The Childers Group

We are delighted to announced that we’ve expanded our areas of expertise, adding writer/educator Rosanna Stevens, singer-songwriter/musician James Fahy, and long-term arts worker Meredith Hinchliffe.

All of us who are involved in the arts are currently enjoying this extraordinary air of celebration in the ACT region.  It’s so important as a network of creative communities that we build on this groundswell of activity and starting thinking about what happens next.  To this end, the Childers Group has added three new members.  There is no doubt that Rosanna, James and Meredith will make terrific contributions to our advocacy work.

As a collective of arts advocates, the Childers Group is committed to maximising our diversity of expertise and strategic thinking.  Getting out of touch with the work of our artists and creative practitioners is simply not an option for us.  That’s why we’ve expanded our expertise – we want to make sure that our advocacy work is informed by the best brains possible.

JAMES FAHY

James Fahy

James Fahy is a MAMA-nominated multidisciplinary artist based in Melbourne and Canberra. He has written for entertainment magazine BMA and ANU newspaper Woroni, and had fiction published in ACT literary journal Burley. Alongside Rosanna Stevens, Duncan Felton and Adelaide Rief he is a co-director of the ACT young literary organisation Scissors Paper Pen. In March 2013 James completed a research internship with independent think-tank Grattan Institute.  As a musician, James has performed as a featured artist at the FUSE Music Conference in Adelaide, received national airplay for his EP The Sun Will Burn Through This Cloud, and played with high-profile acts including The Beards, the Wildes, A French Butler Called Smith, Beth and Ben, Peter Combe, and Novocastrian touring veterans Benjalu. In 2012, James was nominated for an award at the MusicACT Annual Music Awards in the category of Best Folk Artist. In 2010, James co-founded Canberra-based label Nash Cap Productions with Bec Taylor and Julia Winterflood. As an events organiser, host, musician and interviewer he has taken part in a string of festivals such You Are Here, the Canberra Multicultural Festival, the Illawarra Folk Festival, and the Woodford Folk Festival. With Joe Oppenheimer, James founded and co-produced the Pedestrian Orchestra, a year-long series of fifty concerts and arts performances aimed at encouraging Canberra’s emerging talent.

MEREDITH HINCHLIFFE

Meredith Hinchliffe

Meredith Hinchliffe has been involved with the arts since 1977 when she began work with the Crafts Council of the ACT. As part of the CCACT exhibition program she curated many exhibitions including several of individual artists and group exhibitions.  These included all craft media – ceramics, wood, textiles, leather, metalwork and, to a lesser degree, glass.  Craft ACT was included in some touring exhibitions and during her time at the organisation, Meredith showed an exhibition of Molas from the San Blas Islands of Panama. Meredith was a contributor to The Canberra Times from 1978 to 2009 and writes review articles of crafts and visual arts exhibitions and books.  She also writes about issues of importance to the arts.  She has written articles about for a number of journals, including the National Library News, Smarts, Pottery in Australia, Craft Arts  International, Textile Fibre Forum, Object and Ceramic Art and Perception. Meredith worked at The Australian Bicentennial Authority, artsACT and Business Development in the ACT Government.  She was responsible for grant programs in each area.

Meredith Hinchliffe was appointed the full-time Executive Director of the National Campaign for the Arts Australia Ltd in July 1996, until the organisation was wound up due to lack of funding in August 1997.  During this period she built up a strong network of media contacts and assisted with the successful campaign for Artbank to be retained as a government operation. From August 1997 to December 1999 she worked as a freelance consultant. In 2000 Meredith began an appointment for two years as Project Manager, Australian Science Teachers Association. She was appointed Executive Officer of Museums Australia, the national professional association for museum workers and museums in July 2002. She worked as Public Arts Project Officer for artsACT and has managed several public art installation projects. From July 2008 to April 2009 she was the inaugural Executive Officer of the Donald Horne Institute for Cultural Heritage at the University of Canberra.

Meredith has served on the boards of a number of local arts organisations and was President of Ausdance ACT until May 2011. She is approved to value Australian ceramics, glass, textiles, jewellery, leatherwork, wooden objects and furniture from 1950 for the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program and has undertaken numerous valuations of works in most media, including the valuation of the Tamworth Regional Gallery’s textile collection. Meredith has been involved in a number of projects, including curating the Survey exhibition of the Tamworth Fibre Textile Collection in 2010. In 2000 she was awarded an ACT Women’s Award in recognition of her significant contribution to the ACT community in the arts.  In 2011 she was awarded an Australia Day medal by the National Gallery of Australia.

ROSANNA STEVENS

Rosanna Stevens is currently the Communications Officer at the ACT Writers Centre, Senior Ambassador for the Australian National University Student Equity division, and co-producer and founder of Canberra’s young literary organisation, Scissors Paper Pen. In 2012 she was the recipient an artsACT grant to visit a variety of literary communities, initiatives and organisations in the United States of America. She also received CAL Creative Industries Career Funding while completing a three-month internship with San Francisco publishing house, McSweeney’s.

