Regional Arts Australia

Regional Arts Australia's Artlands '23 gathering embodied a profound systems change and flipped the script on how to bring people together for hard and important conversations. The experience was captured in the newly released C R E A T I N G S P A C E documentary, exploring what is possible when a conference is curated around care and wellbeing. This new five-part podcast series continues the conversation, sharing some of the full interviews and diving deeper into the idea that “The future is regional. The future is creative.”    MEET: ROS ABERCROMBIE To close this series we speak to Ros Abercrombie, Executive Director of Regional Arts Australia about the thought process behind Artlands 2023.    This conversation doesn’t shy away from the truth of co-designing a new way to gather, of navigating how to create a space that is culturally safe and appropriate for the different participants that we would be inviting, the challenges that we didn’t see coming, the successes that we all achieved through the process.    There’s a lot to cover so we’ve broken it into two episodes, this one carries on from last episode, where Ros was told we would need healers at the event, and just what that meant from a cultural knowledge perspective.     And then we speak about the final act, Act 5, on the final day of Artlands 2023. We’ve heard the participants speak about a specific moment when one of the participants spoke during this time. We’re now going to hear Ros’ experience of that moment, and what we would do differently if we were to gather people together again in this way.    Ros Abercrombie: I think for me personally, at the time, it was it was a really challenging space to be feeling responsible for that room, feeling responsible for my team, feeling responsible for all of the facilitators and all the participants, the keynote listeners that are really close colleagues, ensuring everyone felt okay through that, and that process after the event was a good couple of weeks of conversations, checking in on people and checking in on how everyone was feeling.    So I certainly felt it. I felt very responsible for it. I still feel very responsible for it.        *   Artlands ‘23 brought 80 purposefully selected participants together at the National Gallery Australia on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (in Canberra), for three days, five acts, tackling the challenges and opportunities presented by the provocation: The Future of Regional Australia is Fundamentally Creative.    Artlands ‘23 is supported by the Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia.    'The future is regional. The future is creative' is a registered trademark of Regional Arts Australia.     Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia. 

Regional Arts Australia's Artlands '23 gathering embodied a profound systems change and flipped the script on how to bring people together for hard and important conversations. The experience was captured in the newly released C R E A T I N G S P A C E documentary, exploring what is possible when a conference is curated around care and wellbeing. This new five-part podcast series continues the conversation, sharing some of the full interviews and diving deeper into the idea that “The future is regional. The future is creative.”    MEET: ROS ABERCROMBIE To close this series, we speak to Ros Abercrombie, Executive Director of Regional Arts Australia about the thought process behind Artlands 2023.    This conversation doesn’t shy away from the truth of co-designing a new way to gather, of navigating how to create a space that is culturally safe and appropriate for the different participants that we would be inviting, the challenges that we didn’t see coming, the successes that we all achieved through the process.    There’s a lot to cover so we’ve broken it into two episodes, this one focuses on the lead-up, the why behind doing something different and some of the challenges and successes of working with three co-facilitators.     Ros Abercrombie: We started to float ideas of things that we were thinking about changing. And overwhelmingly there was an excitement and a positivity. There was also generally a sort of wry smile saying, Are you crazy? Like, do you not just want to do things as normal, would be a whole lot simpler?    And there's no two ways about it. Change is harder. But we were really conscious that as an organisation we pride ourselves on listening to what our colleagues and what the sector was saying, and they were saying they felt that it was time for change.       *   Artlands ‘23 brought 80 purposefully selected participants together at the National Gallery Australia on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (in Canberra), for three days, five acts, tackling the challenges and opportunities presented by the provocation: The Future of Regional Australia is Fundamentally Creative.    Artlands ‘23 is supported by the Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia.    'The future is regional. The future is creative' is a registered trademark of Regional Arts Australia.     Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia. 

