughan, Kim Maund, Thayaparan Gajendran, Justine Lloyd, Cathy Smith, Michael Cohen. Journal of Place Management and Development October 2021
2. “Understanding the value of the creative arts: place-based perspectives from regional Australia”, Sasha Mackay , Helen Klaebe , Donna Hancox & Sandra Gattenhof (2021): Cultural Trends, DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2021.1889343
My website: https://www.wayneelliottartist.com