Footscray Community Arts Centre
We acknowledge that we are on traditional lands of the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation. We offer our respect to the Elders of these traditional lands and, through them, to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
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F.A.C.T. 11: Incarnations
We have been toiling away in the laboratory for month upon month to bring you the wonder that is Incarnations. It is part of the F.A.C.T. program Food. Art. Community. Talk. and we are endeavouring to recreate the effect of Incarnations in a studio situation which is seemingly an impossible task, but it is a task that we have stepped up to… and conquered!
Let me explain what we have accomplished! In the studio we have created a series of art experiments exploring evolving worlds. As we worked a way these worlds started colliding, creating new worlds. In practical terms the worlds had started reincarnating, but the challenge has been in taking our findings and applying them to a real life situation in the gallery space away from the safety and control that we are afforded in the ‘Laboratory’.
Our labours were opened to the public a few weeks ago to great critical acclaim……. Having been shut away in our laboratory for so long, the bright lights were disorientating and the praise, surprising…
In lab coats with strange eye glasses and other scientific paraphernalia we consider the relationships of each of the individuals’ worlds and how they should interact to create one world. Then, how the subject will react when further elements are added to the mix at latter points during the test period.
Standing in the space where the experiment has been installed, two incarnations ago, the group started to consider what the next change might involve. Danny exclaimed “It’s a bit crazy,” while the rest of the group seemed stunned as to the enormity of the task they had undertaken!
With further examination the hyposithis was put forward by Pamela “It needs water so we can swim in it.” An analogy that is very apt when we considered how fluid this process had been so far. On the closing night (Thursday 29th July) the general public is invited to join us for a panel discussion exploring the outcomes and results of our undertaking
The next change over will be at the end of this week (Fri 25th June), will the Sub (1) change it’s colour’s again, have we seen the end of “The Young Pack” (2) will the tape (3) spread out further around the space? Tune in next week to find out the answers to these questions and more!!
1. “On her majesties secret service” by Michael Delaney.
2. “The Young Pack” by Teagan Connor.
3. “Untitled” by Louise Hunter
By Alister Karl
HEMS
by
MRS CROTCHETTY H.
These can fall down, particularly if they are machine sewn, when they can fall down all at once. Safety pins are not a substitute. Everyone deserves to have one hand-sewn hem in a lifetime: invisible, contoured, flat, and done in a matching thread to the body fabric. You should use a herringbone stitch, not a slip stitch (which can fall down as fast as a machined hem) and work with a short length of thread as a safety measure. That way, if the hem snags, it will only run a short distance. Pressing a hem before you sew it is best – but it means you have to tack it firmly first. How tiresome, you say. How effective, I say. Sometimes the long way round is the short cut.
CROCHET
by
MRS CROTCHETTY H.
It’s not that ancient and not that French. It probably began as a way to make cheap lace a couple of hundred years ago, when lace was at a premium. Easier than knitting – you only ever have one stitch on the hook at a time – crochet is quick, portable, and offers endless possibilities. Australian science journalist Margaret Wertheim (daughter of Barbara, Victoria’s first Equal Opportunity Commissioner), discovered how crochet can replicate a coral reef. At the same time American mathematician, Daina Taimina, created ‘hyperbolic crochet’ as a teaching tool.
Shank
The pony refers to your legs. (Ask someone old and Anglo). Machine-sewn buttons often fall off. Buttons sewn on by hand don’t. Not if they are sewn on PROPERLY. Some buttons have a shank built in. Most don’t. The problem is, if a flat button is tightly sewn to fabric, it will not sit neatly because it needs space to cope with the two layers of fabric between it and its base. A button should be sewn on loosely. But that looks ugly. The answer is a shank. After loosely sewing on the button (5 or 6 loops) take the thread up and wind it 5 or 6 times around the threads between the button and its fabric. Voilà! A shank. Finish off neatly.
by
MRS CROTCHETTY H.
Hostess with the Mostest
Last Sat 15th May, our hostess with the mostest, Jen Barry met with RMIT Arts Management students and took them on a tour of life at Footscray Community Arts Centre.
The students were guided through the construction site and met FCAC’s current artists in residence Aamer Rahman and Nazeem Hussain from Fear of a Brown Planet.
We’re always up for a chat here – so don’t be a stranger, come on over!
JEN’S VIEW
From time to time, throughout FCAC’s history – the meanings attached to the word “community” have generated debate about who we are, what we do and who we do it for. In the early 70’s, when the organisation was founded, ‘community art’ was a radical concept. It reclaimed everyone’s right to artistic expression and engagement. Art was no longer elite, enjoyed only by those with an understanding of classical music, a love of opera or a private school education. The social activists who started FCAC were before their time in so far as they created something completely new, particularly in Melbourne’s industrialised western suburbs. But they were also absolutely of their time, in so far as that something new – a place for community art - was absolutely needed. They saw a need and they responded.