Regional Arts Australia's Artlands '23 gathering embodied a profound systems change and flipped the script on how to bring people together for hard and important conversations. The experience was captured in the newly released C R E A T I N G S P A C E documentary, exploring what is possible when a conference is curated around care and wellbeing. This new five-part podcast series continues the conversation, sharing some of the fuller interviews and diving deeper into the idea that “The future is regional. The future is creative.”   MEET: KIARNNA LEHMAN This conversation takes place at Meander, Tasmania, with Kiarnna Lehman. Kiarnna is a young singer/songwriter from Meander, Tasmania, who has been working as a sole trading musician since the beginning of 2022. From early primary school onwards, music has lit her soul alight; it’s what makes her feel the most sparkly. She hopes to bring more authenticity and depth to her music after learning of her Neurodivergence in recent years. Outside of music Kiarnna is wholeheartedly a multipotentialite; some other sparkle-inducing passions include bushwalking, content creating, reading, playing football, and cuddling her enormous dog, Kujo. Always looking for ways to grow, Kiarnna is a life-long learner, and a great-big dreamer.    Kiarnna shares what her group spoke about in Act 5 of Artlands 2023, and some of the questions they put to our key note listeners, and about the feeling of being heard and seen by these arts leaders, that her contribution might actually make an impact.    Kiarnna Lehman: I don't think I've met a single artist that has been gatekeeping information or knowledge. Everyone just wants to help each other and as unrealistic as it sounds, there really is space for every single artist in regional arts in Australia. There's space for everyone.    *   Artlands ‘23 brought 80 purposefully selected participants together at the National Gallery Australia on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (in Canberra), for three days, five acts, tackling the challenges and opportunities presented by the provocation: The Future of Regional Australia is Fundamentally Creative.    Artlands ‘23 is supported by the Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia.    'The future is regional. The future is creative' is a registered trademark of Regional Arts Australia.     Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia. 

Regional Arts Australia's Artlands '23 gathering embodied a profound systems change and flipped the script on how to bring people together for hard and important conversations. The experience was captured in the newly released C R E A T I N G S P A C E documentary, exploring what is possible when a conference is curated around care and wellbeing. This new five-part podcast series continues the conversation, sharing some of the fuller interviews and diving deeper into the idea that “The future is regional. The future is creative.”   MEET: FIONA SINCLAIR This conversation takes place in the Understory Art and Nature Trail at Northcliffe with Fiona Sinclair. With twenty+ years experience as a public artist, community cultural development  facilitator, gallery manager, curator, presenter and cultural tourism operator, Fiona has extensive networks stretching across the vast and diverse WA regional arts sector. Specialising in initiatives that deliver inter-connectivity, collaboration and vibrancy to regional arts practice, Fiona is a passionate advocate for the depth, dynamism and richness the sector contributes to our national creative and cultural experience.    We talk about the “container of care” created at Artlands, the Maori practices of hongi and breathwork taught by the facilitators, Desna Whaanga-Schollum, Chelita Kahutianui-o-te-Rangi Zainey and Te Hira Kaiwai.. We also speak about the experience of our key note listeners, the industry leaders we invited to the final act: Liz Ritchie from Regional Australia Institute, Natalie Egleton from the Foundation for Rural Regional Renewal, Kate Fielding from A New Approach, Georgia McClean from Creative Australia, Jane Carter from the Office for the Arts and Andrea Hogg from the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation.    Fiona Sinclair: Art is art has always been. It's so deeply intrinsic to who we are as humans. So serving art is not serving myself or even serving my community in a way, it's just about connecting to the best of who we can be, but also the most vulnerable that we can be.     *   Artlands ‘23 brought 80 purposefully selected participants together at the National Gallery Australia on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (in Canberra), for three days, five acts, tackling the challenges and opportunities presented by the provocation: The Future of Regional Australia is Fundamentally Creative.    Artlands ‘23 is supported by the Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia.    'The future is regional. The future is creative' is a registered trademark of Regional Arts Australia.     Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia. 

Regional Arts Australia's Artlands '23 gathering embodied a profound systems change and flipped the script on how to bring people together for hard and important conversations. The experience was captured in the newly released C R E A T I N G S P A C E documentary, exploring what is possible when a conference is curated around care and wellbeing. This new five-part podcast series continues the conversation, sharing some of the fuller interviews and diving deeper into the idea that “The future is regional. The future is creative.”    MEET: WARWICK GOW This conversation takes place at Moffat Beach, Queensland, with Warwick Gow, an artist, art worker and co-founder of LANTANA Space. Warwick’s practice is primarily based in photography and installation, using the portrait to place local fringe culture within arm’s length of the mainstream. Destabilising notions of representation, elevating unique identities and that of the self by hijacking the thin veil of commercialism and elegantly smashing it against a DIY ethic. This ethos carries through into Warwick’s approach as an arts worker as part of Sunshine Coast Council’s Creative Development Team and into his emerging practice as an independent curator in a regional setting.    We speak about Warwick’s experience of some of the Maori cultural practices taught to us by our facilitators Desna Whaanga-Schollum, Chelita Kahutianui-o-te-Rangi Zainey and Te Hira Kaiwai. We also speak about the opening cross-sector panel of Act 1 which included Michelle Tuahine, Ruby Heard, Troy Merritt and Sheridan Morris.    Warwick Gow: “Connecting some of those connections and threads through really regional remote areas of Australia. That was a real privilege to sort of be facilitated to do that in a really authentic way where everyone's on this level playing field. And I think there's a real hope about what the future for regional arts can be.”     *   Artlands ‘23 brought 80 purposefully selected participants together at the National Gallery Australia on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (in Canberra), for three days, five acts, tackling the challenges and opportunities presented by the provocation: The Future of Regional Australia is Fundamentally Creative.    Artlands ‘23 is supported by the Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia.    'The future is regional. The future is creative' is a registered trademark of Regional Arts Australia.     Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia. 

