Yikes, it’s begun! KSCA is now working on an exciting multi-partner project for 2018-2019 in regional NSW, for which we have been awarded funding through the Regional Partnerships scheme of Create NSW.
We are partnering with:
– Cementa Inc. (Kandos)
– The Living Classroom (Bingara)
– Starfish Initatives
– Arts North West (New England NSW)
The project title started out as a joke without a punchline:
what would happen if we brought together artists, farmers and scientists for an open ended collaborative process?
After our successful public forum Futurelands2 in Kandos in November 2016, we decided to connect to Bingara, our “sister city” in rural NSW. Bingara is home to The Living Classroom (TLC), a community run space which hosts workshops and incubates innovation in regenerative agriculture (pictured above). Importantly, TLC has 26 beds, a workshop and seminar space, and over 150 hectares of land set aside for agricultural experimentation. An exciting focus of this experimentation is carbon sequestration in soil – for which they now have a dedicated site called The Carbon Farm.
The resources of the TLC led us to imagine what it would be like to run an “artist-in-residency” style program there, expanded to include not just artists but also farmers and scientists.
What might farmers and scientists come up with if they start behaving like artists? And how might artists’ practices expand when faced with the deep knowledge of farmers and scientists?
That’s what we’re trying to find out.
This project also taps into a set of relationships already developing in Kandos. Thus, several of our collaborative residencies with be hosted by farmers and local community members in the mid-west of NSW. The outcomes of all of this blue-sky experimentation will be presented at a public forum at the beautifully restored Roxy Theatre in Bingara, and as an integral part of the Cementa 19 festival in Kandos.
We will launch the project in style on Saturday May 5, 2018 in Bingara, when the North West Theatre Company will present ‘An artist, a farmer and a scientist walk into a bar’ as a theatrical performance! The play will be accompanied by a bountiful feast of locally foraged and organic produce, and an informal discussion with some of our artists and collaborators. All in the magical setting of Bingara’s Roxy Theatre (built in 1936 and restored to its former glory in 2011). It’s going to be a ripper evening – come back to this page, follow KSCA on facebook, or sign up to the newsletter (bottom of this page) for updates.
