Theatre luminary Lindy Hume calls for 'counter-urban' regional arts revolution
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Opera Queensland artistic director Lindy Hume is calling for a newly assertive regional arts sector to break through metro-centric perspectives of regional artists being junior partners.
For the past 12 years the multi-award winning director has continued her extensive and highly successful national and international career from a home base on the far south coast of New South Wales.
In that time Ms Hume has directed the Sydney and Perth Festivals, and directed operas in Australia, Europe and the United States.
Based on her experience of working regionally, nationally and internationally, she said she had formed a view of a "disconnect" between metropolitan artists and regional artists.
Ms Hume said the two sectors "ran parallel but separate to each other" and there was a need for "a more integrated metro-regional cultural landscape".
"For decades a rather beige rhetoric has perpetuated, a folksy, parochial, public image of the arts in regional Australia," she said.
"You say 'regional artists' and you think RM Williams boots, you think a certain aesthetic and you think a certain personality, and what I'm seeing is that is inaccurate."
Above all, Ms Hume said, there needed to be a change in a "metro-centric mindset of regional arts being in a junior relationship".
"I don't want to identify as a regional artist and somebody in a junior relationship with a metro artist, and I want other regional artists to have pride in what they do also," she said.
"Even the terms regional arts and regional artists are problematic because subtly implicit in their history and usage is a perception of hierarchy in which regional is in a junior position to the arts in metropolitan centres."
More diversity in regional art
Ms Hume said her "cheeky suggestion" was to drop the term regional in favour of "counter-urban".
She said artists in the regions were more diverse and producing a broad range of work that was not being recognised because of entrenched stereotypes of a regional artist.
In the south-east NSW village of Candelo, Ms Hume launched a new essay, Restless Giant: changing cultural values in regional Australia, and a regional tour of talks in which she called for change.
"The Restless Giant I'm talking about is the collective rumblings of artists across regional Australia," she said.
"A new more assertive sensibility is on the rise. There's an appetite for change and the emergence of a progressive, new identity."
Ms Hume said not only should regional artists be viewed as creative equals, but the distribution of arts funding should be equitable.
She said although regional Australians comprised about 30 per cent of the population, the regions received only 5–15 per cent of arts funding.
Ms Hume said a rebellious counter-urban movement would have a profound impact on the national culture, contributing work that was uniquely influenced by its origins.
"Moving to or staying in the country to make art is a decision made consciously and purposefully by many Australian artists because it's here, away from the white noise of the urban landscape, that we're at our most productive, focused and inspired," she said.
Creative communities in rural Australia
Ms Hume chose Candelo as the venue for the first of a series of talks in NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Queensland partly because it is not far from her home and also because of its creative community of musicians she cites in her paper.
She said a dozen or so independent musicians — including Heath Cullen, Melanie Horsnell, David Ross Macdonald (The Waifs), Phil Moriarty and Sam Martin (Black Sea Gentlemen) — maintained successful national and international careers from a village of only 400 people.
The formation of the Candelo Arts Society in the 1980s has contributed to a substantial development of the creative community, supporting local artists and attracting others to the area.
For the past 10 years, the society has been hosting the Candelo Village Festival, one of the major festivals in the region.
"The abundance of time, space and silence makes living in places like ours ideal for creating new work. Just ask the excellent and incredibly productive, wildly inventive musicians of Candelo," Ms Hume said.
'Arts critical to fabric of life'
A panel discussion included directors of the Four Winds Festival at Bermagui, fLiNG Physical Theatre from Bega, Merrigong Theatre, and Bega Valley Shire Council general manager Leanne Barnes.
Ms Barnes said Local Government had a role to play in supporting and developing a regional arts industry.
"It's clearly our role to advocate, to facilitate, to provide opportunities for industry groups to get together," she said.
"We're not just about manufacturing at Bega Cheese, or fishing and farming, forestry and tourism.
"The arts are really critical to the fabric of our life here."
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, regional, theatre, performance-art, candelo-2550
