Author Archives: Siobhan

A few weeks ago I was asked by The Guardian to be on a panel discussing “Going Beyond the Press Release in Arts PR”. From the experience I learnt two things: 1. online forums are tricky when you can’t type good, i.e. fast, and 2. The role of PR in the arts is thriving. With small budgets and big ideas, arts organisations, more than ever before, are realising the best use of precious cash is to engage with a strategic media communications specialist who understands their work and the media terrain.

NO BRAINER!

So, without giving away too many trade secrets (there are more), here are some of the key outcomes from the discussion, neatly packaged into “13 Tips for those working in Arts PR“, with love from me and four other dudes whom I slow-typed with.

I know blog posts are meant to be opinions rather than press releases but this, in my opinion, is big news. In 2012 Australia’s longest standing, national arts and social change organisation, Big hART, celebrates its 20^th anniversary. This significant milestone marks two decades of award-winning, and nationally and internationally-acclaimed, theatre, film and community projects that have impacted thousands of Australians, including those in the some of the most remote regions in Australia.

Big hART was co-founded by writer, director and visionary Scott Rankin with John Bakes in Burnie, Tasmania, in 1992. It was a time of economic turmoil due to a drastic downsizing of the local paper mills. Big hART started working creatively with young people and families experiencing trauma and disadvantage from the restructuring as a way of highlighting how the city was so focused on its own survival it forgot those at risk. The outcome was a series of long-term projects which included Big hART’s inaugural production, GIRL – a theatre piece, designed and constructed using paper from Burnie paper mill, that followed the descent of a fragile young girl into the juvenile justice system and propelled Big hART into Australia’s arts arena.

Big hART partners with artists and communities to create arts-based projects that drive change and empower some of the most severely disadvantaged Australians. The company fearlessly tackles Australia’s most pressing social issues in sometimes extremely marginalised communities. These include domestic violence, drug and alcohol misuse, youth suicide, climate change, Indigenous language loss, homelessness, public housing, the juvenile justice system and social inclusion.

Over its 20 years, Big hART has not only produced six feature length films, 14 unique theatre projects that have toured domestically and internationally, and developed over 24 unique, arts-based community projects; the company has changed the lives of well over 7,000 Australians living in over 42 communities across the country, has helped numerous remote Australian communities experience genuine and marked improvements in social and cultural behavior, and has driven significant changes in Australian social policy. Add to that over 20 awards with countless nominations, and inclusion in over 16 major arts festivals, the impact Big hART has had on Australia’s social and artistic landscapes is significant.

On his widely-regarded company turning 20, Scott Rankin, Big hART’s Co-founder and Artistic Director, said, “Twenty years ago you may have thought the least likely place to establish an arts company would have been the North West Coast of Tasmania. Big hART is living proof that neither remoteness nor a commitment to investigating some of the country’s darkest issues need detract from the creation of award-winning art work. The reality is that these ideas – community and social change – continue to be the foundations of what Big hArt is all about.

“As an arts business, Big hART has become one of Australia’s largest cultural exporters – one in 20 Australians have seen a Big hART creation, Namatjira has been touring nationally for over 31 weeks since 2010 and last year a play reading of Ngapartji Ngapartji in Japanese was organised at the anniversary of the Fukuishima nuclear disaster in Japan. We’re so pleased to celebrate this milestone with our comrades all over Australia and the world.”

Some of Big hART’s key projects over the last 20 years include:

• Namatjra – an award-winning theatre show and creative community development project that pays tribute to the life and contribution of acclaimed watercolour artist and Western Aranda man, Albert Namatjira. Namatjira is currently touring Australia – visit www.namatjira.bighart.org
• Ngapartji Ngapartji – a highly acclaimed theatre show and education program that focuses on sustaining the Central Desert’s Pitjantjatjara language. It is the result of a long term inter-generational language and arts project based in Alice Springs, and has received the 2008 Deadly Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Film, TV and Theatre, three Sydney Theatre Award nominations including best mainstage production and was an NT Innovation Award Finalist.  www.ngapartji.org
• Drive – a film made with young men on the North West Coast of Tasmania that looks at the needless automobile deaths of young men due to drug and alcohol abuse. www.drive.org.au
• Gold – a rural and remote project working across the Murray-Darling Basin in Victoria, NSW, QLD and South Australia that addresses the issues of water management, drought and climate change and their impacts on rural individuals, families and communities. It comprises film, photography, music and theatre making as well as education, skills development, crime prevention, social justice, community development and participation, and policy research. http://au.org.au/public/
• Hurt – AFI Award-winning docu-drama that gave 250 young Australians from rural areas the opportunity to tell their own stories in their own words with their own images. The cast and crew included 15 car thieves, 23 homeless young people and nine young people with mental illness.
• Smashed – a community-based film festival that challenges young people on the North West Coast of Tasmania to tackle the issue of youth binge drinking. www.smashed.bighart.org
• This Is Living – a large theatrical work that explores the journey of growing old, against a backdrop of youthful energy. This is Living combined intimate stories from older members of our communities with the kinetic performances of skaters. It toured in 2009, for Ten Days on the Island, to Wynyard, Latrobe, Hobart and Franklin.
• Radio/Drive-In Holiday – a mobile cinema of vintage caravans filled with food, film, theatre, visual and radio art from some Australia’s renowned artists that celebrates the shack culture of communities at Trial Harbour, Couta Rocks, Crayfish Creek, Tomahawk and Southport.

