Inspire Creativity!
Last night I was invited to participate in a council think tank about arts and culture on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. A dozen participants were selected, introduced to each other as champions of their respective arts, well-connected and dedicated to their passions. It made my heart sing to be described as that and meet similar others! I was there to represent writers and writing on the Northern Beaches, and there were others representing visual arts such as sculpture and painting, architecture, music, choirs, recording studios, film making, galleries, urban planning, and performance art. Amazing!
When I received the email, I wasn’t quite sure what would be involved, and when I first arrived I still wasn’t sure – there was a massive Jenga tower, easels labelled ‘out of this world’ and ‘I like it’, and we were asked to wear bandanas!
We then participated in exercises designed to generate ideas and perceptions about the current landscape of arts and culture, how we wanted to see that landscape change over the next five years, and then over the next twenty years. It was exciting! We had to consider our responses from various perspectives including the economy, public places, participation, and health and well-being. I didn’t know I had so many opinions!! The end result was a clear acknowledgment that arts and culture could flourish in and greatly benefit our community, with focused support from both councils through funding, and the community itself through participation.
For me, this would also involve changing attitudes towards arts and culture, as my personal 20-year vision was for community participation in the arts to become part of everyday living, in the same way that sports and exercise form part of people’s weekly health routines. Self-expression and creativity is known to stimulate personal well-being and life satisfaction, and should be promoted as such from the ground up, starting with kids in schools. The Northern Beaches has a strong sports culture, as do other communities; but it could also develop a strong artistic culture, becoming a hub for artists of every kind!! Twenty years ago, soccer (football!) wasn’t really a thing in Australia – now every Saturday and Sunday the playing fields are packed full of soccer-players and Australia was in the world cup (yay!). There’s no reason why the same can’t happen with the arts!
At the end of the night, we had to offer up keywords that summarised our opinions and for me those were:
- attitude
- awareness
- integration
The big question now is how. How do we change attitudes towards arts and culture, stimulate interest and participation, generate awareness, support and sponsorship (to the level given to sport stars and teams), and normalise integration?
I had a few practical suggestions from a writing perspective of course, such as:
- include more words in visual displays of arts, be it poetry or short stories;
- incentivise participation by increasing the number of writing competitions available for both children and adults, so there’s not just a single competition for the whole of the Northern Beaches once per year, but one per suburb every quarter/term, with better prizes, trophies and glory(!);
- increase the visibility of activities already happening locally through better communication;
- prioritise local writers for author talks in schools and prominent libraries to support them in their own community; and
- as well as giving all children across Australia $100 voucher towards sports activities, as happened this year, also give them $100 towards an arts activity.
Do you have any ideas? If so, there’s a ‘Creative Mixer’ open to the public on Tuesday 31st July, 6-9pm at Park House in Mona Vale (RSVP to attend over here). There’s also an online survey you can take here.
After participating last night, I now have a vision of my community participating in creative endeavours on a regular basis to stimulate both the economy and individual’s sense of meaning and belonging; improve personal well-being and mental health by dealing with stress, anxiety and depression through creativity; strengthen community cohesion and connection; express identity and a sense of enjoyment. What say you?
