by Creatives Collective | Dec 10, 2017 | News
The timing of being able to go to REMIX Sydney couldn’t have been more fortuitous. After being awarded a grant to run an arts festival in Coonabarabran, and being so vocal about improving arts and culture in Coonabarabran, being able to feast on ideas from all over the world from the very best in coupling arts, technology and entrepreneurship together. Yes, a small town of 3000 people and the audience of the Royal Shakespeare Company or Burning man have a great deal in common.
Distilling what I heard at the summit down….
Humans love stories and storytelling
and
Humans want to get involved in experiences that bring them into the now
and
Sharing, collaboration and partnering between creative people, groups, and events, brings quicker growth and better viabiity, than if they work individually
and
Australia is behind the world in valuing art. Loss of arts and culture leave communities poorer, but this is not recognised by most Australians
The Articulate festival (the arts festival that Creatives Collective will be running in 2018) clearly addresses the first three statements – but we will need to think about how we will promote the final statement throughout 2018. We can’t do this all on our own, so using statement three we will continue to bang on the door of local people, groups, and organisations to get more involved in the arts on Coonabarabran.
A very big thank you to REMIX for supporting our ticket and for such a thought-provoking and idea-inspiring event.
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 | Aug 30, 2017 | News
One of the biggest hidden barriers to inclusion are financial ones. If you are living with disability in Australia then it is more likely that you are living below the poverty line than any other group of Australians – 45% of people with disability live in poverty in Australia. That’s almost 1 in 2 and is more than twice the average OECD level of 22%.This is one of the reasons why Creatives Collective is actively seeking funding for all of the group’s activities. We want as many local artists with disability to be able to access quality art education, community and leverage support and promotion of each other for as little financial cost as possible. Free if we can.
We make no bones about the fact that if there is a grant that will cover something that will benefit local disabled artists then we are going to go for it. Being able to access what is taken for granted by non-disabled people takes many hours of hard work, and is certainly not an easy hand-out,despite what some people in the community believe. So far over 40 hours of grant writing has taken place – and there’s plans for many more hours to come.
It was very exciting to hear back about our first grant application today from the Warrumbungle Shire Council who have awarded us a Community Financial Assistance Donation for the $167 the group requires to incorporate. This grant may seem small, but it is the first step to being able to apply for grants under our own name. We currently use the excellent services of the 2357 Partnership Inc to auspice our grants, and they earn every dollar of the fees they charge to perform that service, but being independent was one of the group’s first decisions and incorporation is step one to achieving that.
If you want to help us get grants we are always looking for people to write supporting letters for the grants we are going for. These usually involve explaining your interest/connection with Creatives Collective and why you think we should get the funding (we help with pointing out the hot topics that the grant givers want to see covered). If that sounds like you then please send us an email to info@creativescollective.org and will contact you back!
Fingers crossed this is the first of many grants in the coming months.
