Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group

YOUR INVITATION TO THE NEXT MEETING
of the Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group

FACWG meets four times a year at the Forbes Library and networks with other groups in the intervening months. For more information please contact FACWG co-ordinator Jane Bennie.

The Working Group's Cultural Framework and Action Plan will be presented to Forbes Shire Council in July 2007.

NEW! WRITING FICTIONS, NON-FICTIONS, MEMOIRS AND FAMILY HISTORIES
Writers Workshops: The NSW Government’s Country Arts support Program (CASP) has awarded Forbes Arts and Culture Working Group a grant for a series of intensive community workshops for aspiring writers to be held at the Forbes Youth and Community Centre on Sunday 24 June and Sunday 22 July 2007. More >>

Writing workshop flier with booking details [pdf file 75kb]
Writing Workshop poster [pdf 36 kb] Posted 2 May 2007.

COMMUNITY WRITERS UNITE!!!
Aspiring writers in the Forbes Shire have established their own Writers Group and have nominated the historic Vandenberg Hotel as their regular meeting place. The Writing Group was formed at a special meeting of the Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group to provide support, encouragement and resources to local writers. Its second meeting will be held at in a back room of the old pub from 5.30 on Monday 1 May, 2007, and all local writers are warmly invited. For more information, please contact Mark Bennie at Waroo, or email the Working Group. Posted 1 May 2007.

FORBES HARMONY MURAL
A big bright mural by local young people will soon adorn the exterior wall of the Forbes Youth and Community Centre.

Final touches to the Forbes Harmony Mural, 2007. Photo by Jane Bennie. Youth and Community Centre Coordinator, Alison Aldritch, oversees the completion of the Forbes Harmony Mural. Photo by Jane Bennie.

The mural celebrates Harmony Week 2007 and depicts the sharing of water between different sections of our community, including farmers and townsfolk. It was designed and painted by the young people with support from artist Roger Bennie. Posted 1 May 2007.

FRANK MOORHOUSE TO OPEN EXHIBITION
One of Australia's most acclaimed contemporary authors, Frank Moorhouse, will open Double Bush Binding, an international travelling exhibition of hand-crafted books featuring two short stories by 'France's Henry Lawson', the Franco-Australian writer Paul Wenz, on Saturday 12 August 2006 at Mezzanine Gallery in Forbes. More >>(press release pdf 16kb). More >> (pdf flier 58kb). More below.

CELEBRATE FORBES' FRENCH HERITAGE
Forbes Arts Culture Working Group and Bookbinding Exhibitions Australia and Mezzanine Style invite you to celebrate Forbes' French heritage and the literary achievements of local writer Paul Wenz at a French Breakfast on Sunday 13 August, Country Bakehouse in Templar Street, 9.30 am. French pastries and readings of Wenz's work in both French and English with Frank Moorhouse, Sabine Pierard from Bookbinding Exhibitions Australia and Merrill Findlay.

DOUBLE BUSH BINDING EXHIBITION
Posted 9 March 2006. See press release.
Double Bush Binding, an international travelling exhibition of designer bindings of two short stories by French-Australian writer Paul Wenz (1869-1939), will open at Mezzanine Style in Forbes at 5pm on Saturday 12 August, 2006.

Bookbinding Exhibitions Australia's founder, Sabine Pierard (centre), with Forbes Shire Councillor Graeme Miller and Sue Betland, co-proprietor of Mezzanine Style, the Forbes venue for the Double Bush Binding exhibiton in August 2006. Photo courtesy of the Forbes Advocate

Double Bush Binding is a project of Bookbinding Exhibitions Australia Inc. It will show in Forbes for three weeks from 12 August 2006 before travelling to Reims in France, where Paul Wenz was born. The exhibition opened at Sydney's Depot Gallery in Danks Street, Waterloo, in March, 2006, and has since travelled to Japan. Upon closing in Forbes it will travel to Reims where Paul Wenz was born.

Designer bookbinders from Australia, France, Japan, Belgium, Britain, New Zealand, Estonia, Sweden and USA have each bound two of Wenz's short stories printed on hand-made cotton paper for this unique exhibition. The stories by Paul Wenz were first published in France in 1905 and have been translated into English by Margaret Whitlam AO, and Sydney academic, Maurice Blackman. The stories are illustrated by artists Daniel Pata, Rew Hanks and Michael Kempson.

