Leading national and international arts experts, including UK-based Eddie Berg, will come together next month in Alice Springs to discuss creative citizenship and the growing role of the arts in communities at the Charles Darwin Symposium Creative Citizenship: Community, Creative Industries and the Future.
The free arts symposium will examine the role of creative citizenship and what it means to be involved in the creative life of your community.
Charles Darwin University’s (CDU) dean of law, business and the arts and Symposium convenor, Adrian Walter, said everyone has the potential to become a creative citizen.
“We’ll be looking at the role of creativity in communities, whether it be joining a musical group or using new technologies such as blogging on the internet to put forward a point of view,” Mr Walter said.
”Joining a music group is a classic example of community involvement,” he adds. “No one should doubt the power of music to become a huge bonding force within a community.”
CDU has invited outstanding speakers, including Eddie Berg, who used to run an arts and technology centre in Liverpool, England, that has become a benchmark for new ways to encourage local people into the arts.
Berg is the founder of FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), now regarded as Britain’s leading centre for film, video and new media.
Another key speaker is Malcolm Gillies, who besides being a distinguished Australian academic, is an expert on the music of the innovative composer Percy Grainger and Bela Bartok.
Mr Walter points out that with modern technology there is a stream of new communication tools that challenge traditional notions of what it means to be creative. The Symposium will explore such questions as the nature of creativity, the blossoming of the creative industries and how communities can interact on a creative level.
The Symposium will not, however, be limited to academic discussion about the meaning of the arts and how to cope with new technologies as the pace of the 21st century heats up. There will be panel discussions with more traditional artists, as well as those who have found new means of creative expression through the latest technologies.
Registrations are now open from members of the public for the September 27-28 Symposium, Creative Citizenship: Community, Creative Industries and the Future at the Araluen Centre in Alice Springs. Registration is free.
For more information or to register log onto www.cdu.edu.au/cdss or email cdss@cdu.edu.au or telephone 08 8946 6529.