Creative Citizenship Speakers

Cathy Applegate moved to Darwin from Melbourne in 1982 where she still lives with her husband and three children.

Cathy studied piano and theory to an advanced level while still at school but went on to study medicine. Literature and music have always remained central passions in her life and she has had novels and picture books published both in Australia and America.

Cathy performs regularly in Darwin as a piano accompanist and plays cello in the Darwin Symphony Orchestra (DSO). She has attended several Darwin International Guitar Festivals, participating in composers' workshops where she has been able to learn from many high profile and experienced composers.

Her major musical compositions include The Wetlands Suite for orchestra and narrator, and two musicals: Felicity and the Bunyip and A Gecko’s Tale. These works were premiered by the Charles Darwin University Centre for Youth Music. Other works include Time Pieces for guitars and narrator, a song Before the Monsoon, Fragments of Reflection for flute and guitar, Three Sketches of a Beach for piano and cello and Arafura, a choral work with gamelan. Cathy recently wrote a new Territory version of the story Peter and the Wolf - Pete and the Croc; this was premiered in August by the DSO, narrated by Ted Egan.

Eddie Berg became the Artistic Director of the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank in spring 2005. He is charged with leading the expanded National Film Theatre and creating a new flagship international centre for the moving image in all its forms in London by 2012.

Eddie was formerly the founder and Chief Executive of FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology. He was responsible for conceiving and leading the £11m FACT Centre development, which opened to public and critical acclaim in Liverpool in February 2003, forming a crucial part of Liverpool's successful bid to become European Capital of Culture 2008.

The first purpose-built arts project in the city for more than 60 years FACT is now Britain's leading centre for film, video and new media art. Since FACT's inception in 1988 Eddie has been responsible for commissioning and producing more than 100 projects by UK-based and international artists working in film, video and new media and has curated and organised a wide range of exhibitions, screenings and events across the world. He has extensively lectured and served on juries at film, art and media events and festivals internationally; was part of the curatorial team for the 2002 Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art; was a judge for the 2004 Paul Hamlyn Awards for Artists, was a member of the Alexander Korda Jury for the Best British Film at the 2006 BAFTA’s and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

In 2005 he was awarded the £10,000 ART 05 prize for Outstanding Contribution to the Cultural Life of England’s North West, jointly sponsored by the Arts Council and the BBC.

This presentation is about a remarkable community web-casting project in Liverpool called Tenantspin. It was jointly conceived in 1999 by FACT (the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology and the organisation that I founded and was Director of until 2004) and the Danish artists Superflex, working with the Housing Action Trust, a national social housing organisation which were responsible for transitioning communities from the socially maligned but architecturally ambitious tower-blocks of Liverpool to new forms of social housing.

It’s about what happened when residents of more than 30 tower blocks (most of whom were in their 60’s and 70’s) joined forces to develop the project and in doing so extended and questioned conventional notions of cultural production, community or ‘relational’ art forging a unique cultural voice and identity whose influence and impact now extends across the world.

It’s about cultural, creative and social models like Tenantspin, their specificity and the impossibility of replication in other contexts. It’s about how this project has addressed issues of ageing, democracy, technological and social exclusion, and the privatisation of the public sphere that now pervades every aspect of life in the city as it emerges into a new period of cultural and social renaissance.

It’s about the role of artists in this process and the reframing of their social role. It’s about how the histories and perceptions of Liverpool, both inside and outside of the city have shaped and defined the project. It’s about who now owns the project and what happens when it achieves its objectives. It’s about what might happen next….

David Carment is professor of history at Charles Darwin University. He has published extensively on Australian political history, the history of central Queensland, Northern Territory history, Northern Territory politics and cultural heritage management in the Northern Territory.

Active in community and professional activities, David is a former President of the Australian Historical Association, the Historical Society of the Northern Territory and the National Trust of Australia (Northern Territory). He is a member of the Order of Australia, a fellow of the Australian College of Educators and a fellow of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies.

During high school, Barbara Clifford was involved in specialist theatre art and worked for a regional television station as a presenter. She later achieved a certificate in video production techniques (North Metropolitan TAFE, Collingwood, Victoria) and a degree in film and television at the Victorian College of the Arts, School of Film and Television.

Barbara's films and scripts have won numerous awards and in 1996 she was invited to attend the Bilbao International Film Festival in Spain as a guest contestant. In addition to her filmmaking career she has also been involved in the organisation of cultural festivals, events and theatre productions.