Rosanna has been a guest of the National Young Writers Festival, Adelaide Writers Week, You Are Here festival and the Emerging Writers Festival. She has also acted in a range of minor positions at literary festivals including Chairperson for the Melbourne Writers Festival, Volunteers Coordinator for the National Young Writers Festival, and Communications Officer for You Are Here festival. In 2011 she was National Young Writers Month co-Ambassador for New South Wales, and Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre Young Writer in Residence in Perth. Her short fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published nationally, and her work has received favourable mention in The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Australian.

Within her role at ANU Student Equity, Rosanna provides creative writing workshops to high-school students based in regional areas. Her passion for providing creative opportunities to young people and challenging popular educational paradigms has seen her work with students in Young, Bega, Goulburn, Yanderra, Canberra, Collector, the Blue Mountains, Chicago and San Francisco. Rosanna is currently completing a Master of Philosophy at the Australian National University.

The Childers Group, the only arts advocacy body for the ACT region, has joined ArtsPeak, the confederation of Australian peak arts organisations.  This is an exciting opportunity for us.  Since our establishment in 2011 we have found our feet and started to have a real impact on the development of the arts and cultural life of our region.  However, joining ArtsPeak enables us to situate our advocacy in a broader national context.

The membership of ArtsPeak includes 30 key advocacy organisations, including the National Association for the Visual Arts, Regional Arts Australia, Ausdance, Young People and the Arts Australia – and now the Childers Group.

Joining ArtsPeak gives our advocacy a certain gravitas.  This is particularly important as the ACT and region is currently celebrating significant milestones, including the Centenary of Canberra. The Childers Group is already starting to think about what happens next in our region and we’re thrilled to now be in a position to bounce ideas off our ArtsPeak colleagues and be a part of a connected, informed and energised national arts advocacy movement.

ArtsPeak’s priorities for the immediate future are:

• a long-term cultural framework and the necessity for adventurous arts policies that emphasise cross-departmental support for arts and culture – this will need a much greater funding commitment to sustain and grow arts infrastructure and to support the intrinsic and economic contribution of artists.

• the viability of creative practitioners’ careers with appropriate professional development and lifelong skills that contribute to the economic and cultural life of the community, with fair payment and ethical conditions supported by appropriate legislation and regulation.

• the importance of a good arts education from early childhood through school and into higher education, anticipated by the introduction of the Australian Curriculum for the Arts in 2014 – TAFE cuts to arts training and the gradual contraction of arts education options in universities are of major concern.

• greater need for better recognition of and support for the diversity of the arts, including Australia’s unique Indigenous culture, multicultural communities and people with disability across urban, regional and remote Australia – the importance of international engagement and exchange is strongly advocated.

• maintenance of the arm’s length and peer-assessment principles in the restructure of the Australia Council, and greater flexibility and responsiveness to developments in the arts sector – ArtsPeak strongly argues that art form expertise should be maintained.

The Childers Group congratulates Caroline Stacey being named as the ACT ‘City News’  Artist of the Year for 2012, which is awarded by the Canberra Critics Circle.

Caroline  is a very fine example of someone who is making a significant contribution to the creative life of the ACT Region.  She is known for her artistic daring and her tenacity, and she’s been an influential advocate for the arts, particularly in terms of theatre.

It is most fitting for Caroline to be recognised in this way, and it is encouraging for all of us who are working to see the arts being placed at the very centre of Australian life.

Caroline Stacey is the Artistic Director/CEO of the Street Theatre, and is a foundation member of the Childers Group.

The Childers Group congratulates all the artists who received awards and the Canberra Critics Circle for its work in honouring creative excellence in the ACT region over the last twenty-two years. This, too, is an extraordinary achievement.

Poet Andrew Galan

Here’s a huge THANK YOU to everyone who made our second forum for the year – held on Wednesday 19 September at the Canberra Museum and Gallery – such a success.  Thank you to Andrew Galan and Miranda Lello who kicked off proceedings by giving us a taste of poetry slam.  Thanks to the three Members of the ACT Legislative Assembly: Joy Burch (Labor), Vicki Dunne (Liberals) and Caroline Le Couteur (Greens) – we appreciate you giving so much of your time in preparing for the forum, presenting your arts policies, and answering questions.  Thanks to those who represented their sectors: Peter Bayliss (contemporary music), Alexander Boynes (visual arts), Raoul Cramer (theatre), Monica Penders (film), Philip Piggin (community cultural development), Neil Roach (dance), Michael Sollis (fine music), and Rosy Stevens (literature).  Thanks to those who asked questions and participated in the democratic process.

