Not Just a Spectator
MOMENT 11 •
2001
Being a spectator is OK up to a point. Sometimes it’s best to stand back and admire. But sometimes we long to know more about what lies beneath these human endeavours – the inspiration, the technical achievement, the questions they raise. And sometimes it’s great to be around when the line between spectator and participant becomes more indistinct.
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Elastic Planet – our first funded audience development project in 2002—was a multimedia touring exhibition targeted at young people. A combination of arts and technology, exhibiting interactive 3D animations and video based art works, digital comics, illustrations, electronica and soundscapes plus artist talks and workshops in animation it bounced, stretched and morphed between the mundane and the surreal with animation and electricity, showing us the playability of our elastic planet. -
Dianne Turner, Please a request from our environment, (Mother Earth), for you to walk carefully, stop often, look for the beauty of our arid lands and you will find it. Concrete sculpture using alumina cement, 160 x 160cm, 2004. Exhibited at ARID - a sculptural collaboration 2004. -
Dianne Turner, Please a request from our environment, (Mother Earth), for you to walk carefully, stop often, look for the beauty of our arid lands and you will find it. Concrete sculpture using alumina cement, 160 x 160cm, 2004. Exhibited at ARID - a sculptural collaboration 2004. -
Donny McKenzie, participant in indigenous sculpture workshops, part of Arid, A Sculptural Collaboration, Sept 2004 -
Jacky Spencer's 'silhouette' as part of Arid - A Sculptural Collaboration, 2004 -
Julie Milton's 'on tenterhooks', part of Arid - A Sculptural Collaboration -
Learning Connections, a Professional Development Workshop for Teachers and gallery volunteers by visual arts and education specialist Anne Keast at the Riverlands Gallery, Berri -
Mandy Ord, Undergrowth (detail) - The Dark Woods, comic book workshop in New Land Gallery, for the Visual Arts Touring program 2004/2005. Curator Sarah Howell and artist Mandy Ord from Tasmania also ran workshops at the Fountain Gallery and Baxter Detention Centre. “Before hearing Mandy’s story behind her work I thought it was just a made up fictional story and had not realised at all how it related to real life.” Workshop participant -
The Design Now exhibition was specifically curated by Country Arts SA’s education consultant, John Neylon, with the JamFactory, in response to educators looking for a design-focussed learning materials, an important development in Learning Connections, being the first exhibition curated specifically with teachers in mind. Toured statewide from 2008 with integrated interpretive panels which explore the artform from concept, through process to the finished artwork. The catalogue doubled as a teaching resource and remains a valuable tool to unravel in the field of contemporary design. -
Australian Dance Theatre during Come Out Children's Festival 2003 -
Bangarra workshop port Lincoln: Port Lincoln students had the opportunity to work with dancers from Bangarra Dance Theatre, Australia’s leading Indigenous dance company, at a workshop held at Port Lincoln Primary School in August. Students from Port Lincoln High School, Port Lincoln Primary, Lincoln Gardens, Kirton Point Primary and the Port Lincoln’s Children’s Centre learnt new dance techniques from experienced members of the troupe. Many of the students used workshops as part of their preparations for Croc Fest. Bangarra’s Company Manager Jasmine Gulash said “We wanted to show Aboriginal kids that there is a career in the arts. It’s all about stepping out of your comfort zone to get involved in something cultural.” -
A participant in artist Ken Orchard’s Learning Connections drawing workshop at Wild Dog Hill near Whyalla for the exhibition, Drawing Today, 2006 -
By 2012 it was commonplace for all performing arts tours to include participatory opportunities—masterclasses, professional development or workshops. At the Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre, workshops as part of TaikOz’s tour of Shifting Sand, were attended by young members of the newly settled Congalese and Burmese communities and helped to integrate these new arrivals more fully and more creatively into the community. This image is from Just Add Water in Goolwa that same year. -
A 2013 Shows On The Road tour, in which comedian actors Mickey D and Damien Callinan wrote and produced their comedy, Road Trip, within 48 hours of the meeting the locals and gathering quirky facts about each community. -
Workshops for the Shows on the Road Program 2005 tour with Celtic musicians Planet Woman in Kadina - (photo courtesy of Yorke Peninsula Country Times) -
Artist Alan Tucker gave a workshop for the Learning Connections program with students in Kadina as part of the exhibition Open Borders in 2006. -
The Democratic Set by Back to Back and 100 members of Goolwa community during the Just Add Water Regional Centre of Culture and screened at the national conference, Kumuwuki in Goolwa. A travelling community video installation and mesmerizing portrait of the town. -
The Sponge Kids Arts Hub was developed for Just Add Water in Signal Point Gallery, Goolwa and continues in school holidays in both Goolwa and Strathalbyn. -
Arid: A Sculptural Collaboration began in 2004 as a pilot we funded and managed to explore ways to cross-pollinate audiences in order to grow both of them. The biennial festival continues 14 years later as a joint venture between Port Augusta Council and the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden. -
Arid: A Sculptural Collaboration began in 2004 as a pilot we funded and managed to explore ways to cross-pollinate audiences in order to grow both of them. The biennial festival continues 14 years later as a joint venture between Port Augusta Council and the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden. -