Once moving to Alice Springs in May 1999, Barbara worked freelance as a producer and location/production manager on various international and multi-cultural productions. She has also worked in a training/supervisory capacity sharing her skills in Aboriginal community organisation.

Barbara is currently employed at CAAMA Productions as the department's production manager and series producer for the Nganampa Anwernekenhe series.

English born and trained violinist Jane Coleman fell in love with ‘The Red Centre’ while visiting in 1998 to work with The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in their performances of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. She was then working as a professional violinist and teacher in Switzerland, and prior to this, in the UK where she has been a member of The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and undertaken a variety of freelance work in Edinburgh and London.

With the support of the Centre for Youth Music in Darwin, the Alice Springs Strings Group and Alice Springs Steiner School, Jane immigrated to Australia in February 2003 and set up a permanent string teaching program in Alice Springs. The program teaches over 100 young violinists, violists and cellists, who take lessons and play in junior string orchestras and violin ensembles. In January 2006 Jane was awarded with a Golden Fiddle Award for her contribution to string teaching in Alice Springs.

With degrees in Zoology from Oxford and Monash universities and numerous international awards for his films, photography and writing, David Curl has successfully forged a creative career combining science and the arts.

Based in the Northern Territory for 20 years, largely in aboriginal-owned national parks, David’s media company, David Curl Pty Ltd, is one of the Territory’s leading exporters—creating Territory-made films and other media that reach over 60 countries and an audience of over 100 million. His films The Call of Kakadu and Silhouettes of the Desert have become two of the most successful and critically-acclaimed Australian films.

As NT President of the Australian Cinematographers Society, the largest film-making association represented in the Territory, Board Member of the prestigious Australian Screen Directors Association, and creator of Alice Springs’ Cinema in the River, David has played a leading role in the development of the Territory’s film and television industry.

The film and television industry (and, more broadly, the ‘creative media’) is a colossus within the creative sector—a multi-billion dollar sector of the world economy. Yet, with its size and diversity come issues that few governments have been successful at addressing.

This industry plays an increasing role in almost every aspect of our lives and our economy: it records our history and preserves our cultures; it provides education for our children in the most critical years of their lives, before they’ve even reached our education system; and it creates the media upon which our tourism industry relies. This extraordinary range of roles does not fit well with traditional government models and, in Australia, this industry has been treated more as a cultural hobby, than the economic and cultural force that it truly is.

This paper explores the role of government and private sector in the creative media; it looks at the economic as well as cultural returns from supporting creative citizens in this sector of the economy; and it looks at a future where the products of the creative sector—patents, intellectual and cultural property etc.—rather than those of traditional industries, are recognized as one of the most important currencies of the 21st century.

Simone de Haan is one of Australia’s leading performers, music educators and advocates of contemporary music making. He has held positions as director and professor at the Tasmanian Conservatorium, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University and the Australian National University School of Music.

As soloist, member of the Australia Contemporary Music Ensemble and co-founder of Flederman and the Pipeline Contemporary Music Project, Simone has commissioned over 100 works by Australian composers and recorded several CD’s. His performance experience ranges from principal positions with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Opera Orchestra, to appearances as soloist, master teacher, chamber musician, performer/composer, improviser and conductor in North America, Europe, Asia and throughout Australia. He has been a member of the Maarten Altena Ensemble in Holland and Ensemble Modern in Germany.

Simone has conducted ensembles ranging from the Hong Kong Academy Wind Ensemble, Western Australian Symphony Orchestra Brass Ensemble and Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra, to the ‘The World’s Greatest Band’ in Charters Towers. In recent years he has focused on artistic direction and community project development, including roles as Inaugural Artistic Director of the International New Music Tasmania Festival, Queensland Biennial Festival of Music and Jammin…making music together, a major collaborative event on South Bank in Brisbane.

Simone has collaborated on creative and sustainable cultural development projects with musicians and music education institutions, ranging from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Lyon Conservatoire, to Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. He performs as guest conductor with the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and is brass consultant for the Northern Territory Education Department Music School. Simone is currently Director of Creative Programs at Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon, where he is responsible for education, artist-in-residence and public programs.

