Land Art
- 10 Nov 2014
It was a devastating flood that brought Artists and Farmers together across the Lockyer Valley to creatively explore resilience and community identity…
According to the Community and Regional Resilience Institute, community resilience is ‘..the capacity to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change’ (Community Resilience System Initiative, final Report 2011)
Often the language of Emergency Management is about ‘doing’ for communities and the decision of what is best is often taken away from the people whom these decisions impact. The Lockyer Valley Arts Corps (LVAC) had come together to change this premise and to take up the baton to lead and support their community to grow into a collective vision of a community culturally rich, vibrant and sustainable.
The Land Art Project is one of the first steps they have taken toward actualising this vision. The project is one of the LVAC’s local responses to ongoing impacts of the 2011 and 2013 floods, aiming to celebrate their community and reflect that in a farmer’s day-to-day life, in fact in our whole community’s day to day life, we are creative by necessity and this creativity drives our community’s resilience.
The Land Art project aims to support farming families and the broader community to build a stronger sense of cultural identity and connectivity across the Lockyer Valley whilst exploring notions of contemporary arts practice. Four artists were in residence with four farming families over April – May 2014. During their stay they created works in collaboration with the farm community, responding to the landscape and the shared stories. These artworks were presented at informal gatherings at the farms – a local neighbour focused celebration bringing friends and neighbours together to share inspiration, food and stories. In the final week of the project the artists created a collaborative exhibition work presented for the broader community at the Lockyer Rural Lifestyle Expo, with the goal of building connections with others interested in the development of this project.
“I like my farming but I don’t just live to be a farmer. This is an avenue to express more.” Farmer project participant
Lockyer Valley is known as ‘Australia’s salad bowl’, farming here has a long history. The linkage between the farming community and the arts is minimal at the best of times, yet these two industries are struggling with similar issues of support, advocacy and a need to develop creative ways of building a sustainable future. The artist community realise that they have much to offer in capturing a growing interest from ‘drive-by’ tourists coming into the region and are proactively working to build opportunities for the development of ‘cultural’ tourism, opportunities for visitors to truly engage with something of the local lived experience. Partnering with the farming community to establish ongoing Land Art experiences offers supportive outcomes for all.
“It is generally agreed that cultural tourists spend substantially more than standard tourists do. This form of tourism is also becoming generally more popular throughout the world” The Impact of Culture on Tourism, OECD (2009), Paris
Successful cultural tourism is rely on effective partnerships, working to enable real change and to have a long lasting and meaningful impact on partners, locals and visitors. The Land Art project has the potential to be an exemplar successful cultural tourism initiative. The collaborative approach of this project will challenge traditional stereotypes of rural identity by focusing on the creative promotion of contemporary culture within the community’s historical farming context.
Effectively prepared communities are able to respond and recover in ways that help minimise any disasters disruption to everyday life and the local economy. By building real relationships between individuals and sectors of the community the Land Art project and LVAC support the strengthening of information channels, resource sharing and the building of response mechanisms that are realistic and relevant for the community.
“After what Tamara has created and what we have seen tonight, everybody should do it. Everybody should have an artist on their farm.” Farmer project participant
The role of artists in regional Queensland is vital to the growth and vitality of our towns and communities beyond the direct engagement of arts and cultural programs. By taking the lead in the development of responsive partnerships and driving a vision for a future that is focused on creative engagement and participation in an active cultural and civic life, arts and cultural practitioners show themselves as empowered leaders and activists in the task of building resilient and welcoming communities.
Scotia is a community cultural development artsworkers and advocate who has worked across Australia and Internationally developing programs, training and advocacy for the arts. She is currently managing the Creative Recovery Network, supporting and advocating for the role arts and culture play in disaster preparedness and recovery.