Artlands Conversations #5: Ros Abercrombie (Part 2)

Regional Arts Australia's Artlands '23 gathering embodied a profound systems change and flipped the script on how to bring people together for hard and important conversations. The experience was captured in the newly released C R E A T I N G S P A C E documentary, exploring what is possible when a conference is curated around care and wellbeing. This new five-part podcast series continues the conversation, sharing some of the full interviews and diving deeper into the idea that “The future is regional. The future is creative.” 

 

MEET: ROS ABERCROMBIE

To close this series we speak to Ros Abercrombie, Executive Director of Regional Arts Australia about the thought process behind Artlands 2023. 

 

This conversation doesn’t shy away from the truth of co-designing a new way to gather, of navigating how to create a space that is culturally safe and appropriate for the different participants that we would be inviting, the challenges that we didn’t see coming, the successes that we all achieved through the process. 

 

There’s a lot to cover so we’ve broken it into two episodes, this one carries on from last episode, where Ros was told we would need healers at the event, and just what that meant from a cultural knowledge perspective.  

 

And then we speak about the final act, Act 5, on the final day of Artlands 2023. We’ve heard the participants speak about a specific moment when one of the participants spoke during this time. We’re now going to hear Ros’ experience of that moment, and what we would do differently if we were to gather people together again in this way. 

 

Ros Abercrombie: I think for me personally, at the time, it was it was a really challenging space to be feeling responsible for that room, feeling responsible for my team, feeling responsible for all of the facilitators and all the participants, the keynote listeners that are really close colleagues, ensuring everyone felt okay through that, and that process after the event was a good couple of weeks of conversations, checking in on people and checking in on how everyone was feeling. 

 

So I certainly felt it. I felt very responsible for it. I still feel very responsible for it.  

 

 

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Artlands ‘23 brought 80 purposefully selected participants together at the National Gallery Australia on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (in Canberra), for three days, five acts, tackling the challenges and opportunities presented by the provocation: The Future of Regional Australia is Fundamentally Creative. 

 

Artlands ‘23 is supported by the Regional Arts Fund and delivered by Regional Arts Australia. The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia. 

 

'The future is regional. The future is creative' is a registered trademark of Regional Arts Australia.  

 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Regional Arts Australia.