by Creatives Collective | Nov 30, 2017 | News, Projects
Creatives Collective has won a grant to stage a new art festival in Coonabarabran in 2018. The Articulate Festival will be a celebration of Art, Inclusion, and Culture and will consist of an art exhibition/competition, a community art creation event, a makers market, artist workshops, a film festival and a dinner with speakers to talk about art and well-being. Local artists, groups and businesses will all be invited to participate and the festival is expected to bring tourists and shire residents to Coonabarabran to experience this vibrant new cultural event.
The name Articulate was chosen because of dual meanings of the word – to allow two or more immovable objects to move by a special connection between them, and to clearly voice an idea, opinion or position. Creatives Collective see the festival as a way of bringing many individual groups together to move in the same direction for Coonabarabran, and as a way to give a platform via art for people to clearly express themselves.
The date for Articulate has not been set yet but will be in April/June 2018 and will be centered around the community theatre and Town Hall precinct which will be converted into a vibrant area with food trucks, live music, body painting and more.
“We are very excited, but the hard work starts now” says Creatives Collective president, Allison Reynolds, “We have a very large project plan that will involve many people from Coonabarabran. This event will bring all sorts of people and groups together to work with our members to make the Articulate Festival a huge success for Coonabarabran.”
Creatives Collective project plan was successful in applying for funds under the Team Up grant program. Team Up offered funds to people with disability to form peer groups, or groups that had already formed to create change in their community, leverage influence and develop leadership and other skills. Team Up is a project of Council for Intellectual Disability (CID), Community Disability Alliance Hunter (CDAH) and Diversity and Disability Alliance (DDA) and is funded by the NSW Government.
[IMAGE: Three round cartoon faces surrounded by arrows pointing signifying movement in one direction, next to the words Team Up Peers Creating Change]
If you want to contact Creatives Collective for any information then you can email them at info@creativescollective.org
by Creatives Collective | Nov 20, 2017 | News
If things aren’t working doing them the way they have always been done, time to change how you are doing them. This is why Creatives Collective is excited to be going to REMIX Sydney 2017! Art and culture is a very different beast to what it was even 20 years ago. Everything has changed, from how it is presented to how it is perceived is a completely new landscape.
While every stage presentation at REMIX Sydney 2017 looks amazing (wish we could go to them all), our member will focus on the Academy stage run by Create NSW and UTS which will be all about the future of story telling, and how to engineer creative spaces. These are things we believe will help us most as a group and will help Coonabarabran as a place.
Creatives Collective are also keen to catch up with some amazing and interesting people, including Create NSW staff. Making networks is hugely important to a small group like ours, and will help in future endeavours being able to put faces to names, and enjoyable encounters to grant applications (*wink wink*). There’s also going to be everyone who is anyone in the creative, tech and STEM areas from Sydney and NSW – our member is particularly interested in entrepreneurship in arts (having been an entrepreneur herself) and how connecting with sponsors and philanthropists (rather than relying on grants from peak bodies) could help artists with disability.
Creatives Collective would like to thank REMIX Sydney 2017 for sponsoring our member’s ticket.
Keep an eye out for a full report in the blog later in December!
by Creatives Collective | Nov 9, 2017 | News
It flew by and we are convinced it was only a 20 day month. So what did we do in those 20 days?
- We submitted our Team Up grant to get a community art event back in Coonabarabran in 2018
- We put up our hands to have a table at the Warrumbungle Community Care Services Expo
- We contacted Outback Arts and offered them help in setting up a group like ours
- We put up our hands to present at the Warrumbungle Shire Community Consultation meeting in Coonabarabran
- Allison went off to a grant writing workshop so we can get mo’ money
- We reached out to Accessible Arts to introduce ourselves and asked how we could get together
- We reached out to Arts Access Australia to introduce ourselves and asked how we could get together
- We went to the Coonabarabran Arts Council AGM to see how we fitted in with them
- We nearly went to the Create NSW roadshow in Coonamble
- We kept pushing to get our creative space
- We ordered flashy things to promote ourselves [image banner saying creatives collective in pink and blue letters]
- We heard back from Arts Access Australia and will be working with them on getting regional artists with disability together
- We did creative things – every Friday!
- Roctober- Jewelry making with Tracy
- Grown Up Finger painting
- Coonabarabran Gets Stoned
- Chilled out free art during “meeting”
The weather is getting warmer and we really need to get into an air-conditioned creative space or we will have members not being able to participate. A place of our own is still our main goal.
We are also going to have our first fundraising effort starting in November to raise enough cash to pay for insurance next year when we incorporate.
Then there’s allllll the other stuff we need to get done before next year!
by Creatives Collective | Oct 13, 2017 | News
Lots! Lots happened in September.
- We had 2 members end up in hospital (for different things). They are both out and about now.
- We spent every Friday doing creative practice
- Australian Native Flowers
- Teapots/Teacups
- Post-It Note Miniature Gallery
- FOOD!
- In Plein Air
- Member Led – Rocktober (Jewelry Making by Tracy)
- We put in a grant application for 3 Microsoft Surface Pros through the FRRR
- We had meetings!
- We got an ABN and a TFN
- We opened a bank account (in progress)
- We sent a tonne of emails to a tonne of places about all sorts of things from requesting a Councillor keep disability accessibility in mind when selecting a potential arts’ space building, to floating various festival ideas.
- Changed our logo on all of our things to Anni’s great watercolour interpretation – branding!
- Put the website into a form that it can remain in until next year when Go Pro 2018! kicks off (Have you read our Manifesto yet?)
- Posted a gazillion articles on our Facebook page
Still a couple of months leading up to Christmas and so much to do!
by Creatives Collective | Oct 8, 2017 | Projects
We as a group have committed to improving our professional skills in 2018 to be able to sell our work and increase our profiles as artists. Sure we are leveraging disability, it’s what differentiates us from other artists. We naturally have to be more innovative, work with more constraints and be braver with publicly speaking about, and displaying our works. It makes us better artists, despite the able attitude that we are held back by our impairments.
We have applied for CASP and RAF grants that will help us with sourcing educators, mentors, and exhibition requirements for a year of pushing ourselves out of comfort zones and into the bright lights of promotion, marketing and being in the local community’s face (in a nice way of course). At the time of writing there’s about a month till the successful grant applications are announced. We are quietly confident, and mildly anxious.
We have also applied for a grant for 3 Microsoft Surface Pros so we can jump into the work of digital art and expand our knowledge and works into a more “modern” place. Paintings of gum trees are nice and all, but we have things to say and we are looking for interesting ways to say it. These tables are light and easy to use and for some of our members will be perfect to work with as they are less fatiguing than a PC or laptop.
2018 is also the year we hope to be able to find a studio space that we can call our own. Politics and more politics in this area make it difficult. This will be our biggest challenge – keep watching this space 😉
[IMAGE DESCRIPTION 6 sharpie textas in rainbow coloured order]