One volume of the special designer-bound edition of the Wenz stories has been purchased by Forbes Shire Council through the Heritage Committee and will return to Forbes as a valuable addition to the Wenz Collection after being exhibited in Reims, France.

Download the exhibition brochure [pdf 1,494 KB] and the poster [pdf 929 KB] for this latest project by Bookbinding Exhibitions Australia.

NEW: WENZ HERITAGE ASSESSMENT
The Heritage Significance Assessment of the Forbes Wenz Collection by historian Stephen Gapps for Forbes Shire Council is no online. This Research was funded by a Community Heritage Grant from the National Library of Australia. more >>

SMALL VICTORY FOR THE WORKING GROUP
Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group's lobbying efforts to inspire Forbes Shire Council to renew its membership of Arts OutWest have been successful. The Shire Council has resolved to pay its annual subscription to the regional arts support organisation to ensure that local artists, craftspeople and all those who engage in creative activities in the shire are not disadvantage. Thank you Forbes Shire Councillors.

ARTS OUTWEST MEETINGS IN FORBES
By Jane Bennie. Posted 24 April, 2006
Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group hosted a series of community meetings and a luncheon with Hannah Semler, Executive Officer of Arts OutWest, on Thursday 20 April, to discuss the cultural development of Forbes Shire.

Hannah Semler from Arts OutWest (left) with Lachlan Gallery President, Elaine Imrie, Forbes, 20 April, 2006. Photo by Jane Bennie.

The first stop was the Lachlan Street Gallery for a meeting with President Elaiine Imrie and members of the gallery society. This was followed by a very successful luncheon meeting at Mezzanine Style, the café and gallery in the historic Forbes Arcade, with representatives of other community organisations.

Hannah presented an overview of the many benefits Arts OutWest could offer local organistions and arts practitioners, including support in applying for grants and opportunities to learn from other shires. A number of groups, such as Corinella School, Forbes Town Band and CentreCare, have already received arts grants, and gave their own positive feedback about the importance of this kind of support for regional communities.

The lunch time gathering was a great opportunity for networking between community groups and for much fruitful cross-pollination of ideas. The many proposals that were bounced around the table were both inspiring and practical. CentreCare representatives asked for help from local artists for their latest project, for example, and several other groups interested in doing cultural projects at Lake Forbes have decided to explore how they might work together to achieve a mutual goal. Forbes Historical Museum representatives also expressed an interest in being involved in the forthcoming Paul Wenz booking exhibition to be held at Mezzanine gallery in August.

Networking at the Working Group's luncheon at Mezzanine, 20 April, 2006. Photo by Jane Bennie.

Janine Whitfield, one of the co-proprietors of Mezzanine, will discuss plans for her gallery, and how it can support the work of local and visiting artists, at the next meeting of the Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group on Wednesday 3 May at 5.30 pm. Another topic on the agenda will be the proposed Register of Local Artists and Craftpersons the Working Group has already committed itself to as a next step in the implementation of our community cultural development Action Plan.

NEW EXECUTIVE FOR THE FORBES WORKING GROUP
By Merrill Findlay. Posted 9 March 2006.
Jane Bennie, a printmaker and farmer from Waroo, was unanimously elected the new coordinator/convener of Forbes Arts and Culture Working Group at its March 2006 meeting. Jane replaces founding interim convener Merrill Findlay, who will be spending much of 2006 working on a new project in Melbourne.

Art enthusiast and TAFE teacher Jennifer Purdie was elected Secretary, and local artist Ro Burns was elected liaison person responsible for the Working Group's ongoing consultation with the Wiradjuri community through Yoorana Gunya Family Healing Centre.

The Working Group gratefully acknowledges all the work done by past-secretary Kylie Grayson and Juliet Hodder in moving things along in 2005. Thankyou Kylie and Juliet.

INTRODUCING JANE BENNIE: FACWG'S NEW COORDINATOR
Jane Bennie, the first formally elected convener/coordinator of the Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group, is looking forward to working with locals to achieve community goals, she says.

Jane Bennie (left) with fellow artists Kathy Ewing and Rosalie Burns in the Forbes Art Gallery Society's Lachlan Street Gallery. Photo by Merrill Findlay, March 2006.

