Community and Youth Arts
At the heart of what I do is collaboration and connection with the community.
I am honoured that a large part of my practice has been working as a youth arts practitioner. My work has connected me with communities all across South Australia, including my time running D’Faces, a regional youth arts organisation. Among other accomplishments, I have spoken at the 2021 Artland Conference on a panel for youth arts and have connected with leading practitioners from around the nation.
I have run workshops, curated exhibitions, built festival art, organised art camps and more. I am dedicated to supporting young artists and building art that helps connect communities.
2020 REGIONAL
YOUTH ART CAMP
While the Company Manager of D’Faces I coordinated this statewide youth art camp.
D'faces' Regional Youth Arts Camp was a project to bring together creative young people from across regional SA. The program focused on building a common ground where young actors, dancers, circus performers and more could connect and collaborate. The event was run from a campsite in Halbury over the course of three days with workshops focused on empowering the young artists to create artworks reflective of their stories and worldview.
The camp was led by a diverse team of artists from a range of artistic practices and backgrounds: Rob Golding, Phi Theodoros, Michal Hughes, Jai Golding and Tamara Lee.
The project was funded by Country Arts SA's Regional Arts Fund.
REGENERATION
FESTIVAL ART
Working with the Onkaparinga City Council as a volunteer I helped develop installation art for their 2017 Regeneration Festival. The following year I helped develop projection art for their 2018 Regen Festival. The installations were built with primarily recycled and sustainable materials and explored connection to place and the impacts of waste culture.
2017 Regeneration Festival art made in collaboration with Zoe Brooks, Mark Timberlake and Isadore Glockner-Karo.
2018 Regen Festival art made in collaboration with Zoe Brooks, Dave Court, Henry Jock Walker and David Musch
DEFINITION EXHIBITION
This project explored the identities of people in the community. I spent time interviewing 80 community members and painting their portraits. Each participant was asked how they define themselves and their responses were recorded and incorporated into their art.
Adelaide composed Roderick Mason used recordings of their responses to develop an atmospheric soundtrack that would play during the exhibition.
This project was funded by the City of Onkaparinga
The portraits were developed into a limited run of books that are up for sale here.
COLLABORATIVE ANIMATIONS
Amongst my various projects, I have had the pleasure of working in various communities across South Australia to collaborate on animations.
On a project funded by Country Arts SA, I travelled to Elliston and Streaky Bay and ran multiple animation workshops in schools and community centres, passing on skills to local artists. I also ran a series of workshops with the ‘Families Together’ Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander group. Teaching various animation techniques to kids through play. The resulting videos are a proud showcase of the skills learnt by the young participants.
In addition to these kinds of workshops I have also collaborated with several established and emerging artists to create animations from their artwork for exhibition purposes. These artists include Seth Kear, Heidi Karo and Emerson Dellaero. These videos were developed wit the input and support of the artists, using their artistic vision and my technical skills to bring their works to life in new ways.
