Working Sustainably in Community Practice

Arts workers in remote or trauma-impacted communities are often sent in to complex environments with little preparation or adequate peer support for the situations they will encounter. In this episode, we head to one of the most remote areas of Australia - Warburton community, Western Australia on Ngaanyatjarra Lands, where Silvano Giordano shares his experience as co-Director of Wilurarra Creative - a community hub and arts studio dedicated to creative programs for young Ngaanyatjarra people. Silvano shares some of the systems of self-care and sustainable practice he has developed over time, and his co-Director, BJ, joins us to talk about the ways his community approaches working relationships between Ngaanyatjarra and non-Ngaanyatjarra people. We also hear about Silvano’s participation in a professional supervision pilot project - a collaboration between Creative Recovery Network and Community Arts Network (CAN), designed to draw on the experience and wisdom of leading community arts and cultural development workers to grow a deeper understanding of the support needs for community-based practitioners across Australia. June Moorhouse, co-CEO of CAN joins us to talk about the pilot project’s findings and how she believes the arts sector is at an exciting turning point for driving change towards new standards of practice and a framework to better support practitioners in high performance work environments. Silvano Giordano, Wilurarra Creative, Co-Director BJ, Wilurarra Creative, Co-Director June Moorhouse, CEO, Community Arts Network Shona Erskine, Psychologist and Consultant This episode features music by Travis West, 'Boy Crying for Family', from the album Wilurarra Desert Reggae: A Compilation of New Ngaanyatjarra Music recorded at Wilurarra Creative studio in 2017.