Connecting arts and culture producers across Queensland

Regional and remote artists and arts enablers are connecting with each other – and with their urban counterparts – thanks to research led by The University of Queensland, in collaboration with ArtsNexus.

Artists and arts companies across Queensland suffered significant losses throughout 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and are only now emerging from the widespread restrictions on public gatherings that derailed many creative productions.

Chief Investigator and UQ researcher Dr Kate Power will be co-locating with ArtsNexus throughout the coming year, facilitating peer-coaching circles for regional and remote artists and arts enablers from Far North Queensland, and connecting arts workers around the state.

“Regional and remote artists are a hugely important part of Australia’s cultural ecosystem, but the lion’s share of public support for arts and culture tends to gravitate towards large cities,” Dr Power said.

“It’s critically important to share the expertise developed by well-funded arts organizations with artists and companies outside urban centres.

“At the same time, most large city-based arts companies need to deepen diversity across their staff and programming, and could learn a lot from collaborating with artists and arts enablers in regional and remote Queensland.”

Funded by the Queensland Government's Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowships (AQIRF), this research will bring artists and arts enablers together across the rural-urban divide, to share knowledge, facilitate collaboration, foster mutual support, and build new creative partnerships.

“The data collected through this project will also improve our understanding of peer-coaching, and its potential value to the arts and culture sector,” Power said.

“Peer-coaching is often used in business and education, but its applicability to the arts and culture sector has not yet been tested.

“Arts and culture often relies on traditional, top-down mentoring – and while there are some excellent mentoring programs in place in Australia, these can be difficult to access.

“By contrast, peer-coaching is a low-cost and potentially high-impact support mechanism that is open to anyone, anywhere.”

This research will generate a free, publicly-available Peer Coaching Guide to support Australian artists and arts enablers.

ArtsNexus is joined in this project by Queensland Ballet, La Boite Theatre, The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), Theatre Network Australia (TNA), and Blakdance.