Give your support to State of the Arts Media – a great service with a bright future

State of the Arts Media has just two weeks left to reach their crowdfunding goal of $4000. If they can’t reach it by November 23, they lose the benefit of the donations pledged to date. Their aim is to commission 23 stories from five local writers to continue building a record of arts and culture across western Sydney and regional New South Wales. It’s founded on their generous and audacious vision that the arts help to build understanding, innovation and social cohesion.

After much experimentation, Natalie Wadwell of south west Sydney and her co-founder Lucinda Davison of the NSW south coast established their multi platform website State of the Arts Media at the beginning of the year. At their campaign launch on October 23, they raised $1300 and are now 40% of their way to $4000. The campaign was developed under the umbrella of the international not-for-profit Start Some Good crowdfunding instigator and its Parramatta based event Pitch for Good. They help people initiate and independently finance their own social enterprises.

A year ago, I asked if there was a future for this blog Western Sydney Frontier and following Natalie’s enthusiastic response, State of the Arts Media is now a more than worthy successor. I have gladly contributed copies of my book Passion Purpose Meaning: Arts Activism in Western Sydney as rewards for donations to their fund.

Natalie writes –

There are 3 ways that you can help

Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. You can help us reach our all or nothing fundraising goal by mobilising your community to help us reach $4000 by the 23rd November. Without your support, we risk walking away with nothing.

Are you in?

• Contribute to our fundraiser. You can choose from some awesome rewards, including copies of Katherine Knight’s book, Passion Purpose Meaning: Arts Activism in Western Sydney. There are only eight $50 vouchers for Taste Cultural Food Tours remaining. You can snap one up before they all go! Gift it to a friend or spoil yourself.
• Share. Tell your friends why you support SOTA Media. We appreciate that not everyone can financially support our campaign, so don’t forget to include #cultureiseverywhere and we can say a BIG thank you!
• Read. You can click here to read the talk that started it all at Pitch for Good Parramatta. I spoke about the importance of documenting art and culture from beyond major cities. Will you let me know what you think?

I’d really appreciate any support you can send our way, .
Are you feeling like a cultural crusader?

In creativity,
Natalie

It will soon be four years since Natalie addressed a TEDxYouth@Sydney forum about engaging communities through art. Already in her second year of cultural theory at UNSW’s College of Fine Arts, she was fed up with the lack of creative opportunity for young people in her home suburb of Campbelltown and the constant assumption that people in western Sydney don’t appreciate arts and culture anyway.

She was well aware that the region already had some outstanding arts facilities and programs, like Campbelltown Arts Centre, almost entirely as a result of community advocacy supported by local councils, but there was little for independent young people wanting to explore opportunities for themselves. She knew it was tough, but there wasn’t much encouragement for a career in the arts and little of a climate that welcomed discussion, ideas and experimentation that might support such development.

Rather than accept the status quo, she set out to acquire the skills and experience necessary to enable the emergence of a self-sustaining dynamic creative environment. It had to be okay to trial things and learn from your mistakes. She volunteered and sought mentorship opportunities with creative venues like Campbelltown Arts Centre, 107 Projects in Redfern and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art to analyse and develop some alternative approaches. She was accepted by The School for Social Entrepreneurs last year and completed a course that gave her more of the tools and mentors she needed.

Check out all the links in this story and support in whatever way you can. Five dollars would be a help and $35 will reward you with a copy of the book. We will all benefit.

Breaking new ground in telling our own stories through theatre and writing

More and more people are telling the stories of western Sydney and regional New South Wales. Felicity Castagna won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction in 2014 for her debut novel The Incredible Here and Now. With a spare writing style she evokes a picture of the inner life and thoughts of Michael a teenage boy in Parramatta, who undergoes the sudden loss of his older brother and its impact on his family and his own growing up. It’s a gentle story of a quest for understanding and finding his place in the world and is filled with intimate glimpses of his home and family and the places where he hangs out with friends.

Yes, there is drama, but the story is more about Michael’s responses to it rather than the events themselves. The Incredible Here and Now has a quiet, meditative quality about it so it will be very interesting to see how it makes the transition to the stage. The National Theatre of Parramatta commissioned Felicity to create a play of the same name from her novel, which opens at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, on July 13 and runs to Saturday, July 22. For Felicity, it has been a great learning curve as she works with directors Jeneffa Soldatic, right, and Wayne Harrison. Jeneffa herself grew up in Sydney’s south west, at Ingleburn, and feels that Michael’s teenage experience has many similarities to her own. To make her way in theatre, she had to leave Sydney for New York, where she graduated from the Actors Studio in 2004 and became one of only a few Australians to be accepted as a life member.

Felicity says, “I’ve been attending shows at Riverside Theatres for more than 15 years. To see my own work on stage there, in my own community is such a privilege. The support and guidance provided to me by National Theatre of Parramatta, has been incredibly important in developing my own career as a writer and as a voice in the community that I love so much.”

“Fundamentally,” she says, “it’s a play about language and silence. Our personal grief is such a fundamentally hard thing to articulate whether you’re a teenage boy or a mother. That grief therefore, needed to be expressed in the visual language of the play; a box, a stack of pancakes, an older brother who is not there anymore but continually returns to stage like a memory that is always in the back of one’s mind.”

Performing the lead role of Michael is Bardiya McKinnon, above, (TV’s As the Bell Rings and In Your Dreams) and as Dom, Alex Cubis (TV’s Mako Mermaids and Rake). In addition, The Incredible Here stars Caroline Brazier, Libby Asiack, Olivia Simone, Ryan Peters and Sal Sharah. Information and bookings.

Two young women are taking the concept of storytelling across the regions of NSW to new heights. Natalie Wadwell, left, of south western Sydney and Lucinda Davison of the NSW south coast have been developing a comprehensive website State of the Arts – SOTAau – for the last two years. They “support the next generation of Australia’s storytellers”. It’s a big vision and requires a lot of work and financial investment. This year, Natalie was a recipient of a Layne Beachley Foundation ‘Aim for the Stars Scholarship.’ This money was put towards SOTAau to gain legal support and redevelop their platform. SOTA is also among the first initiatives to be supported by Arts Initiatives Australia – an organisation aimed at making Australian arts more sustainable.

You can now explore the prototype of SOTA’s new platform. Over the next six months they will be shortlisting and targeting five areas, the independent artists within and the organisations servicing them. This will help them learn where the platform can improve and how they can scale it to effectively service the vast geography that is greater western Sydney, regional NSW and the ACT.

They provide publishing opportunities for writers based in suburban and regional areas and access to a growing network of mentors and other creatives to help build sustainable career pathways. SOTA is a social enterprise: a business that generates profit for a social purpose. They say, “Local writers are best positioned to share experiences of art and culture.” Watch this space!