Collaborative practice and improvisation are central elements in today’s music making. As a result, the specialised roles of composer, performer and listener, have for the most part, become blurred and quite frequently, irrelevant. Through the creation of shared performance rituals between those participating—and designed for a specific time/s or place/s—the nature of the musical work itself may also be radically altered. This can lead to resultant outcomes and unexpected connections, improvised in the moment, in a way that could not have been planned.

Although large scale performances are generally perceived by the general public as the iconic ideal of the ultimate experience, it is the CD or DVD, a private music listened to in one’s own lounge room, that reaches more people. In contrast, however, the scope exists for far more significant outcomes to unfold from live performances that have a greater impact on the community as a whole.

To further explore these concepts, festival development, community project development and the exploration of interdisciplinary modes of practice will be examined as interrelated aspects in the creation of a fluid, yet ‘sounding music’ of engagement. By leaving room open in the performance context for improvisation, spontaneity, engagement and participation, a redefinition of community arts practice as making music together, becomes possible. An action of this type has the potential to lead to a changing notion of artistic practice, grounded in the belief that each of us, as creative individuals, can discover our own personal artistry of meaning and in so doing, reach out and forge dynamic relationships with each other.

Simon Japanangardi Fisher is a senior Warlpiri man from Yuendumu. He is the Cultural Liaison Officer for Pintubi, Anmatjerre, Warlpiri Media and Communications, formerly known as Warlpiri Media Association.

Simon has a Masters in Anthropology gained from the Northern Territory University, now Charles Darwin University. His academic research is in Aboriginal land and water rights as well as in human rights. Simon continues to support academic research in these areas through supervision of PhD students.

Simon is responsible for the custodianship of the Warlpiri Media Archive. The Archive has been in existence since 1982 and represents the most significant media resource on Warlpiri language and culture. It is highly regarded by the community as well as by academic researchers.

Simon has a strong interest in the use of technology for cultural and language maintenance.

Brian Fitzgerald is a well-known intellectual property and information technology lawyer. He has published articles on law and the internet in Australia, the United States, Europe, Nepal, India, Canada and Japan and his latest (co-authored) books are Cyberlaw: Cases and Materials on the Internet, Digital Intellectual Property and E Commerce (2002); Jurisdiction and the Internet (2004); Intellectual Property in Principle (2004).

Over the past five years Brian has delivered seminars on information technology and intellectual property law in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA, Nepal, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Norway and the Netherlands. In October 1999 Brian delivered the Seventh Annual Tenzer Lecture—Software as discourse: The power of intellectual property in digital architecture—at Cardozo Law School in New York. 

Through the first half of 2001 Brian was a visiting professor at Santa Clara University Law School in Silicon Valley in the USA. In January 2003 he delivered lectures in India and Nepal and in February 2003 was invited as part of a distinguished panel of three to debate the theoretical underpinning of intellectual property law at University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. During 2005 Brian presented talks in Germany, India and China and was a visiting professor in the Oxford University Internet Institute’s summer doctoral program in Beijing in July 2005.

He is also a chief investigator and program leader for law in the newly awarded ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. Brian is also project leader for the DEST-funded Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) law project, looking at legal protocols for open access to the Australian research sector. His current projects include work on intellectual property issues across the areas of copyright and the creative industries in China, open content licensing and the creative commons, free and open source software, research use of patents, science commons, e-research, licensing of digital entertainment and anti-circumvention law. 

Brian is a project leader for Creative Commons in Australia. From 1998-2002 Brian was head of the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University in New South Wales, and in January 2002 was appointed as head of the School of Law at QUT in Brisbane.

The internet and associated digital technologies provide us with an enormous potential to access and build information and knowledge networks. Information and knowledge can be communicated in an instant across the globe, cheaply and with good quality, by even the most basic internet user.

However copyright law, which takes definition from international Conventions and is similar in most countries, provides that you cannot reproduce or communicate copyright material (literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, films and sound recordings) without the permission of the copyright owner, subject to limited exceptions. Therefore, while the technology has the capacity, the legal restrictions on the reuse of copyright material hamper its negotiability in the digital environment.

Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University and a number of his colleagues, frustrated by the fact that technology offered so much but that negotiability of copyright material in law was so cumbersome, came up with the idea of the Creative Commons. Lessig’s vision was for a space in the internet world where people could share and reuse copyright material without fear of being sued—a creative commons.

This presentation will explain the development of the Creative Commons project both in Australia and overseas and how it might be utilised by communities throughout the country.

