Common Ground

Whilst we work with all tiers of government, our most practical day to day relationship is with the tier that knows community most intimately. To plan events, install public art, or work with communities to shape and produce artwork, our relationship with local government comes into play. And for our part, we bring arts expertise that provides creative solutions to local issues and makes communities good places to live. It’s a good partnership.

Around 2003 it was becoming clear that formalising our relationship would create multiple benefits for communities, and artsworkers working closest to local government through the Creative Communities Network, including our own staff, developed the Creative Communities Guidelines to provide a framework for effective council investment in arts and culture. Around the same time, we were encouraging participation from local government in our forums and conferences and councils were becoming increasingly aware of both the significant role arts can play in delivering their core responsibilities to community, and the advantages of collaboration.

For many years prior to our formation in 1993, arts officers around the state had nurtured, pollinated and tended the roots of cultural expression, maintaining complex networks of parties who wanted arts to happen and agencies that could support them. Gradually it made more and more sense to partner with local government to share these roles. Our Regional Centres of Culture upped the ante considerably, embedding arts and culture into those councils’ strategic frameworks, and motivating others to follow the path.

Nowadays we work closer than ever with 20 local governments* with some relationships focussed on the sustainability and activation of arts spaces, others on shared staff and others on delivering public outcomes. Many local government jurisdictions now manage their own arts and cultural aspirations and employ artsworkers across theatres, galleries and community arts.

The role of the regional arts and cultural facilitator has evolved, and is likely to be the product of a partnership with an agency whose core business is not arts. Our Creative Communities Partnership Program is now a competitive process employing 13 facilitators ** and open to any organisation keen to work collaboratively to employ arts practice to deliver richer outcomes in regional communities.