A forum of this sort needs expert facilitation, and that’s what we had in Andrea Close – we appreciated how you kept everything rolling along like clockwork.  Thank you to the Cultural Facilities Corporation, especially the members of the front-of-house staff who were instrumental in making the forum happen.  Thanks to New Best Friend who always make us look fabulous.  And lastly, but most importantly, thanks to the 70 or so who came along and packed out the venue to show that people are willing and wanting to have a robust discussion about the importance of the arts and community creativity in the ACT region.

What happens now?  We’ll get a summary of the discussion up here shortly.   And then, of course, there’s the ACT election on Saturday 20 October.

Just a quick update to say that we’re completely thrilled with the response to our second forum – we’re booked out!  It’s great to know so many people are interested in having a discussion about arts policy in the lead-up to the ACT election next month.

A couple of things.  Firstly, if you haven’t RSVPed but would like to attend, the Canberra Museum and Gallery is formulating a waiting list – you’re welcome to put your name down on that.  Secondly, if you have RSVPed but can’t attend at the last minute, please contact the Canberra Museum and Gallery so someone on the waiting list can take your place.  Here’s looking forward to a wonderful discussion about what it means to be a creative region!  Any questions or comments, just drop us a line.

Just a heads-up that the next Childers Group forum will be held on Wednesday 19 September 2012.  It will be 5pm for a 5.30 start, 7.30pm finish.  The venue will be the Canberra Museum and Gallery Theatrette, Canberra City. The format of the discussion is still being finalised, but we can tell you that the three ACT Legislative Assembly members relating to the arts will be presenting their arts policies.  Discussion will undoubtedly ensue.  Formal marketing of the forum will commence shortly.

Reports are coming in that there have been significant changes to arts journalism at The Canberra Times.  Two sources are the ABC and City News.  Arts reporter Diana Streak has either been demoted or offered a redundancy, and literary editor Gia Metherall has been told her position is surplus to requirements.  Some questions.  What does this mean for the coverage of local arts coverage in the ACT region?  How will the region know what’s happening in their communities?  How will there be an intelligent and articulate discussion about what it means to be a creative part of Australia?  More specifically, what does it mean for book reviews?  No doubt reviews will still happen, but how will regional writers and publishers get their work into the broader public?  Will these changes result in the urbanisation of Australian literature?

The Childers Group understands that newspapers are businesses and that the print-based newspaper business model is collapsing rapidly.  However, we also believe that newspapers have a role to play in terms of making an active contribition to the local communities in which they are situated, regardless of the mechanism – print or on-line or a combination of both.  The arts and all arts communities deserve professional arts journalism.

The Childers Group is seeking your views on the best way to respond to this situtation.  Email us at childersgroup@gmail.com.  In the meantime, we’ll find out as much as we can.

UPDATE as at 16 July: We’ve been informed that a total of three positions have been axed at The Canberra Times: arts editor, literary editor, and features editor.  Apparently The Canberra Times‘ intention is to focus on digital content, but the question remains: how to provide local arts content without professional and dedicated local arts journalists?

(Image courtesy of ACT Museums and Galleries.)

Congratulations to Centenary of Canberra Creative Director Robyn Archer for being appointed Deputy Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts.  Not only is Robyn highly respected as an artist and festival director, she is also a strong and consistent advocate for the arts and cultural life of the ACT region.  The next twenty-four months really are shaping up to be pretty special indeed.

Two key issued that were raised at the ‘Burning Issues and Radical Ideas’ forum on 18 April were artist incomes/employment and diversifying funding opportunities through philanthropy.  All of us here at Childers Group HQ love good news, so here’s some good news on these two issues.

New artist-in-residence funding program for the ACT region:

First up, the ACT Government through artsACT has established Arts Residencies ACT, which is providing funding to help organisations establish an artist-in-residency program.  This could mean ACT-region artists get to work with a particular organisation – and it doesn’t necessarily have to be an arts organisation, which provides cross-over opportunities and career expansion for the artists involved – or it could involve bringing in national artists to work in the ACT region and engage with local communities.  Applications open today and close on Friday 8 June.  For more information, go here.

Arts philanthropy seminar to be held in Canberra:

In terms diversifying funding opportunities, at 4pm on Thursday 31 May at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, the Australia Council’s Artsupport team is holding a seminar on best-practice in private support for the arts.  According to Artsupport, the unit recently organised and led a philanthropy leadership study tour to New York for the Chairs and Chief Executive Officers of Australia’s major performing arts companies – Melbourne Theatre Company, Belvoir, Bell Shakespeare, Black Swan State Theatre Company, Sydney Dance Company, Queensland Ballet, Bangarra Dance Company, Tasmania Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and State Opera of South Australia. The study tour met with the CEOs, Development Directors and key Board Members of New York companies – Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, American Ballet Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Public Theatre, Signature Theatre, Orchestra of St Luke’s and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. The intention for the study tour was to witness best practice in private support for the arts, to be inspired, benchmark and refresh ideas.  Participants will share their insights.  The seminar is free.  Go here for more information and to register.

See why we love good news so much?