Donal Fitzpatrick has recently joined Charles Darwin University’s School of Creative Arts and Humanities as Head of School.

The School of Creative Arts and Humanities welcomes Donal from New Zealand where he was the Head of School of Fine Arts with the College of Creative Arts, Massey University.

Previously Donal was the director of the Graduate Cinema Programme until 2005.

Donal has exhibited his paintings and drawings in numerous exhibitions, most recently at the Peter Rae Gallery, Dunedin in 2005.

For the last five years Malcolm Gillies has been the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the Australian National University. On 1 October he becomes the ANU’s Vice-President (Development), based for the next two years at Yale University.

A musician and linguist by training, Malcolm holds doctorates from the universities of London and Melbourne. During 1998-2001 he was President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and in 2004-6 inaugural President of the Council for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

Malcolm’s latest book is Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger (OUP), co-edited with David Pear and Mark Carroll. During June he curated a fourteen-concert Bartok Festival at Wigmore Hall London.

The arts are an excellent way of fostering a sense of identity within communities. Arts-funding bodies have community arts policies and funding schemes to encourage community-based artists. These schemes, however, lack the glamour, and funding levels, associated with major performing arts companies or major galleries.

In this paper Gillies ponders the twenty-first century’s needs for community arts. Are our communities any longer primarily geographical in nature? Which arts are most appropriate, and presented by whom? How is the sense of identity expressed, and its ‘effectiveness’ evaluated?

Drawing on some aspects of the Australia Council’s Community Partnerships Scoping Study, as well as comparable developments in Britain, New Zealand and South Africa, Gillies looks at the political positioning of arts in communities schemes and the kinds of identities expected to result from such initiatives.

John Hartley, Federation Fellow, is research director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology. He is a distinguished professor of QUT and adjunct professor of the Australian National University. He was foundation dean of the Creative Industries Faculty (QUT) and previously head of the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.

John is the author of 15 books, translated into a dozen languages, including Creative Industries (ed., Blackwell 2005), A Short History of Cultural Studies (Sage 2003), The Indigenous Public Sphere (W. A. McKee, Oxford 2000), Uses of Television (Routledge 1999) and Popular Reality (Arnold 1996). He is editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies (Sage).

John serves on ministerial advisory bodies for educational renewal (Queensland) and international education (federal). He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and recipient of the Centenary Medal.

Creative industries have been identified as enterprises with creative outputs—publishing, media, software, the arts. More recently the idea has been extended to creative inputs; creative design and practice from cars to tourism. But the idea can be extended even further, beyond expert processes and traditional business models, to include consumer-generated content and user-led innovation.

Now everyone is potentially part of the innovation system. Digital technologies allow individuals to create and circulate their own ideas, images and stories. The creative citizen is already active in the blogosphere, on MySpace and YouTube, and via initiatives like Digital Storytelling. The big challenge now is how to combine these different uses of creativity. Is it possible to bring together consumer entertainment with business innovation and civic engagement? What is the role of creative experts and artists in an open innovation system?

David Headon is cultural adviser to the National Capital Authority and director of the Centre for Australian Cultural Studies (Canberra). He taught in the School of Language, Literature and Communication, UNSW (Australian Defence Force Academy) from 1986 to 2003. For many years he has been a regular commentator on cultural issues on ABC radio (regional and national).

David's publications include: North of the Ten Commandments - a Collection of Northern Territory Literature (1991), Crown or Country - The Traditions of Australian Republicanism (1994), The Abundant Culture - Meaning and Significance in Everyday Australia (1995), Our First Republicans: Selected Writings of John Dunmore Lang, Charles Harpur and Daniel Henry Deniehy 1840–60 (1998), Makers of Miracles, the Cast of the Federation Story (2000), Manning Clark’s ‘The Ideal of Alexis de Tocqueville’ (2000), The Best Ever Australian Sports Writing - a 200-Year Collection (2001), and The Symbolic Role of the National Capital (2003). He was project co-ordinator, co-writer and editor of the national award-winning planning study of Canberra, The Griffin Legacy (2004).

This paper will use, as its set of case studies, six of Australia's best known writer/activists: Patrick White, Judith Wright, Dorothy Green, Donald Horne, Kevin Gilbert and Bruce Dawe. All were born in the World War I/Depression era (ranging from White in 1912 to Dawe in 1934) and all had a sense of social responsibility as a prerequisite to their art. Indeed, they either maintained a combative stance throughout their writing lives, or actually became even more politically radical in later life.