Bingo Unit: Riverland and Mt Gambier people explored their inner good or bad cop in an interactive, multimedia police drama experience, by Team Mess, shooting film scenes for the stage performance a week later. -
A multi-dimensional two-year program to ignite interest in dance performance in 2015/16, DanceXtend connected potential audiences to contemporary dance in the months between performances by touring professional dance companies, building longer term relationships with them. Defining dance as any movement by the body and validating everyone’s interpretation of it, it made dance more accessible and more comprehensible. The Jungle Gym, (a three dimensional interactive structure which takes the individual through a series of contemporary dance moves), was the standout amongst, many opportunities for people to put the toe in the water and overall the program succeeded in bringing more people into the theatre. -
A multi-dimensional two-year program to ignite interest in dance performance in 2015/16, DanceXtend connected potential audiences to contemporary dance in the months between performances by touring professional dance companies, building longer term relationships with them. Defining dance as any movement by the body and validating everyone’s interpretation of it, it made dance more accessible and more comprehensible. The Jungle Gym, (a three dimensional interactive structure which takes the individual through a series of contemporary dance moves), was the standout amongst, many opportunities for people to put the toe in the water and overall the program succeeded in bringing more people into the theatre. -
Stunning, graceful and evocative, Reclaimed Pianos returned to South Australia in 2018 after a sell-out 2016 regional tour. This intimate creation by internationally renowned company Circa, taps into the piano’s magical ability to transport us through time and to other places. As notes reverberate, they echo our memories of times before, places travelled and worlds to be discovered. From classical recitals to family sing-alongs: pianos have stories to tell. Image: Chris Herzfeld -
Created by one of the country’s leading children’s theatre producers, Dave Brown (former Artistic Director of Patch Theatre Company) in association with The Paper Boats Project, Especially on Birthdays is an intimate visual-theatre experience for 4-8 year olds recreates the ups, downs and roundabouts and fun of birthdays. -
Danger Club brought together local kids from Port Pirie and Circa’s acrobats (people who live danger every day) to perform a brand new show for friends, family and the community at the Northern Festival Centre. Danger Club met in a top secret location, to inspire and challenge the kids in unexpected, exciting, and amusing ways to create a unique physical theatre performance. -
Nathan Maynard's 'The Season' supported by Playing Australia, marks a change in the way touring is funded and supported. With the new model we are able to include periods of longer engagement in communities - not just a workshop on the day. Presenter lobbying of government enabled the shift to occur. Photo by Robert Catto, on Tuesday 10 January, 2017. -
For the touring exhibition, Tough(er) love, an interactive resource kit exploring the artists and artworks, with behind the scenes videos, was produced, an early foray into a pattern that was to grow exponentially bringing both Learning Connections and the exhibitions program into the digital age. https://www.countryarts.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/TougherLove_ResourceKit.pdf -
Telling our Stories in partnership with History SA as part of Just Add Water, engaged community historians Madeleine Regan and June Edwards to work with filmmaker Malcolm McKinnon to create five artefact based films about community stories -
Exhibition on Screen Michelangelo pre-screening talk by local artist Yvette Frahn at the Chaffey Theatre presented as part of Country Arts SA's CONNECT program.
Being a spectator is OK up to a point. Sometimes it’s best to stand back and admire. But sometimes we long to know more about what lies beneath these human endeavours – the inspiration, the technical achievement, the questions they raise. And sometimes it’s great to be around when the line between spectator and participant becomes more indistinct.
Long before our organisation began, community art-making based on a democratic model of decision making and participation had been resourced and encouraged. But there was more to be done to grow audiences by encouraging a personal connection for all arts experiences.
By 2001, federal funding was available to explore such strategies which we grasped with both hands to pour into projects that would either target an under-represented demographic (Elastic Planet), engage partners with a vested interest in an un-related activity (Arid), or provide the means for people to learn more about the artworks and the artists (Learning Connections).
Over the next decade, Learning Connections grew into a wide-ranging engagement program for educators complementing touring exhibitions, and ‘value-adding’ in all our programs became increasingly sophisticated. Eventually we no longer needed a discrete program for audience engagement and our Regional Centres of Culture and Performance Development Programs would be entirely modelled around enabling meaningful encounters with art at every level of the creation and presentation process. By 2012, 50% of everything we presented included participatory elements and in 2018 it is at the heart of everything we do.
You can still choose the extent to which you get involved – being a spectator is still perfectly OK. And we still count how many of you turn up as we always have, but our principle indicator of success is now the depth of your personal engagement and the reverberation for you and your community.