In this final episode of Regional Assembly's Conversations with the Assembly, Zahid Rafiq reads 'Frog In The Mouth' from his upcoming debut book, The World With Its Mouth Open. Introduction by Abdul Halik Azeez.  Zahid Rafiq is a writer living in Srinagar, Kashmir. He was a journalist for several years before turning to writing fiction. The World With Its Mouth Open is his first book. Conversations with the Assembly (Series 2) is a podcast that delves deep with practitioners from Regional Assembly—an online artist studio connecting creative practitioners living and working in regional and remote locations in Asia, the Pacific and First Nations unceded territories across Australia. Each episode will foreground distinct voices and amplify, challenge and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during Regional Assembly.  To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.

Join Jade Dewi Tyass Tunggal and Jacky Cheng in discussion with Alana Hunt for the sixth episode of our second series of Conversations with the Assembly. Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal is a Javanese Australian dancer, choreographer and creative collaborator. Born in Darkinjung country NSW her work has been made and shared nationally and internationally. She has ancestry of Australian Scottish Viking convict-settlers, kinship ties with Borobudur Temple 800AD and is a direct descendant of Yogyakarta’s first Sultan 1755, Kangjeng Hamengku Buwana. Jacky Cheng was born in Malaysia of Chinese heritage, and now resides in Yawuru Country, Broome, WA. Her practice is fundamentally about identity and awareness through cultural activities and memories of home, country, and relationships. Her awareness was amplified through her diasporic identity as a Chinese descendant in foreign borders as she continues to question her notion of 'home' and 'belonging' - 'here and there' and the 'in between'. Alana Hunt coordinates Regional Assembly. She also makes art and writes, finding ways for this material to move affectively through the public sphere and the social space between people. She has worked with journalists, filmmakers, human rights defenders and lawyers on works that unfold over many years, with gradual yet accumulating resonance. The iterative memorial Cups of nun chai (2010-20) was serialised in 86 editions of Kashmir Reader (2016–17). In late 2023, Hunt completed Surveilling a Crime Scene (2023) a film that examines the materialisation of non-indigenous life on Miriwoong Country in the town of Kununurra and its surrounds. Hunt has exhibited nationally and internationally and is the recipient of a number of awards, most recently the 2023 STILL: National Still Life Award judged by Max Delany at Yarrila Arts and Museum, Coffs Harbour.  ----more---- Jade Dewi Tyass Tunggal: I was homesick for the bush, for the beach, and I was realising the treasures of learning, for me to come back home. That was a big incentive, and that was around 2000, I think I had a paranoia about the Y2K bug. And I was surviving as a dancer in New York city—getting really cold—and I was like “I’ve gotta back to an Australian Summer”. Jacky Cheng: It’s very interesting because it’s almost like, you and I, we’re both traversing the in between terrain. Wanting to go back to Yogyakarta, and learn, because you’re missing home and the bush here in Australia, but also wanting that tradition. But it’s the same thing for me. When I came to Australia and I did all the things that I thought—I was looking West, and I was so excited to be amongst it, because I wasn’t reflecting on myself as being of Asian identity, or being a person of colour. And then I realised I didn’t quite fit in, and when I went back home to Malaysia for the first time I realised, “Oh, this is really who I am!”. So I was finding that terrain and trying to realise what it really truly means in terms of encapsulating that idea of our identity. So it’s very refreshing to hear that from you as well Jade. ----more---- Conversations with the Assembly (Series 2) is a podcast that delves deep with practitioners from Regional Assembly—an online artist studio connecting creative practitioners living and working in regional and remote locations in Asia, the Pacific and First Nations unceded territories across Australia. Each episode will foreground distinct voices and amplify, challenge and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during Regional Assembly.  To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.

