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FORBES ARTS & CULTURE WORKING GROUP: NEWSLETTER NO. 3 - SPRING/SUMMER 2005

INTERNATIONAL BOOKBINDING EXHIBITION FOR FORBES IN 2006

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Exhibition organiser, Sabine Pierard (centre), with Forbes Shire Councillor Graeme Miller and Mezzanine Style's Sue Betland, plus copies of the book of short stories by Paul Wenz now being bound by design bookbinders around the world. Photo courtesy of the Forbes Advocate.

Mezzanine Style, the up-market design shop and cafe in the old Forbes Arcade in Rankin Street will host a unique international exhibition now being organised by Sabine Pierard of Bookbinding Exhibitions Australia. The exhibition, Double Bush Binding, has a strong Forbes theme: the book to be bound features two short stories, in French and English, by local writer and farmer, Paul Wenz, who settled on Nanima Station on the Lachlan in the 1890s with his Australian-born wife Hettie (nee Dunne).

Mezzanine Style's co-proprietor, Sue Betland, with Sabine Pierard (centre), Graeme Miller and Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group convener, Merrill Findlay, in the magnificent but not-quite- finished gallery in which Double Bush Binding will be exhibited in 2006. Photo courtesy of the Forbes Advocate.

The two Wenz short stories, "Charley" and "Jim and Jack", were first published in France in 1910. One has been translated into English by Margaret Whitlam, the other by Maurice Blackman. In this special handbound bilingual edition they will be illustrated with etchings by landscape artist Daniel Pata. The paper they're printed on is handmade by indigenous paper makers at Euraba Paper Company in Boggabilla, a town on the Newell Highway north of Forbes. Copies of the stories and etchings are now being bound by design bookbinders in France, Australia, Britain, Estonia, Japan, America and other countries. The travelling exhibition will be launched in in Sydney March 2006. It will then visit Forbes where Paul Wenz died, and close in Reims, in the Champagne region of France, where the author was born. [MF. Posted 25 November 2005.]

CULTURAL SURVEY COMING TO YOU
Story from the Forbes Advocate, Tuesday, 12 July 2005
"Watch out for the Forbes Arts and Cultural Working Group's survey form in your mailbox asking you 'What makes Forbes special?', and what you think can be done to make the shire an even better place to live in ... " Read more >>

PUBLIC CONSULTATION: A TEAM EFFORT
Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group distributed four thousand survey forms in July as part of our community consultation process. Responses to the questions asked on the forms will be incorporated into the cultural plan the Working Group is developing for the Shire.

Forbes Arts and Cultural Working Group member and town librarian, Bronwyn, helps Scott, Geremy and Mitchell fill in survey forms at the Library, 11 July 2005. Photo courtesy the Forbes Advocate, with thanks.

TEAM EFFORT
The design and distribution of the survey forms was a real team effort. The process was driven by Marg Willmott's determination that everyone in the Shire should have an opportunity to contribute their ideas to our cultural plan. Sian Dyce, Jo Erskine and Kylie Grayson wrote and designed the form in consultation with other Working Group members. Forbes Shire Council sponsored the printing and distribution of it. Court Press did the printing. The Mason family distributed the forms to all households in town, as part of their weekly letterbox round; and Australia Post delivered them to rural residents on their regular country mail runs. Bill Stevenson, from the Christian Life Centre, delivered bulk copies to churches and promoted the survey in his regular community radio broadcasts. Kylie Grayson took charge of the media and promotion. Her press release to the Forbes Advocate was published in full.

Young Forbes musician Emma C. gets some advice from a Sydney Youth Ochestra percussionist in the Forbes Town Hall. Photo by Renee Orr, courtesy of the Forbes Advocate. More photos below.

Sue-anne Nixon constructed more than twenty collection boxes and delivered them to supermarkets, schools and other places where people congregate within the Shire; and after the forms were printed she and her learner-driver sons delivered hundreds of them to businesses and community groups, as did other members of the Working Group. Merrill Findlay wrote letters to most of the service organisations in town asking them to encourage members to fill in the forms at their next meetings, while other Working Group members, including Elaine Imrie, personally urged people to fill them in at meetings and other events they attended. Elaine suggested people to add a Civic Centre to their wish-lists for Forbes, and discussed the many community amenities which could be incorporated into such a Centre, such as comfortable meeting rooms and modern performance and exhibition spaces. Elaine is equally keen that people should think of ways of utilising the lake and river more for cultural events.