Jane was born in Nowra on the NSW coast "on an undisclosed date", and lived in England, North America, Canberra and Sydney before returning to Nowra to co-manage a family dairy farm with her husband Mark and raise their four children. The Bennies moved to the Forbes shire in 2001 "to find an easier lifestyle on a mixed farm on the Lachlan River at Warroo."

Jane has always been engaged in community activites and local organisations. In the Shoalhaven Shire she was involved in the Nowra Show Society, East Nowra School Canteen, the Greenwell Point Trees for Farms project, Women In Dairying, Nowra Pottery Group, and Arts Shoalhaven. She was also a host mother for international students. Not surprisingly, given her passion for the arts, one of the first community organisations she became involved with in Forbes was the Lachlan Street Gallery.

Jane Bennie trained as a traditional fineart printmaker at art school but in recent years has concentrated on photography. She began a TAFE course in photographic printmaking in Nowra, but her studies were interrupted by her move out west. She has since re-established her workshop on her farm at Waroo, where she is inspired by the Lachlan River and the landscape around her. "The river brims with reflections of red gums with their fantastic patterns and the colours which are so different from the coast," she says.

Jane gratefully recalls the support she and other arts practitioners received from the Shoalhaven Shire Council's cultural development officer in Nowra and now looks forward to a time when Forbes Shire Council can likewise offer the same level of support to local arts practitioners by appointing a professional cultural development officer, as recommended in the draft Forbes Cultural Plan (2006).

Jane was the runner-up in the recent Forbes Heritage Week art competition. Her work can be seen at the Lachlan Street Art Gallery.

The Forbes U3A Choir at the Apex Caravan Park, December 2005: pianist Marie Snow, and singers Clarrie Mayberry and Lachie Reynolds. Photo by Merrill Findlay.

CRITICAL TIME FOR THE ARTS IN FORBES
Posted 2 March 2006
Community research for the Forbes Cultural Plan has revealed that the arts and cultural industries in the shire are facing a crisis, according to the Forbes Arts and Culture Working Group's "writer-in-residence", Merrill Findlay. more >>

FORMER FORBES ARTIST WINS AWARD
Rachel Ellis, who spent most of her childhood and youth in Forbes, has won the prestigious 2006 Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize worth $15,000. Rachel is the daughter of Barbara Richards, a member of the Forbes Art Gallery, and returns regularly to the shire from Bathurst where she now lives. Her success is an inspiration to other aspiring artists in the region. For more on Rachel's art see the King Street Art Gallery, Sydney.

Lachlan Valley Culture: Young Wiradjuri dancers from the Condobolin/Lake Cargelligo Aboriginal Dance Group at the Lachlan Catchment Management Authority's Showcase for Natural Resource Managers in Forbes on 2 November 2005. Photo by LCMA staff.

Young Wiradjuri dancers from the Condobolin/Lake Cargelligo Aboriginal Dance Group at the Lachlan Catchment Management Authority's Showcase for Natural Resource Managers in Forbes, 2 November 2005. Photo courtesy of the LCMA.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT GOES CULTURAL
The Presidents of the Local Government Association and the Shires Association of NSW and the NSW Minister for the Arts began 2006 with a new Cultural Accord that promises increased support for cultural development in regional NSW.

"Cultural development is about more than promoting paintings and performance," Local Government Association President Cr Genia McCaffery explained. "It is about our communities creating and expressing their identity."

"It's vital that rural and regional communities get the same opportunities to celebrate our local identities and participate in cultural activities," her colleague, Shires Association President Cr Col Sullivan added. "Our regional and rural culture is unique and an asset to our communities.

"We know from recent research that ratepayers have strong regard for the cultural services provided by their councils and I am pleased this Accord will help us to continue down that path."
more from the Local Government and Shires Associations >>

ARTS RESOURCES FOR COUNCILLORS & SHIRE OFFICERS
Public Art Policy and Planning for Local Government more >>
Public art training for local government officers more >>
Public Art Resource Kit from the NSW Local Government and Shires Association

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR REGIONAL ARTS PRACTITIONERS & LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICERS
See the latest from Arts OutWest and from Regional Arts NSW