Of course, Gough Whitlam had come to power just a few years before with the fabulously sexy “It’s Time” campaign (what passionate, thinking person could resist those braless slogan t-shirts?) and I have no doubt that this seductive political context inspired the founders of FCAC. In his 1985 book, The Whitlam Government, Gough Whitlam said:
In any civilised community the arts … must occupy a central place. Their enjoyment should not be seen as something remote from everyday life. Of all the objectives of my Government none had a higher priority than the encouragement of the arts, the preservation and enrichment of our cultural and intellectual heritage. Indeed I would argue that all the other objectives of a Labor Government - social reform, justice and equity in the provision of welfare services and educational opportunities - have as their goal the creation of a society in which the arts and the appreciation of spiritual and intellectual values can flourish. Our other objectives are all means to an end; the enjoyment of the arts is an end in itself.
Skip ahead a decade to the late 80’s and a lot had changed. Economic rationalism now framed an understanding of the arts not as a central feature of a civilised society but as “an industry” which could deliver benefits, particularly in the areas of tourism, international diplomacy and the newly developing need for ‘content’ in a digital world. The arts provided colour and movement alongside major events such as the Bicentennial, giving politically-commissioned ‘do’s’ some much needed glamour. The focus was squarely on the value of the arts in an economic context and arts organisations were required to justify their funding accordingly, with an ever increasing emphasis on marketing, bums-on-seats, business plans, KPI’s and touring of arts ‘product’. It was the age of terms such as ‘flagship’ and ‘world-class’ and every arts organisation laid claim to these adjectives, inadvertently diminishing their value. The Victorian arts policy of the day, Arts 21, said it all. The policy’s six key strategies were:
• Into the Information Age (whooooosh!)
• Providing World Class Facilities
• Creating Great Programming
• Promoting Leadership
• Customer-Focused Marketing
• Delivering to Australia and the World
Mmmm, no mention of ‘art’ or ‘community’ in there….and yet the rhetoric of Arts 21 embraced the notion of ‘popular’ arts in a way that no previous arts policy had dared. The more ‘popular’ the work – that is, the more tickets sold - the better the art. Artistic success was equated with box-office and experimentation was for losers.
At this time, the arts was no longer supported because it was good for society, it was supported because it was good for business. So, when the new millennium clocked in, ‘community art’ had a problematic public brand. It was seen as the territory of basket weavers, face painters and do-good social saviours using batik to create bad art. It was outdated and simply of no real use to anyone (save a few die-hard social activists interested in quaint old fashioned concepts such as equity and justice). It was dull, earnest and so-yesterday…
It’s no surprise then that, during the last decade, FCAC contemplated the idea of losing the word ‘community’ altogether from the organisation’s name. The phrase ‘arts centre’ seemed so much more palatable and the focus would then be clearly on ‘the arts’, which is far sexier than ‘community’.
Now here we all are in 2010 and community appears to be making a comeback. This last decade has been characterised by the rise of the triple bottom line, corporate social responsibility, green companies and celebrities driving hybrids, adopting children and making whistle-stop tours for the UN. Post GFC, economic rationalism is well and truly on-the-nose (at least for now), and – luckily for FCAC - being interested in people, communities and neighbourhoods is where it’s all at. So, wouldn’t you know it – we’re ahead of our time (again). Gough would be proud!
Interestingly, despite the arts-as-useful-economic-tool model losing recent political favour, the arts-as-answer-to-all-social-problems model seems to have gained traction. Where the economic rationalists used the arts for fiscal development, today the arts support social development, being called upon to promote diversity, tolerance, social inclusion, mental health, community wellbeing and a reduction in everything from drink driving to obesity. These days, arts organisations are just as likely to receive funding from health and welfare agencies as they are arts funding bodies. So perhaps we haven’t gone as far as we thought? The ‘enrichment of our cultural and intellectual heritage’ – art for art’s sake –championed by Gough Whitlam, continues to elude us.
And so, with great vogue comes great responsibility…. by embracing the contemporary concept of ‘community’, (which, despite the fluctuations of fashion has always been our point of difference), we must answer to that very broad, sprawling, constantly fluctuating and frequently indeterminate congregation of people who live and work and study and play all around us. Those people ‘out there’ – some currently engaged with FCAC, some not – who have needs and opinions and wants we must try to acknowledge, understand and, perhaps, satisfy.
You will all no doubt be aware that Melbourne’s west is quickly changing. No longer the no-go zone it once was, the inner west is fast gentrifying and the outer west will host the greatest areas of population growth in Melbourne over the next decade. For FCAC, this means that the concept of ‘community’ can be overwhelming. It includes newly arrived refugees and immigrants, young people studying in the west, middle class professional couples with young families, residents of social housing estates, the unemployed, the socially disenfranchised and the upwardly mobile. Never before has our ‘community’ been less homogenised. Not yet at the level of the BMW in the carport or weekend visits to the seaside holiday home, the West is nonetheless in its ascendency as a powerhouse of economic, social and cultural growth. At the same time, it continues to be home for many of Australia’s most disadvantaged people. How are we to navigate our way through so much demographic change? If we can’t be all things to all people, what can we be and for whom?