Join Abdul Halik Azeez and Alana Hunt in discussion for the fifth episode of our second series of Conversations with the Assembly. Abdul Halik Azeez’s work examines technologies of power as mediated through contemporary culture, narratives of progress, lived experiences and new media processes. His multidisciplinary practice predominantly draws from post-war transformations impacting Sri Lanka such as gentrification, economic crises, tourism, and renewed ultranationalist politics. Collaboration plays a key role in Azeez’s work. In 2019, he co-founded The Packet, a collective of emerging artists from Sri Lanka which has worked extensively with publications and digital interventions including artist books, browser based art and site specific installations. Alana Hunt coordinates Regional Assembly. She also makes art and writes, finding ways for this material to move affectively through the public sphere and the social space between people. She has worked with journalists, filmmakers, human rights defenders and lawyers on works that unfold over many years, with gradual yet accumulating resonance. The iterative memorial Cups of nun chai (2010-20) was serialised in 86 editions of Kashmir Reader (2016–17). In late 2023, Hunt completed Surveilling a Crime Scene (2023) a film that examines the materialisation of non-indigenous life on Miriwoong Country in the town of Kununurra and its surrounds. Hunt has exhibited nationally and internationally and is the recipient of a number of awards, most recently the 2023 STILL: National Still Life Award judged by Max Delany at Yarrila Arts and Museum, Coffs Harbour.  ----more---- Halik: One other thing that struck me in one of the conversations that I was reading was how you said you were less confident when it comes to exhibition making and presenting your work in exhibitions. And that’s something I can also strongly relate to. Sometimes you begin to localise your work in the end product, the object that comes out of it. Whether it’s the video, or the photographs that are made, or the writing that’s done. You start to think it’s perhaps the presenting of these objects and you obsess about the perfect way to present it given the constrained space or resources. ----more---- Conversations with the Assembly (Series 2) is a podcast that delves deep with practitioners from Regional Assembly—an online artist studio connecting creative practitioners living and working in regional and remote locations in Asia, the Pacific and First Nations unceded territories across Australia. Each episode will foreground distinct voices and amplify, challenge and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during Regional Assembly.  To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.

Kate Just is a queer American/Australian artist of Polish, Irish, Scottish and German descent who lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Victoria. Just is best known for her inventive and political use of knitting. In addition to her solo practice, Just often works socially and collaboratively within communities to create large scale, public art projects that tackle significant social issues including LGBTQIA rights, sexual harassment and violence against women. Her work creates space for viewers to closely reflect on their own relationship to art, feminism, care and social justice. Infused with a sharp feminist take, in this conversation with Alana Hunt that took place in January 2024, Kate reflects on recent bodies of work including Protest Signs (2022), Self Care Action (2023) and Fifty Rules for Making Art (2023-24); community and activism in regional Victoria; adopting family, and moving with grief.  Follow Kate on instagram @katejustknits ----more---- She said, “you have to come home, you have to”. So I went, with this feeling of resistance. And when I got home my Mum was sitting on the couch doing two things which I had never seen her do—smoking and knitting…and I’m thinking “who is this person, who is smoking and knitting?!” I’ve never seen her do either. She was a high powered CEO. And so I just sat next to her and we didn’t really talk much at all. And I just watched her, and I picked it up and started doing it. It was a very profound moment, where I felt like nothing needs to be said, but the world is kind of falling a part, and somehow we are doing this action that connects things back together, and makes something new. And I also had this feeling, while I was sitting next to her silently, you could go to any place in the world and you would find this history of women teaching other women to work with craft. And it would go all the way from the beginning of time, to now.And it’s the medium that contains so many women’s stories, unknown, that may never be known. It would just only ever be in their house, this thing they made. But that is so powerful and so continuous. ----more---- Conversations with the Assembly (Series 2) is a podcast that delves deep with practitioners from Regional Assembly—an online artist studio connecting creative practitioners living and working in regional and remote locations in Asia, the Pacific and First Nations unceded territories across Australia. Each episode will foreground distinct voices and amplify, challenge and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during Regional Assembly.  To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.

