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culture@com.unity: the arts and cultural domain in nsw

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IN A CREATIVE STATE - CONFERENCE REPORT

Around three hundred delegates across all cultural sectors from right around the state converged on the University of Sydney on October 5 and 6 2001 for culture@com.unity, the joint state cultural conference presented by Regional Arts NSW, Museums and Galleries Foundation NSW, Community Cultural Development NSW and the Local Government and Shires Associations of NSW.

With a total of eighty speakers on twenty three panels, presentations and tours, topics ranged widely from the sector specific - such as exhibition technologies, a professional artists' workshop and a session for members of Regional Arts Boards - to the universal - such as valuing culture, strategic planning, cultural mapping and audience development. There were case studies of best practice in local government, a showcase of exceptional projects achieved on shoe-string budgets, sessions on community cinema and performing arts touring, tours of galleries and museums and more.

The conference program incorporated performances from a number of musicians, including Glen Skuthorpe and the nine-piece Junction House Band. Two visual artists, Cheryl Robinson and Helen Monday, worked over the two days on a piece that incorporated delegates' contributions. And there was a fabulous dinner at Parliament House featuring a piece from 'Dislabelled' by the Australian Theatre of the Deaf and Sue Broadway performing 'The Ancient Australian Tea Ceremony'.

From morning coffee to last drinks, from social capital to human remains, culture@com.unity was a resounding success.

The sheer level of enthusiasm, commitment and engagement was remarkable. Delegates came away inspired by a new level of connectedness across all sectors. The event brought together people from arts councils, local councils, museums, galleries, Aboriginal land councils, Aboriginal cultural centres, community centres, historical societies, festivals, performance groups, libraries, universities, industry associations, training providers and consultancies. There were representatives from Regional Arts Boards, the NSW Ministry for the Arts and The Australia Council as well as interstate guests from Victoria and Queensland.

A large percentage of delegates were volunteers whose attendance was generously paid for by the NSW Government, which provided a $9,000 grant for a hundred conference registrations and dinners. Premier and Minister for the Arts, Mr Bob Carr was represented at the conference by both the Minister for Tourism, Ms Sandra Nori, who opened the conference and the Minister Assisting the Premier on the Arts, Mr Bob Debus, who hosted the conference dinner. The Deputy Director General for the NSW Ministry for the Arts, Mr Roger Wilkins was also in attendance.
By the end of the second day it was clear that culture@com.unity was truly a landmark event that took the NSW arts and cultural industry one giant step forward towards convergence and another giant step into deeper ground in the areas of cultural planning and sustainable, community based development.

International guest speaker, Professor Simon Roodhouse introduced the theme of inclusiveness in the cultural sector - the need for the arts, museums, galleries and communities to all work together - in his opening address (extracts of which are reprinted here on pages 9-11). And at the plenary session it was Virginia Hollister's observation that a core theme in everyone's presentation had been how crucial it is for cultural sustenance that organisations, networks and funders build partnerships across the community.

Simon Roodhouse remarked on the "genuine sharing" that he saw going on between practitioners and policy makers from all cultural sectors, saying, "That mix is what made this conference quite unique." And indeed for many it was the new connections and developing relationships that was the highlight of their experience at the conference. There were countless instances of people meeting new people as well as others they'd spoken to on the phone but never had the chance to meet. Kate Croll lent weight to the value of this networking in her remark that it was "people spending time with people from other sectors discussing things they found important, confusing or confronting, sharing ideas from different perspectives," that she thought was one of the key strengths of the conference.

Scott O'Hara, CEO of Community Cultural Development NSW added his insights into the collegiate aspect of the CCD field in NSW. Following the Icons and Templates session, where four artists with very different experience, work practices and perspectives shared their insights into their careers, he was prompted to reflect on how diverse NSW art practice is. He concluded, "You, as community practitioners, don't need to know everything. Even if you haven't met them, you can seek advice from others with specialist knowledge."

Maisy Stapleton, CEO of the Museums and Galleries Foundation of NSW, was impressed by the way "a number of sessions directly and indirectly brought up issues to do with ownership, research, documentation, evaluation, strategic planning and other tools for arts development." The conference brought out the importance of "serious research in a coordinated fashion across all sectors," she said. "It's time all organisations did it … map a framework we can all work on so we can have it to help with [cultural] planning."

Rosslyn Kemp, Director of Regional Arts NSW, agreed. "We need to evaluate, to find out what we're doing and where we're doing it," she said. "We need to ask, what are we doing, what are we sustaining? Who for? What partnerships do we need? And then we need to tell. If governments don't know, tell them … and we have to have the statistics to tell them."
Simon Roodhouse brought up what, for most of us, was the bottom line, when he talked about "bringing together art expertise to get behind regeneration of communities from their perspectives." As Virginia Hollister said, "There are so many incredible and inspiring examples of community empowerment … and this relates to ... not empowerment of the status quo, but empowering creativity, which means empowering risk, the capacity to make mistakes, the space to create new vision, to develop a voice and find what's meaningful."

Culture@com.unity was empowering of us all to embrace this vision.
Thanks go to every delegate, speaker, and performer - but most of all to the tireless team of organisers from the MGF and RANSW - for making culture@com.unity such a great success.

- Rachael Vincent

(This report is reproduced from November edition of ArtReach magazine).

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