They variously re-defined the courage, resilience, wisdom and vision needed from the truly creative citizen in challenging times. Above all, all six lived into the 1990s and beyond to act as potential role models for a post-modern, post-9/11 world. At a time of well-documented social disengagement, this paper will draw lessons from these major Australian cultural figures, using as a sounding board the best of the creative citizenship initiatives generated by Donald Horne in the early 1990s. For the time being at least, such initiatives—and such role models—have been lost in a community apparently pre-occupied with terror, taxes and reality television.

Andrea Hull AO has been the Director of the Victorian College of the Arts, affiliated with the University of Melbourne since 1995. The VCA has 1000 students in six tertiary schools, a secondary school for gifted music and dance students and an open-/non-award program for over 500 people.

Prior to the VCA she was the Chief Executive of the Western Australian Department for the Arts, a department including museums, libraries, galleries, film, arts and cultural capital works and during which she pioneered the concept of putting the arts onto a state-wide economic and social agenda. Prior to this Andrea held three directorial positions at the Australia Council; Director of Strategic Development, Director of Policy and Planning; and Director of the Community Arts Board. During these years she initiated cultural policy directions including community cultural development, the creative city program, women and arts program, arts and education programs, and the program entitled Creative Australia.

She has undertaken consultancies on cultural policy, cultural tourism, and tertiary arts education for the governments of New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai and been a keynote speaker at an extensive array of international and national conferences.

In 2003 she was awarded the Order of Australia for services to the arts, arts education and cultural policy. In 2004 she was awarded The Achievers Award in Creativity and Innovation by The Committee for Melbourne.

The last 100 years of citizenship has been focussed on the empowerment of the citizen. The political power of the citizen in a country such as Australia is now well entrenched and it is time to extend and develop the concept of citizenship into the realms of creativity. But what do these terms 'citizenship' and 'creativity' mean today? And how can they interact? What might the creative citizen look like?

Educational institutions are themselves challenged to become creative citizens just as corporations are being challenged to become 'corporate citizens'. Education will need to become more focussed on creativity as a core competency and institutions will need to be more proactive in adopting the role of 'citizen'. This emerging new emphasis represents the biggest shift in educational philosophy since the introduction of universal education in the industrial age and nowhere will it be felt more strongly than in arts training institutions.

This paper looks at the 'creativity challenge' facing tertiary arts training institutions and canvasses various responses. Institutions will need to expand and develop their role further into the community, they will need to be proactive in adopting creativity as central to everything they do and the ways they do it and, in the process, they will need to come terms with and contribute to a redefinition of cherished beliefs about creativity itself.

Welsh born Martin Jarvis began his studies as a violinist. In 1971 he won a place at both the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College Music, choosing the former as his place of study.

In 1987 he returned to Australia, taking up a position at what is now Charles Darwin University, where he is an associate professor.

Since his arrival at Darwin, Martin has received a number of awards, in particular a Centenary Medal in 2003 for services to Australian Society.

He is the author of The String Players’ Pocket Dictionary, which has sold worldwide. His most recent research publications have taken a fresh look at the professional relationship between Johann Sebastian Bach and his second wife Anna Magdalena.

For eight years Martin was the chairman of the Centre for Social Research at CDU.

Over the years since its inception, it is probably no exaggeration to say that the Darwin Symphony Orchestra (DSO) has become a Territory icon. However, when I arrived in Darwin in 1988 there was no symphony orchestra resident in the Northern Territory. My brief was to build an orchestra and establish the demand for orchestral performances where none had existed previously. Not an easy thing achieve in the smallest Australian capital city and one of the remotest capital cities in the world. However, here in Darwin at the very least we had the opportunity to develop an orchestra that, from the outset, could be part of a new vision for orchestras.

To achieve this aim, appropriate programs of study were devised at Charles Darwin University (CDU). The focus was, and remains, on 'community music'; that is to say full engagement with the communities of the NT, with the emphasis on participation in music making for those with a performance aptitude. The music staff encouraged talented amateur musicians to enrol as students in order to up-skill themselves and since that time training for many members of the DSO has taken place at CDU’s School of Creative Arts and Humanities.