In the latest episode of Regional Assembly's Conversations with the Assembly Selena de Carvalho and Arie Syarifuddin join forces in a soul-moving conversation about the potential of big and long and radical creative acts seeding from very humble grounds—from lutruwita to Jatiwangi! Selena de Carvalho (PhD) is an inter-disciplinary artist, designer, maker and risk taker of settler, refugee and migrant heritage based in lutruwrita/Tasmania- ‘Australia’. Selena purposefully connects creativity in a (post) activist context amplifying the ecological imagination through practicing relational ethos. Selena views her creative work as a cultural response – ability. Throughout this practice she seeks out materials and environments that have weathered various forms of frontline disturbance, with-nessing, witnessing and interpreting global warming and its local affects. Arie Syarifuddin (1985, Indonesia) is also known as Alghorie. Affiliated as an artist, curator, cultural producer, designer, and director of artist in residency department to the artist initiative; Jatiwangi Art Factory in the village of Jatiwangi in West Java, which is Indonesia’s biggest roof-tile manufacturing centre. Established in 2005, Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) is a community that embraces contemporary arts and cultural practices as parts of the local life discourse in a rural area. Redesigning; hacking; giving values and dignity to the ordinary things; negotiation between fiction, dreams, reality, everyday life; and the intersection of historical reading is the most inclination of Arie’s works. ----more---- Arie Syarifuddin: Jatiwangi itself is like the industrial area of clay roof tiles for 600 years, nothing for the young people to stay there. If there was not the Jatiwangi Art Factory I could go to the big city to look for many possibilities, but since then, I have the ability to stay in my place and play. Selena De Carvalho: I had another look through the website at the one history of the Jatawangi Art Factory is really interesting. From that humble beginning of let’s host music and have ten families as our family partners to know very deeply, to now having many many villages that are also in that constellation. When you talk about having an art space and it allowing you to stay where you live and have a creative outlet, career, network, global network, local network, there’s something beautiful in that place based way of making and being and living. That’s super exciting for me to hear about. ----more---- Conversations with the Assembly (Series 2) is a podcast that delves deep with practitioners from Regional Assembly—an online artist studio connecting creative practitioners living and working in regional and remote locations in Asia, the Pacific and First Nations unceded territories across Australia. Each episode will foreground distinct voices and amplify, challenge and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during Regional Assembly.  To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.

Join Selenda de Carvalho and Katie West in discussion for the second episode of our second series of Conversations with the Assembly. Selena de Carvalho (PhD) is an inter-disciplinary artist, designer, maker and risk taker of settler, refugee and migrant heritage based in lutruwrita/Tasmania- ‘Australia’. Selena purposefully connects creativity in a (post) activist context amplifying the ecological imagination through practicing relational ethos. Selena views her creative work as a cultural response – ability. Throughout this practice she seeks out materials and environments that have weathered various forms of frontline disturbance, with-nessing, witnessing and interpreting global warming and its local affects. Katie West is an artist and Yindjibarndi woman based in Noongar Ballardong country, working in installation, textiles and social practice. The process and notion of naturally dyeing fabric underpin her practice–the rhythm of walking, gathering, bundling, boiling up water and infusing materials with plant matter. Using found and naturally dyed textiles, video, and sound, Katie creates installations, textile pieces, and happenings that invite attention to the ways we weave our stories, places, histories, and futures. Katie West: I guess that the capitalist system system that we work in, you do feel pushed to get things done quickly. Living where we live now has helped this too but I’ve also realised that maintaining that sense of slowness in the process is really important for myself and my own mental health but also for the work too. That’s where the work comes from. That’s the value in it and that’s the thing to cultivate and protect from here on out. ----more---- Conversations with the Assembly (Series 2) is a podcast that delves deep with practitioners from Regional Assembly—an online artist studio connecting creative practitioners living and working in regional and remote locations in Asia, the Pacific and First Nations unceded territories across Australia. Each episode will foreground distinct voices and amplify, challenge and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during Regional Assembly.  To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.