Our thanks to everyone who has already filled in a form and returned it to one of Sue-anne's collection boxes. And to those of you who have not yet filled one in and returned it -- please do so soon. Or download the survey (pdf version) from this web site and return it to the Working Group by email to [email protected].

GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE SHIRE'S YOUNG MUSICIANS
Forbes Advocate, Thursday, 14 July 2005
Youthful conductor, Michael Thrift, led a group of some 80 musicians Sydney Youth Orchestra and from Forbes in a play-along in Forbes Town Hall. Photo by Renee Orr, courtesy of the Forbes Advocate. More photos below.

KYLIE GRAYSON: the Working Group’s first formally elected officer bearer
Kylie Grayson, a recent returnee to Forbes, was unanimously elected the Arts & Culture Working Group's first secretary, public relations officer and media consultant at the 4 July 2005 meeting.

The election of Kylie to this position adds a new level of professionalism to our volunteer Working Group, along with some very valuable skills. Welcome aboard, Kylie, and thank you. (Merrill Findlay reluctantly remains the convener and honorary newsletter writer/editor!)

Kylie tells her own story

STORIES THAT CHANGE THE FUTURE
the future is nothing more than an idea in the present …
Scott Rankin, Australian novelist

The arts, in all their manifestations, help us to think about the future in new ways by exposing us to new stories about how the world could be. Thinking about the future in new and creative ways is especially important in times such as these, when rural communities are facing so many social, economic and ecological challenges associated with our future sustainability.

“The future is nothing more than an idea in the present, which we invent, detail and mull over," Scott Rankin writes in his preface to Heartwork: great arts stories from regional Australia (Regional Arts Australia, 2004). "These ideas come to us packaged in story that we unwrap, in a discussion of ideas we call culture.”

Forbes's smallest, trumpeter, Little Thomas Z, was almost hidden on stage when he played with the SYO at Forbes Town Hall in July. What does the future hold for Little Thom and others of his generation?
Photo by Renee Orr, courtesy of the Forbes Advocate.

For Scott Rankin the arts are fundamental to this "discussion of ideas we call culture", because they "act as a canary in the coalmine, the arts allow for the maverick vision, the arts ignore committee, the arts don’t ‘stay on the message’; all vital for keeping the ‘discussion of the future’ inclusive.”

Heartwork: Great arts stories from regional Australia is a very user-friendly book about how art can transform regional communities. One of the many works of art it describes is The A-Maze-ing Labyrinth constructed for Malacoota's Arts Festival of the Southern Ocean, by Lake Tyers artist, Catherine Larkins, with the help of around 250 local volunteers and the support of 20 local organisations.

This astonishing artwork consists of a series of interconnected hexagons and soaring ‘onion domes’ that are made from bamboo poles, metal brackets, and hundreds of metres of brightly coloured nylon ‘skin’. On completion the hexagons became 18 magical ‘rooms’ which were used as gallery and performance spaces for the duration of the festival.

According to one visitor to Mallacoota, the A-Maze-ing Labyrinth was “A truly wondrous and amazing entwining of many, many individuals' creativity and love ... I am privileged to have been through it.”

‘Locals stepped forward in droves to construct, assemble and embellish The A-Maze-ing Labyrinth,’ writes Catherine Murphy in Heartwork: Great arts stories from regional Australia. ‘A Swiss silver and goldsmith scaled-up the dome pattern from models to actual dimensions, working with a local welder. Patchworkers configured and sewed the intricate designs covering the six panels of each dome. Kite makers advised on the rip-stop nylon material. A retired upholsterer sewed up the sleeves in his backyard shed, while also transferring skills in cutting, measuring and constructing to his assistants. Fishermen and others provided advice about fine stainless steel cabling to counteract wind and stress factors. The State Emergency Services (SES) and a local farmer helped to install the structure on the local oval.

"The finished structure was lavishly decorated with highly coloured patchwork designs with eclectic inspiration drawn from Middle Eastern, Russian and Indian aesthetics," Catherine Murphy said. "Locals compared it to a beehive, a sophisticated patchworker’s block and a Star of David." At the end of the festival The A-Maze-ing Labyrinth was demounted and put away for next yearl.

