Design Canberra: culture in the backyard – the thread of design connects arts, culture and creative industries

See main article, 'Designs on the future'

This is part of the article, 'Designs on the future – how Australia's designed city has global plans', about the annual Design Canberra festival and the plans for its future. The ultimate vision of Craft ACT for Canberra is to add another major annual event to Floriade, Enlighten and the Multicultural Festival, filling a gap between them and complementing them all.

When I worked in Canberra on national arts and culture programs and policy for over 13 years I had little to do with Canberra itself. My focus was firmly everywhere else in Australia, rather than my own backyard. 

The OZeCulture conference, the national series of conferences for artists and cultural organisations using the web, was the reason I first moved to Canberra in late 2000. I had come from the Powerhouse Museum to join the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts to organise the first of the OZeCulture series and I was closely involved with all the subsequent conferences.

Culture in the backyard

Since leaving the Australian Government Ministry for the Arts in 2014, and moving into a new stage of my career in the arts and cultural sector, I have found myself much more engaged with local arts and culture in Canberra. 

As part of this I have become involved at the heart of developments with Australian design. Since leaving the Australian Government I have been a member of the Board of Craft ACT since late 2014 and, in parallel, an Adjunct with the University of Canberra through the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research in the Faculty of Arts and Design. 

All of these strands come together with my previous involvement in research and policy for creative industries in the vision for the future that is Design Canberra. The promise of Design Canberra was a major reason I was attracted to Craft ACT in the first place.

The thread of design

Looking back, almost 16 years later, it shows how design flows through so much of the arts and culture sector. It is illuminating to see how this thread connects Design Canberra with work I was lucky to be party to over more than a decade, within museums and other cultural institutions, government departments and creative industries.

See main article, 'Designs on the future'

See related article:

Designs on the future – how Australia’s designed city has global plans
‘In many ways design is a central part of the vocabulary of our time and integrally related to so many powerful social and economic forces – creative industries, popular culture, the digital transformation of society. Design is often misunderstood or overlooked and it's universal vocabulary and pervasive nature is not widely understood, especially by government. In a rapidly changing world, there is a constant tussle between the local and the national (not to mention the international). This all comes together in the vision for the future that is Design Canberra, a celebration of all things design, with preparations well underway for a month long festival this year. The ultimate vision of Craft ACT for Canberra is to add another major annual event to Floriade, Enlighten and the Multicultural Festival, filling a gap between them and complementing them all’, Designs on the future – how Australia’s designed city has global plans.

The innovative power of art connects local and global – Craft ACT embracing diversity

As globalism proceeds apace, the counter-balancing world of the local and regional is becoming more important, anchoring us firmly in the places where we reside and create, where culture is made and lived. A set of Canberra exhibitions built around innovation and celebrating the achievements of craft and design connects local creativity and cultural life with the larger international significance of the themes and artists involved.

Like many other Australians who live in smaller towns rather than in our biggest cities, I like to celebrate the power of local culture. The fact that my local town is Canberra merely makes the link between local, regional and national more challenging, complex and perplexing – not to mention fun. Canberra was built as the result of a momentary nation-building frenzy and the power of that vision has never really abated. Still at heart it’s also a bit of a country town, with all that entails.

The result of a cross-disciplinary research project to develop and test a lego-like assembly educational toy to assist Japanese language learning for Australian children. The rectangular pieces are imprinted with images, Japanese words and phonics and click and connect together using colours to help match up the right pieces. The result is a correct construction of a Japanese sentence. Credits: Dr Yuko Kinoshita, Associate Professor

Carlos Montaña-Hoyos and Sam Tomkins. Prototype, 3D print, paper print. 2016. Image credit: Sam Tomkins. 

Dense and diverse works in a small space
A small cluster of exhibitions currently at the Craft ACT Gallery in Civic, Canberra's main city centre, offers a pleasurable and thoughtful mix of viewing. Like most of Craft ACT’s exhibitions, much gets crammed into a relatively small space.

The intriguing world of tiny exhibitions - Craft ACT shows what small organisations can do

Beyond the big blockbusters, across Australia small and smallish arts and cultural organisations are creating a cultural life with our communities - often below the radar - that belies their size. There are many examples - this is just one. Let's just be grateful and not lose it.

We’re all used to the great big blockbuster exhibitions with all their wow and flutter. They are great. What’s really intriguing though is the world of tiny exhibitions, a babbling brook of activity that flows away – often unnoticed – under the tall timbers of the big institutions.

At Craft ACT at the moment you get four of them at once – in one smallish gallery space. That takes some serious curatorial skill and a big range of talent for a curator to draw on. As a member of the Craft ACT Board I get to go to quite a few of our exhibitions but this set of four really entranced me. Like most other small or smallish arts and cultural organisations we have a strong team to produce our exhibitions – exhibitions coordinator, curator, installation team. Unfortunately, as with other similar organisations, they are all usually the same person – so they have to be good at what they do.

Even, found petals, found cloth, embroidery thread, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist

From East Arnhem Land to Canberra 
Before you even reach the gallery, at the top of the stairs, is a small but beautiful display of handwoven bags in ochre colours from the Ramingining community in East Arnhem Land – as far from Canberra as you can get in Australia. Early career artists Marley and Linda Djangirri Malibirr use traditional craft techniques to express stories of Yolngu culture and country. The work, like many in the other exhibitions, is for sale, but don’t think about it for too long – when I was there almost half were already sold.

After the Budget: Government support for small scale arts and culture – here today, gone tomorrow

During the Senate Estimates Hearing on 29 May, Arts Minister Brandis repeatedly stressed that the Government was not cutting any funding that had already been committed. However, from what he said, it seems highly likely that any programs that currently exist that would have had funding rounds in future years will find that there are no longer funds to distribute. Organisations that have funds for the next 12 months, or next few years if they have triennial funding, may find that the programs they have relied on for support no longer exist by the time their current funding ceases.

This is a way of cutting programs without stopping them outright. Instead it allows them to peter out slowly over a number of years, by which time it will be too late to complain.

Ngarukuruwala - Strong Womens' Choir, the sort of local cultural activity that contributes so much to Australia's cultural life

In the arts area this is particularly likely to hit hard because many organisations rely on small amounts of funding from year to year merely to continue their base level of operation and many have been supported this way for many years if not decades. This is particularly true with small local Indigenous cultural organisations. They are then able to use the government funding to attract a broader range of support.