Summit to showcase regional WA’s outstanding artistic talent

Summit to showcase regional WA’s outstanding artistic talent

Regional Arts WA

The vibrancy and depth of artistic talent across regional WA will be highlighted at the 2017 WA Regional Arts Summit, coming to Mandurah in October!

Outstanding examples of the visual and performing arts, including a creative community response to bushfire devastation, an indigenous arts and dance performance, regional comedy and a youth circus will be on show at the four-day event, being hosted by Country Arts WA in partnership with the City of Mandurah and the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre.

Annette Carmichael’s “The Beauty Index” will be one of the incredible shows making up the Regional Showcase. Photo by Nic Duncan

The Summit will bring together 300 arts workers, artists and performers from across WA and beyond to share ideas and build the state’s creative future.

Country Arts WA Executive Director Paul McPhail says the Summit will be a great chance to share information and experiences and explore new ways of facilitating, supporting and promoting the arts across regional WA.

“WA has a lot to be proud of in the way we nurture, facilitate and support our arts communities and we are delighted to showcase the unique and vibrant depth of talent and diversity we have in our artists and performers across this huge state,

“We wanted to bring the Summit to Mandurah because it is a forward thinking city that recognises that arts and culture are integral to community connection and expression.

“The City of Mandurah is one of the first local governments to develop an arts, heritage and culture strategy and the quality of the artistic output from the region is world-class, as we will see during the Summit.”

Early bird registrations are now on, offering a discount of up to $75 are available until August 31.

Four speakers will explore the Northcliffe community’s creative response to tragedy in the wake of the horrific 2015 bushfire as part of the showcase. Photo courtesy of Southern Forest Arts

Paul says the arts is a vital industry delivering tangible and real results such as job creation and increased tourism as well as a myriad of social benefits and community capacity building that make our regional centres attractive places to live, work and play.

“In 2016 alone the arts created more than 2,500 regional job opportunities as well as 1,910 new arts and cultural works and reached a total audience of more than 300,000 people across WA,”

“The success of these projects and initiatives, however, goes far beyond the economics. As the summit showcase will demonstrate, the arts have the unique ability to help regional communities recover from natural disasters such as bushfires as well as to address real social and cultural
issues.

“There is such an amazing level of talent and creativity within our regions and it is going to be exciting to bring these artists and performers, many of them local community members, together for this series of performances and forums and to share the benefit of their knowledge, experiences and achievements.”

The Summit showcase will be highlighted by six projects funded by Country Arts WA through the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, which you can find full details of here.


Country Arts WA acknowledges the support of the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries and Primary Industries and Regional Development with funding from Royalties for Regions Creative Regions and Lotterywest, including support from the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, Regional Development Australia (Peel WA) and Peel Development Commission.

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