For more inspiring arts stories from Heartwork visit Forbes Library, or download the book in pdf format from Regional Arts Australia. Or wait for the next Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group’s newsletter when we'll feature another transformative arts happening.

Sydney Youth Orchestra stretching the Forbes Town Hall. Photo by Renee Orr, courtesy of the Forbes Advocate.

INSPIRE - Visions for invigorating communities and cultural industries. A conference on Future Mapping, Skills Development & Critical Debate, Sydney, 2 - 3 September 2005, hosted by Regional Arts NSW, Community Cultural Development NSW, and Museums and Galleries NSW. For local government councillors, planners and policy developers, artsworkers, community leaders, and anyone else who's interested in new ways of thinking about the future. More >>

FESTIVAL-ISING FORBES
Funds are now available through Festivals Australia to help rural communities like Forbes produce new and exciting creative events to enliven their annual festivals. [See David Scobie's proposal for the Ben Hall Myths and Legends festival.]

Festivals Australia’s Regional Residencies program provides funding for communities to employ professional playwrights, composers, theatre directors, muralists or circus performers, for example, to work with locals to transform their community stories into spectaculars with casts of hundreds, even thousands.

Such funding could enable Forbes' choirs, musicians, dancers, creative writers, artists and aspiring actors to work with a professional composer and director, for example, to produce a mega-multimedia song and dance performance about the life and times of local bushranger, Ben Hall, to be performed in the streets of Forbes, on the balconies of the local pubs, in the historic Court House, and across the rural landscape on which Ben Hall lived and died.

Imagine the whole Shire singing The Streets of Forbes, the song that put our town on the cultural map of Australia? But who would play Ben Hall and his wife Brigit? Who would play the other members of Hall's gang? And what about Sub-Inspector James Davidson and his cops, and the ‘black trackers’ Billy Dargin and Charley? Who’d design and sew the costumes; who’d do the lighting, the sound and special effects? Who’d create and decorate the lanterns to illuminate the nightly processions? Who’d invent the other magical necessities to make this event even more unforgettable? And who’d provide the horses, the coaches, and the gold?

Applications for funding to Festivals Australia’s Regional Residencies program close at the end of September. Anyone interested?

WHAT HAVE OTHER COMMUNITIES DONE WITH FESTIVALS AUSTRALIA FUNDING?
Hundreds of communities around Australia have already told their own stories in extraordinary ways with financial support from Festivals Australia.

Successful applicants in 2004 included Naracoorte , a small South Australian town, Midland on the outskirts of Perth, Sydney’s northern beaches, and Mandurah in Western Australia.

Forbes violinist Celia P. and flautist Michaela L. concentrate on their parts during their performance with the Sydney Youth Orchestra in July.
Photo by Renee Orr, courtesy of the Forbes Advocate.

Naracoorte's Food and wine festival
Narracoorte annual Taste of the Limestone Coast festival is promoted as "a cultural extravaganza of food, wine, music and the arts". Each year the festival attracts thousands of people to the region to experience local wines and gourmet food, as well as a strong cultural program. The theme chosen for the 2004 festival was Polynesian Magic. With Festivals Australia funding the town was able to host a troupe of Polynesian performers to conduct workshops with young people and develop a "vibrant exhibition of dance, story and song". This year the festival theme is The Flavours of Europe, featuring Greece, Italy and Germany. Locals expect thousands of visitors to flock to their town for their festival.

Midland's contemporary arts festival
Midland, east of Perth, holds an annual Urban Edge Festival featuring ‘an integrated mix of innovative performance, sound, visual arts, comedy and communication workshops by WA artists’. Funding from Festivals Australia enabled arts group ARTRAGE to conduct video animation workshops with 500 young people. A gala screening of the young video artists’ animations was held at the local town hall and the faces of all the workshop participants were projected onto giant silver bubbles around the CBD.

Reconciliation festival on Sydney's northern beaches
Each year people living along Sydney’s northern beaches celebrate indigenous culture and heritage with the Guringai Festival. In 2004 northern beaches councils received funding for a project called Whale Songlines which was based on a 'contemporary dreaming story' by indigenous writer, Susan Moylon Coombs. Festival artists worked with over 800 local youngsters through the schools, dances groups and community organisations to choreograph and perform new dances to a specially commissioned musical score, and create giant puppets and lanterns for the festival performances.

The Guringai Festival promotes reconciliation and educates locals about indigenous heritage. People involved with Whale Songlines claimed that by ‘harnessing the history of the Aboriginal people of the area and their relationship with whale migration' they were nurturing a stronger sense of place and connecting people with both the whale migrations and the natural environment.

A festival to stretch your imagination
Mandurah, a geographically isolated town in WA, holds a an annual festival 'to build community connections and energy through arts, as well as stretch people’s expectations and experience of the arts.' In 2004, with the support of Festivals Australia, locals employed a circus company to spend 8 weeks in the region teaching circus skills, such as fire twirling, uni-cycling, costume design and drumming. The ‘Stilts ‘n’ Stunts’ workshops were held in the local youth centre opposite the football oval, and on at least one occasion the young workshoppers gleefully entertained the football crowd during half time with their new circus skills. The grand finale of the Stretch Festival 2004 was a performance and masked parade in which hundreds of young people strutted their ‘stilts ‘n’ stunts’ stuff through the streets of Mandurah.

LOCAL LAD GETS FESTIVALS AUSTRALIA FUNDING - BUT NOT FOR FORBES
Local lad Rob Willis has worked on projects funded by Festivals Australia in Baradine and Kempsey, but his home town Forbes hasn't invited him to help tell our local stories in mega-festival-format ... or not yet!

Alectown violinist Sasannah T. lines up with Sydney Youth Orchestra performers in the Forbes Town Hall in July.
Photo by Renee Orr, courtesy of the Forbes Advocate.

Rob Willis worked with Baradine people on their Baradine and Beyond celebration of the Pilliga in 2003, and in 2005, with Kempsey people on the The Road From Nulla Nulla project, which was the highlight of the National Folk Festival in April this year.

The Road From Nulla Nulla was based on oral history research Rob Willis did at Slim Dusty's birthplace, Nulla Nulla, on the Macleay River near Kempsey, for the National Library of Australia. [Kempsey is now building a Slim Dusty Centre to honour their local hero.] The project was conceived to "produce a linked workshop, dance and concert presentation on the music and dance traditions that led to the early development of Australian country music," according to a Festivals Australia blurb. The production also acknowledged the traditional owners, the Dunghutti people, for whom Nulla Nulla has special significance. Total Festivals Australia funding for The Road From Nulla Nulla project was $8,670.

Other recipients of Festivals Australia funding in 2005 were ...

Albury Wodonga Aboriginal Corporation for Ngan Girra Biggest Didjeridoo Gathering at the Girra Festival - Tenth Year Anniversary in Albury ($14,000);
Bland Shire Council for KneeHIGH Puppeteer Workshops & Carnival appearance at the West Wyalong Christmas Carnival 2005 ($19,700);
Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival for Bluegrass Parkway Workshops at the Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival in Dorrigo ($5,450);
Electrofringe for Australia….where? at Electrofringe in Newcastle ($10,000);
Global Carnivals Australia for The Voice of Bamboo— A Performance Souk at the Bellingen Global Carnival in Bellingen ($45, 619);
Inverell Cultural and Arts Council for Family Portraits—Artists-in-residence Workshops at the Tom Roberts Festival in Inverell ($15,000);
Live Prawn Productions Inc for Light the Night at Surfing the Coldstream in Yamba ($14,000);
Mungindi Music Festival for The Land Sings—the Land Swings Concert at the Mungindi Music Festival in Mungindi ($12,000).
Northern Rivers Writers' Centre for Youthful Words at the Byron Bay Writers Festival ( $11,000);
West Dapto Community Association for Animated Elements of Horsley at the Horsley Country Fair in Dapto ($4,300);
Southside Festival for the Southside Festival Fire Event at the Southside Festival in Port Kembla ($25,150);
The Fatherhood Project for The Fatherhood Music Event at the Fatherhood Festival in Bangalow ($14,900).
Tweed Shire Council for the Lights of the Harbour at the Tweed River Festival in Murwillumbah ($15,120).

But when will we see Forbes Shire Council or other local organisations on such a list?

DOWNLOAD the Festivals Australia application forms:
Regional Residencies program (closing date 30 Sepetember2005)
General grant application (closing dates 15 February 2006 and 15 July 2006)

The content of this newsletter was produced by Forbes Arts & Culture Working Group convener Merrill Findlay and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or aspirations of other Working Group members.