In this podcast—the first episode of our second series of Conversations with the Assembly— Frankie Snowdon and Amala Groom join forces in a frank and forthright discussion that weaves together their shared interests in what constitutes sovereignty, the use of humour, the immense value of family, and the ways in which they navigate their practices across national and international contexts, while staying grounded in the local communities that mean most to them.  Amala Groom is a Wiradyuri conceptual artist who lives and works on Wiradyuri Country in Kelso, NSW. Her practice, as the performance of her cultural sovereignty, is informed and driven by First Nations epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies.  Frankie Snowdon is a dance artist and the founder and Co-Director of GUTS Dance Central Australia, based in Mparntwe/Alice Springs on the unceded lands of the Arrernte people. Born and raised in her desert home, her work spans performance, choreography, teaching, community based projects, program creation and facilitation and sector advocacy.    Frankie Snowdon: We’ve now started to do QnA’s after every single show that we do. And not just once in a season but every show in a season there is an opportunity to basically just have a chat.  ----more---- Amala Groom: See that’s just healthy though. Because that’s debriefing. And that’s a healthy part of any social order.  FS: It’s been so amazing. And I think particularly regional audiences, because we do a lot of regional touring as well. As a regionally based organisation we’ve been really strong in going “We don’t just want to take our work to the city”. It’s really important that we also practice what we preach—and go to all the places that don’t get an opportunity to have work come to them. And actually regional audiences are some of the most brave and articulate audiences and they just say what they think. They’re so wonderful. And it has informed practice for me in ways that I never got when I lived in the city.  AG: It’s tough. And it’s raw. And it’s elemental. And you know, it reminds me of like of having conversations [with my grandparents]. I’m so lucky that my Mum’s parents are still with us. And that I get to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. They ran a sheep station on our Country. About an hour north of Bathurst. And they would tell me these old yarns…  ----more---- Conversations with the Assembly (Series 2) is a podcast that delves deep with practitioners from Regional Assembly—an online artist studio connecting creative practitioners living and working in regional and remote locations in Asia, the Pacific and First Nations unceded territories across Australia. Each episode will foreground distinct voices and amplify, challenge and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during Regional Assembly.  To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.

“The body has always been central to my practice because I think, your body is your body. And I think especially having a child and seeing the way in which each day she looks a little bit like other people that I love and seeing the way in which she is made up of all of these other bodies that have come before me and before her. We have within te reo Māori, as a way of introducing yourself, something called a pepeha. You introduce yourself as a mountain and as a river, and you introduce your tupuna, or your ancestors, as yourself. I think I've always written about my body because it's my body, but it also doesn't belong to me. It belongs to many other beings and entities that have existed and will exist. You say, ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua, ko au’— ‘I am the land, and the land is me’.” Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

“I have a problem with the concept of ‘artist’ - because art galleries and the Western canon of arts practice don't really resonate with me, though I love to create. The more that I speak to our [Māori] weavers and our people that are at home [haukainga] about their own practices, I realize that Mātauranga Māori, our knowledge system and our concepts of art — are embodied knowledge… connecting with the values of plants, ancestral knowledge, and encompassing things like food systems. It [Mātauranga] shows you ways to be able to understand the patterns within the environment. So I find the term 𝘢𝘳𝘵 to often be very abstracted.” Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

“I'm really careful to know who the traditional owners are for the places that I'm recording. I'm drawing places along the road that I've travelled past, but it's not my right to just sort of take the imagery. So for me, it's about relationships: who are the people connected to those places?” Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

“There's also that threshold that makes publishing so exciting: the moment of shifting something from a private to a public domain. And that threshold is the most kind of uncontrollable, dangerous, speculative space there is because you have no idea what's going to happen.” Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

“I'm really banking on my legacy being something that maybe is never felt and that is very gentle and very subtle in a way, but that can kind of break some of those cycles of trauma and break some of those cycles of isolation and scarcity that people have during this particular time so that they can be well and their families can be well." Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

“I'm quite open to just being seen as a contemporary artist rather than being served an Indigenous label. That my practice is about art, rather... and then I'm a person of aboriginal heritage, but that's a part of my art. That's all part of my work." Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

"Dust in capitalist ignation is the obsession with the act of cleaning and marginalising. It's obligatory in archaeology to clean the dust to see the past. So dust as a material or condition—it's a very complex and dense idea for me. So my conception of dust comes from the caste system and thinking about the politics of purity. And I see dirt, waste, remains, and excrement as the 'dust' that is produced by the hegemonic system. And I like to argue that we have to see the waste not only as a crisis of Earth's ecology, but as an ecology of politics. And it's important to think about the history of waste in relation to our social and political condition. It's only Dalit thinkers and philosophers who are writing books and also cleaning gutters. Toxicity has already created a caste in the future. So my idea of prophecy is not in the future but it's in the past that has not happened yet." Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

"I feel like there's a lot of potential in the space of art... especially at this time, to be able to hold space for the messiness, the chaos, the undoing of familiar logics and patterns and wirings of the world and of our brain. The empowerment and the agency that art and creative practices can offer are really integral as well to understand each of our own creative potential." Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.

“I think engaging in the discussion of White Australia rather than avoiding or being angry at it helps you in everyday life, and to be absolute about who is white and who is black today doesn’t progress the discussion of healing.” Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly. To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.