I am currently a PhD candidate at the Queensland University of Technology.

CURRENT ABSTRACT

The rationales associated with community arts policy and practice in Australia, have periodically been questioned and subsequently built upon since the field became a funding category of the Australia Council for the Arts in the early 1970s. These changes have occurred alongside significant moments of transition that have occurred in the broader cultural and technological landscape. These turning points include the influence of mass media on the formation of culture, shifting government policy, multiculturalism, and the proliferation of personal computers and low-cost media production hardware. These moments have contributed to reconfigurations of the field exemplified by multiple name changes, policy shifts and the introduction of new practices.

This study asserts that computer and mobile device networks are at the centre of the current cultural moment; and, hypothesises that like earlier technological and cultural moments of significant transition, the current ‘networked moment’ is having effects on community arts and cultural development. I argue that these effects are manifested in three ways which I describe as ‘shifts’: a shift from content to network paradigms; a shift from sustainable content production to sustainable network-making; and, the shift from on-the-ground facilitation to the brokering of ideas and knowledge across communications networks. The project explores the possible implications of these shifts for the roles, identities and practices of community arts, particularly in that sub-sector of community arts that is most closely engaged with digital media technologies – an area of practice I will refer to as community media arts (CMA).

Two experiments have been designed to investigate the implications of each of the aforementioned shifts. They will be co-designed and implemented in partnership with the Sydney-based community media arts organization CuriousWorks. The first experiment will test new ‘networked’ CMA practices using a conceptual framework represented by the term ‘network-broker’; the second, will test the hypothesis that network-making should be considered integral to sustainable CMA practice.

The study will produce a practical output in the form of a digital toolkit. This web-based resource will be designed as a ‘living’ repository – a pool of information, activities and software tools that users can add to, feed back to and rewrite. As a hackable space, it will foster an environment that embraces change and emergent practices. The digital toolkit will forge connections with existing online community resources, to become a node in a wider, adhoc Internet-mediated network that is nurturing self-directed creative practice.