As a result of the University's commitment to the community, the NT now has a symphony orchestra that has helped change many peoples perspective on life in the Territory. This paper explores the journey to this position.

Sylvia Kleinert is Associate Professor of Australian Indigenous Art at Charles Darwin University where she is postgraduate coordinator in Art & Design and a member of the Cross Currents project working on the development of online teaching in the area of Indigenous art. In 1997-2000 Sylvia Kleinert  was an ARC Post Doctoral Fellow at the ANU’s  Centre for Cross-cultural Research  followed by a Research Fellowship at the Centre  in 2001-2003.

Working across the areas of art history and anthropology she has published widely on the Hermannsburg School, cultural tourism and cultural heritage, Aboriginal art in south eastern Australia and Indigenous prison art. Sylvia  Kleinert co-edited (with Margo Neale) The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture (2000),  winner of the Power/Australian and New Zealand Art Association  prize for 2001, and she is editor of Crossing Cultures: Art Politics and Identity (2006).

Diana Leeder is the Executive Director, Arts and Museums, in the Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts.

Prior to joining the NT Government in the former Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs in July 2003, Diana worked in local government, firstly in New South Wales regional library services and then from 1985-2003 in libraries and community services with the Darwin City Council.

Australian policy in recent years has been influenced by the concept of an innovation economy. Successive governments at all levels have introduced policies that have sought to make the link between economic development and arts, cultural heritage, creativity and innovation more visible. Northern Territory Government policies such as the Indigenous Arts Strategy, Building Strong Arts Business and the Festivals Development Program have increased opportunities for improved economic outcomes and the development of new creative products. Building Strong Arts Business is a whole-of-government approach to economic sustainability through the arts. Building on small initiatives commenced in the first year, opportunities have been exploited over a three-year period resulting in both economic and creative outcomes.

The growth of the Darwin Festival and the establishment of funding frameworks for a number of regional festivals, through the Festivals Development Fund, have released an increased level of creative energy throughout the Territory. Examples of creative outcomes under the Building Strong Arts Business and other government initiatives are examined and the question posed as to whether the policy has been a creative catalyst or whether the increased creative activity over the last three years would have occurred independent of the government policies that proudly claim it as proof of a successful policy.

Susan Luckman is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at the University of South Australia who researches in the fields of media and cultural studies and creative industries. She has authored publications on youth cultural practices, new media, the internet and advertising, creative cultures and cultural policy, digital music cultures, contemporary protest movements, subcultural theory, cyberfeminism and contemporary cultural studies.

Susan is Node Co-convenor (early career researchers and post-graduates) for the ARC Cultural Research Network, a member of the editorial collective for Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, on the editorial board of Hecate, and Co-convenor of the Cultures of the Body Research Group at the University of South Australia. Current research grants include the ARC Linkage Project: Creative Tropical City: Mapping Darwin’s Creative Industries.

This presentation will introduce this new ARC Linkage Project and, particularly, some of the research team’s early observations regarding the applicability of existing cultural policy frameworks to Darwin as a uniquely situated city (geographically, climatically, economically, racially and culturally).

This initial review of creative industries approaches will inform the larger mapping project which has a threefold aim: first, to determine the nature, extent and change over time of the creative industries in Darwin; second, to interrogate the applicability of national and international creative industry policy frameworks to Darwin; and, thirdly, to identify opportunities for growth and transformation of the creative industries in Darwin

Penelope McDonald became the inaugural Director of the Northern Territory Film Office, the Northern Territory Government’s agency for developing and supporting a sustainable, creative and vibrant film, television and digital media industry in the Northern Territory, in July 2004.

Penelope is an accomplished producer and director responsible for the creation of over 42 internationally award winning programs encompassing documentaries, dramas and digital interactive media. Her production company Chili Films was commissioned to produce 12 interactive works on permanent display at the National Museum of Australia.

Penelope’s work has screened widely including documentaries Much Ado About Something, My Mother India, Too Many Captain Cooks, Black Sheep and Photographic Memory; and short dramas My Mother My Son, My Bed Your Bed, Payback and Night Cries. Penelope has worked in close collaboration with many emerging Indigenous Australian filmmakers, and her work explores creative cultural interaction.

She is a graduate of the University of Sydney, the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and Charles Darwin University.

