Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Ariel Songs : Performing Cultural Ecologies Of Ballarat
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'(Edward Casey, The Fate of Place, 249) Philosopher of place Edward Casey proposes that regions are experienced through interconnected places; such place-filled regions are made up of the unique communities, environments and histories that dwell within them. Up to 60,000 people who attended the Begonia Festival in the regional city of Ballarat in 2019 may have walked past a modest grassy bank marked out by colourful bunting between three great oak trees in the Botanical Gardens. Importantly, Ballarat sits within the broader Central Victorian Goldfields Region, currently nominated for World Heritage Listing, with claims to be 'the most extensive, coherent and best-surviving landscape anywhere, that illustrates the global gold rush phenomenon of the second half of the 19th century'. This heritage works powerfully both on emotional and economic registers to define regional identity and 'a sense of place' that is strongly linked to tourism appeal. As Michelle Duffy notes, such regions are comprised of places and peoples and systems - interconnected in conversations with time, culture, reality, belief, nature, industry and relationships. Eco-scenographer Tanja Beer discusses the design process undertaken by her Masters of Landscape Architecture students, Libin Wang and Zongjing Yu, whose stage design for Ariel Songs won a competition undertaken as part of the Performing Landscape Studio. Beer led the design process and helped her students to deepen their understanding of place-based design thinking through extended community consultation with the Friends of the Ballarat Botanical Gardens and the City of Ballarat. [...] in 2013, the City of Ballarat signed an agreement with UNESCO to act as a pilot city in the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) programme which takes a 'bottom up' approach to development and seeks significant consultation with 'grass roots' participants to elicit what the community values about their lived experience of place to plan future growth. The Ballarat Imagine survey identified that the community clearly valued their natural environment, gardens and also the tangible and intangible heritage of Ballarat. Accordingly, the Ballarat Creative City Strategy (2019)17 and the Ballarat Event Strategy 2018-2028118 highlight that festivals such as the Begonia Festival play an important role in the ongoing identity of the city and its surrounding rural areas.' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon Australasian Drama Studies Regional Theatre in Australia no. 77 October 2020 21039143 2020 periodical issue

    'The inquiry came on the back of an effective shutdown of most work in the creative sector as a result of social distancing restrictions and lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March, and of extensive debate about the Australian Government's reluctance to offer a dedicated financial support package to an industry that, by the government's own estimates, contributed $111.7 billion in 2016/17, or 6.4 per cent of GDP. The terms of reference for the inquiry appeared accordingly broad: 'The Committee will inquire into Australia's creative and cultural industries and institutions including, but not limited to, Indigenous, regional, rural and community based organisations'. More broadly, the frustrations of lockdown, a newfound capacity to work remotely, loss of income, and the more general reassessment of life choices and lifestyle that COVID-19 provoked all resulted in an unprecedented net population loss in Australia's big cities, with an October 2020 Ipsos poll finding that one in ten Melburnians were considering a move to regional Victoria. Meanwhile, among the very limited federal stimulus offered to the arts in the early months of the pandemic was a $27 million 'Targeted Support' package in April, which directed $10 million to the music industry, $7 million to Indigenous arts, and $10 million 'to help regional artists and organisations develop new work and explore new delivery models'. In short, while COVID-19 has arguably reconfigured the Australian arts landscape, and the ways in which we understand where arts happens, it also made visible changes that were already occurring, particularly outside major metropolitan centres. Recommendation 1 was that 'the Federal Government increase its investment in building enabling infrastructure to improve connectivity, key services and amenity through coordinated regional plans', while Recommendation 13 anticipated further work on 'the cultivation of social, cultural and community capital'.5 This initiative built in turn on existing trends. Australia's enormous size continues to present major practical challenges when it comes to touring on the one hand, or building and sustaining arts infrastructure on the other. [...]the high-profile shift in the funding narrative over 2020 towards the regions, as well as the obligatory pivot towards the digital environment, has not entirely done away with a metropolitan funding bias, which is most apparent in the fact that the city-based Major Performing Arts organisations receive a disproportionate amount of the federal funding pie.' (Editorial introduction)

    2020
    pg. 208-243, 375-380
Last amended 30 Nov 2021 14:18:36
208-243, 375-380 Ariel Songs : Performing Cultural Ecologies Of Ballaratsmall AustLit logo Australasian Drama Studies
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