Fore more information, visit www.bighart.org

This article is desperately sad, but will be no surprise to anyone who’s had the unfortunate opportunity to visit the Surabaya Zoo in Java, Indonesia, where a beautiful giraffe called Kliwon has died with 20kg of plastic in his stomach.

We travelled there in 2008 and were so shocked by the state of the zoo we took the photos below. The enclosures are dirty, run-down and filled with litter. The water features are toxic. Chimpanzees sit in the pedestrian walkways – when we were there one was eating a plastic bag – and a sad camel pulls visitors around in a carriage all day. Apparently hundreds of animals have died there in the last few years. It is truly devastating.

According to a zoo spokesperson…

“We got the autopsy results last night. They found a plastic lump weighing around 20 kilograms and 60 centimetres in diameter in his stomach,” zoo spokesman Anthan Warsito said.

The giraffe was also found to be infected with tuberculosis.

“We have a staff of around 180, and seven of them have tuberculosis, so it’s possible one of them transmitted it to the giraffe. At this point we don’t really know the cause of death,” Mr Warsito said.

The plastic probably came from food wrappers the animal ingested after visitors tossed them into its pen over several years, Mr Warsito said.

I LOVE this. Wish I’d thunk of it. What a dude. Hope his book sells big time.

If you want to buy Pat’s book – here ’tis.

There’s been a bit of a mini-furor in theatre-land this week when a new online news outlet, the Global Mail, chose to present this article as their inaugural Arts and Culture feature. It is only a mini-furor and one that I’m sure won’t linger (I hope), so I’ll just give a brief account from my perspective.

The gist of the GM’s story, as per the sub-header is, “Bloggers are rising up to tell Sydney theatre lovers what they really think of the latest plays, with no punches pulled.”

1. The story actually focuses on just one blogger, a “sassy” drama teacher – Jane Simmons – who writes a theatre review blog called Shit on Your Play. There are a few comments from another online reviewer, but his offerings certainly don’t indicate any sense of ‘revolution’, just the idea that theatregoers like to talk about their experiences afterwards. Really? (Does anyone hear a dripping noise?).

With that in mind, I’ll just start by rejigging the GM’s angle a tad: “A Sydney theatre blogger rises up to tell Sydney theatre lovers what she really thinks of the latest plays, with no punches pulled.”

2. Shit On Your Play tends to hate on stuff (like, der). Including good stuff. I would never pretend to be anything but a layperson in regards to theatre reviewing (I like it or I don’t, and then if someone else hates what I like and provides a good argument as to why they hate it, then I hate it too). But, from my perspective, SOYP is just counter-productive snipeyness that takes the heart and soul out of what theatre makers do.

So, let’s say: “A snipey Sydney Theatre Blogger swoops to tell Sydney theatre lovers what she really thinks of the latest plays, with no punches pulled.” 

3. There is a gaggle (A cast? A rack? A murder?) of intelligent, interesting and thought-provoking reviewers – both on and offline – in the contemporary Australian theatre industry who have been pulling their own punches for many years. Online reviewing isn’t new, nor nasty reviewing (remember the old SMH Metro writer who’d groan and sigh if he hated what he was watching?). And neither are newsworthy. The difference with these guys is that most genuinely cherish and support the industry that employs them.

4. Despite offering a unique view, which of course it does and is entitled to do, and in-depth overview of each play, as is possible online, SOYP doesn’t speak to an audience outside the industry. Anyone who doesn’t frequent the theatre often, but is looking for a new and fascinating experience, will get lost in the historical references and dropped names (included for credibility, obviously), and will perhaps even get bored and stop reading. I did.

OK, so let’s say: “A new online news source attempts to promote the ‘electricity’ of online media by rolling out a new-to-the-game, snipey Sydney theatre blogger who swoops to tell the Sydney theatre INDUSTRY what she really thinks.” 

That’s kind of it really.