Therese O'Brien was born and raised in Alice Springs into a musical family, commencing piano lessons at three and starting the cello at seven years of age. Over the years she has had a wide involvement in the Alice Springs music scene, winning numerous prizes and trophies at the Centralian Eisteddfod and the senior music scholarship at St Philips College. For many years Therese sang within the local choir, played percussion in the local town band, was involved in the Alice Springs String Group and at 15 she began teaching cello to local children.

In the last two and a half years of high school Therese was awarded a grant to travel to Adelaide once a month to receive lessons from the principal cellist of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Mr Janis Laurs. At the completion of year 12 in 2002 she was accepted into the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide where she has thrived and is now in her honours year.

Paul Rajan is Director Community Engagement in the Department of the Chief Minister, Northern Territory, with responsibility for youth, women’s, seniors and multicultural policy areas.

Community engagement is essentially about participation and has at its core the exercise of personal creativity in the determination of life choices and belonging.

Paul has worked in both government and community sector human services agencies since 1975. He has spoken widely on social policy.

Prior to locating in the NT Paul and his partner ran a successful consulting business offering social and community development research and project services to the community sector, business and the three tiers of government.

Ben Strout became the Executive Director of Arts Development at the Australia Council for the Arts in December 2000. With a degree in History of Ideas from Williams College, he trained as a performer and director at the Eugene O ’Neill Theatre Center’s National Theatre Institute and at the Hartman Theatre Conservatory (USA). He worked as a performer and musician with a number of theatres in the USA and for several PBS television productions before coming to Sydney in 1982.

Ben was Artistic Director of Australia’s Theatre of the Deaf, directing and sometimes writing productions for young audiences. He formally joined the Australia Council as a senior program officer in the Performing Arts Board in 1988 and has held a range of other senior positions at the Council since then. During 1990 he was the executive director of the Australian Centre of the International Theatre Institute.

Graham Symons is Deputy Chief Executive of the Northern Territory Department of the Chief Minister, with particular responsibility for policy. He has held a range of senior management and policy positions in the Northern Territory Government since 1984, including Deputy Under-Treasurer, Chief Executive Territory Housing, and Deputy Chief Executive of the Department of Health and Community Services. Prior to this he worked for the South Australian Government.

Graham’s other interests include sport, land care and the arts.

Adrian Walter is currently Dean of the Faculty of Law, Business and Arts at Charles Darwin University (CDU) where he is also a senior lecturer in guitar and music history. He previously held senior management positions as head of the School of Music and School of Creative Arts and Humanities at CDU.

Adrian has been closely involved in developing the University’s successful remote delivery music and visual arts programs and has managed the University’s music and visual arts components at the Garma Festival. He has a keen interest in the redevelopment of the University’s anthropology program and for the development of ethnomusicology at CDU. 

Adrian has been the artistic director of the Darwin International Guitar Festival since 1993 and has been particularly involved in the promotion and performance of twentieth century works by Australian composers. He has premiered a number of new works by leading Australian composers. The Festival is a biennial event featuring the world’s leading musicians, composers and musicologists. Regular guests of the Festival have included John Williams and Peter Sculthorpe. Several major works inspired by the Territory landscape have been commissioned by Peter Sculthorpe and have added a considerable musical profile for the Northern Territory. Peter’s commissioned works for the Festival have become valuable contributions to the solo guitar repertoire.

He is an active researcher in the area of performance practice and is completing his doctoral thesis on this topic.  

Adrian is a classical guitarist of international reputation and has performed both as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Australia and overseas. He is particularly interested in the performance practice of nineteenth century guitar repertoire and has performed with period orchestras in Italy and France as the featured soloist. He is also conductor and director of the CDU Chamber Orchestra and guitar orchestras.

Adrian is director of the Centre for Youth Music, a pre-tertiary music program that involves music education for over 300 children in Darwin.

Adrian is the convener of the September Charles Darwin Symposium - Creative Citizenship.

The musical landscape of the Top End is unique in its reliance on its own community for its cultural productions. It is a community that encourages participation in creative activity—indeed for many this becomes a defining aspect of their citizenship. In this environment, cultural production by the individual has become as significant as cultural consumption.

This case study explores the concept of the community musician by investigating community interaction as a key creative driver of the Darwin International Guitar Festival. The festival, held bi-annually in Darwin, provides collaborative projects bringing leading national and international performers and composers together with community-based musicians. This results in unique performances and the creation of a body of new work, significantly enriching the cultural landscape of the Northern Territory.