1st December 2018. Painted Tree Gallery, Northcliffe.
Our vision is to bring a range of community art workshops to the Northcliffe and neighbouring communities during 2018 celebrating social and creative inclusion and culminating in an anthology and celebratory exhibition leading into the week recognising People with Disabilities in early December, 2018.
We have chosen to use our river systems as a theme for the exhibition because our water courses influence all our communities and express both our diversity and commonalities no matter where we live.
The concept for the overall project was inspired by the story of Aimee Dickson, a young Northcliffe artist who has special needs, and her peers both local and city based. Aimee’s journey is inspiring and demonstrates how the smallest steps can positively impact on each of our local communities.
Northcliffe’s isolation lessens choice for local people because of geographic constraints but when there is an opportunity to come together, the response is enthusiastic and appreciative with examples of community art projects visible throughout the town and local exhibitions resulting from specific projects shown in the Painted Tree Gallery.
Lack of choice can be even more challenging for artists who have a disability living in small communities and by bringing the Creative Connections model into this community we hope to introduce a new concept which may lead to new and ongoing networks which can not only create more intimate links within our own community but also reduce social isolation by raising awareness around disability and the arts and its importance in our cultures. Throughout the year, the workshops, updates in the local paper and on Facebook will ensure the conversations will continue throughout the years.
In 2017 Aimee became the first remote or regional artist to entered in the Perth based Creative Connections exhibitions and her entry into this community also brought a poet from Balingup and three more from Northcliffe into the Creative Connections network for the first time. This led to conversations with local residents including Aimee’s mother, Fiona Dickson about the possibility of using the Creative Connections Art and Poetry Exhibitions model to run workshops and hold an exhibition in Northcliffe. In Later, artists poets and from Northcliffe and Balingup supported the idea and believed that holding a series of workshops provide opportunities to bring the local community together.
The project will embrace creative and social inclusion, the power of community and personal journeys by bringing them together in a celebratory exhibition at the end of the year in the Painted Tree Gallery.
It is traditional for Creative Connections Art and Poetry Exhibitions to produce an anthology and this time it will be with the people of Northcliffe. There will be many stories celebrated including the larger story of the transformative nature of difference and how it can bring us together.
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The funding for this project and the exhibition is sourced from Community Arts Network and local community grants.
The The Ebb and Flow of Linking Waterways Art & Poetry Exhibition is supported by:
