Exciting and inspiring Tasmanian communities through arts and culture

• The Dance Project
• Arts and wellbeing
• Branching Out
• Material Girl
• Tasmanian Portraiture Prize
• Rural Broadband Campaign
• Open Your Eyes

Projects

Open Your Eyes a resounding success!

 Tasmanian Regional Arts' wonderful cultural tourism showcase event - Open Your Eyes - was a resounding  success. Held over the period 16-18 September, the concept of self guided arts experiential tours proved a hit for those of an arty,adventurous nature and the host communities alike.

Creative Producer Jaspa Wood has taken an interesting approach to documenting and marketing the event.  For those attending, or those that missed out, you can get a humorous and irreverent snippet of the program from the two roving writers, Poet Duncan Hose and Performance/Installation Artist Tristan Stowards who toured the region's sights and events and have concocted these wonderfully funny online vignettes of the program.

You can access their wit via youtube by following the links below:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jlD8Khwh3U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAZPEg1X3hk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJXDgvmOKx8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRLpRAAENgE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43urc9cFcy0&feature=related

Many thanks to all the artists and the communities who took part - we trust that those that took part will well and truly have their eyes open to the creative potential of the state's south.

The DANCE PROJECT - FAMILY

FAMILY is the southern component of The Dance Project, a statewide initiative of the Australia Council. Mature Artists Dance Experience, (MADE) Tasmania’s innovative contemporary dance theatre ensemble of mature adults is working in collaboration with Hobart’s Hospice Volunteers to create a two part dance and sound installation encapsulating the primary message that death is an essential element of life - and a community in fear and denial of death is a community in fear and denial of life”. (Hospice Volunteers).

In 2010 MADE was approached by Hospice Care Association of Southern Tasmania Inc who had identified MADE and its performance methods as the means for establishing a dialogue with the broader community about the subject of death, predominately feared and treated as taboo. FAMILY project patron Professor Ashby (Director of Palliative Care, Royal Hobart Hospital and Ethicist) and the Hospice Volunteer’s believe it is the ignorance and fear of dying that is preventing many people from having a ‘good’ death. Similarly,MADE strongly advocates the valuable contribution mature members of our community make to our cultural identity - through dance and movement; forming a collaboration that is surprising, obvious and integrally connected.

It is through this unique collaboration that artistic interrogations are transposing the powerful discourse evolving from the two groups combined into phrasal encounters that are both visceral and unchartered.The Dance Project, a community arts initiative is focused on the critical investigation of the work through its year-long intensive workshops aimed at facilitating participatory experiences and new meanings within the form of dance. The introspection of the movement being created is further charged by the diverse ensemble of mostly woman ranging in ages from 40 year of age to 80 years of age. Yet, it is the intent of the movement resonated through the connection of the Hospice Volunteers and their intimate association with dying and death that reverberates long after visiting the work in creative development.

FAMILY is a bold, innovative project that is stimulating critical discourse about dying and connecting with death - through this exquisite participatory performance work – in life.

Branching Out

In 2009 commenced a two year project to investigate and support social enterprise development in Tasmania through the Arts.

Funded through the support of the Westpac Foundation, Branching Out set out to equip regional Tasmania's community arts organisations with skills and expertise to generate their own resources, placing less emphasis on grants and more on economic self - sustainability.

Branching Out is a project that saw Tasmania's peak community arts organisation, Tasmanian Regional Arts work with two pilot groups on establishing social enterprises. This project has seen a collaboration between business, government, the arts and community to look at the opportunities of social enterprise to increase sustainability and capacity of non profit and volunteer arts organisations.

The Institute for Regional Development (UTAS) worked with TRA to implement an action learning process that provided the opportunity to record, reflect and respond to the needs of the pilots. Based on this work UTAS then sourced Kylie Eastley as research assistant in the UTAS baseline study into social enterprise in Tasmania in an extension of the initial two-year funded project which concluded in 2011.

The Branching Out project identified the challenges for those organisations without the capacity, resources and reserves to invest in the set up and management of a social enterprise. It also identified gaps in the services currently available to those in the social enterprise and non profit sector. In response to this TRA developed an innovative coaching approach that saw significant outcomes for the pilots and broader Tasmanian social enterprise sector.

Branching Out has been the catalyst for a broader conversation about social enterprise in Tasmania. TRA aims to build on this work to explore the potential for it's own organisation as well as the future opportunities of social enterprise facilitation throughout Tasmania and further afield.

To access the final report on the Branching Out research Project, click here (PDF: 2.3MB)