We’ve recently been going through a strategic planning process to create our strategy for the next 3 years. With all the change surrounding us, we have had to make a number of decisions regarding where we will focus our limited resources. This, of course, is a pragmatic approach. We can’t do everything, right? And yet, I can’t help but worry that in choosing two or three ‘communities’ or ‘programming platforms’ to focus our efforts on, we may miss a multitude of opportunities as yet unknown.
My staff would probably say this is just my psycho-pathology – “She just can’t say no!” But, perhaps my anxiety also points to some of the limitations of the KPI paradigm (a legacy, in part, of the economic rationalism of the 80’s and 90’s)? “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” still rings in our ears as a golden rule of management. But if I set a series of KPI’s now, will they be relevant in even 3 years time? Some will and some won’t. In a January 2010 blog post by the Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Roger Martin said:
We have a deep-seated desire to quantify the world around us so that we can understand it and control it. But the world isn’t behaving. We must consider the possibility that if we can’t measure something, it might be the very most important aspect of the problem.
So how do I lead my team here at FCAC through the implementation of a business plan which is clear and focused and directive, whilst also being responsive to as yet unknown opportunities and challenges? If we become too responsive, are we adopting the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ method of management where we never know what hits us until our head’s sore? And it’s frequently sore…. Should we be taking a leaf from the structural engineering view of flexibility:
Flexibility, for an engineering system, is the ease with which the system can respond to uncertainty in a manner to sustain or increase its value delivery. Uncertainty is a key element in the definition of flexibility. Uncertainty can create both risks and opportunities in a system, and it is with the existence of uncertainty that flexibility becomes valuable.
After all, it was Charles Darwin who said:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most responsive to change.
The community is relentless. It never sleeps. It eats change for breakfast. It’s so “on the pulse” that those who doggedly try to engage with it (like us) are in danger of losing their own pulse through sheer exhaustion.
So what is the right balance between ‘set direction’ and ‘opportunistic openness’ and how should we best articulate this to staff, stakeholders and the wider community? As a leader, how transparent should you be about the flux in which you operate? If your staff or organisational partners think you have no strong ideas about where you’re heading, will you lose them? On the other hand, strong ideas are only as good as your willingness to let them go if they are no longer relevant. How do we acknowledge change but allow room for reflection so that we’re not overwhelmed by it and, even more importantly, make sense of it? The short answer is “I don’t know”.
The long answer is that I feel we must continue to seek a balance if we are to do justice to our role in the community. There’s no such thing as a free lunch – I get it. We can’t take government funding – or stakeholder investment - without saying what we’re planning to do with it. But, if we become too obsessed with delivering our KPI’s by hook or by crook, we might be missing the real game, particularly if we are playing with community. As my grandmother used to say “It’s the quick or the dead. And I’m not dead yet”.
A lot has been written about ‘adaptive leadership’ recently and it seems like it really is the challenge for contemporary leaders. I’m certainly no expert but, for FCAC, here’s what I’m currently thinking:
• Open everything up rather than close down
• Disclose the previously undisclosed
• Play with others even when you want to keep your dolls to yourself
• Encourage feedback – from staff, from stakeholders, from the community
• If you find yourself in a cul de sac, back-up and get out
• If you hit a snag, ask for help
• Take time out for reflection
• Incorporate flexibility into systems and budgets
• Ask questions
• Don’t let KPI’s rule your life – let the intentions behind the KPI’s rule
• Take action now – don’t sit on the fence waiting for the best possible scenario (it doesn’t exist)
This is the culture we cultivate at FCAC. And, as of today, it seems to be working well. Let’s face it, as long as we keep the word “community” in our organisation’s title – and we intend to – we don’t have a choice.
Presentation for Leadership Victoria by Jennifer Barry, Director & CEO, Footscray Community Arts Centre (28 April 2010)
GETTING KNOTTED #2
by
MRS CROTCHETTY H.
In the 1950s, when I went to school, knots were a no-no. The sewing teacher would turn our work over looking for knots, marking us down if she found one. Girls with knots in their knitting could safely be sniggered at. But knots are necessary. Rope knots are a science – and were used, literally, to gauge sailing speed in the old days. Learning to roll a knot off my forefinger with one hand, with the needle threaded, was a true Eureka moment. Not that we should regard that seminal Ballarat moment in history lightly. The flag, in its own case, in its own gallery, is a fine thing, made by women of the goldfields from what fabric they had to hand.
GETTING KNOTTED #1
by
MRS CROTCHETTY H.
THREAD has twist. It’s how thin bits of wool or cotton – and synthetics drawn out from a drum of liquid – are wound together to make thicker threads. And we prefer them thicker to make the work grow faster, don’t we? Not me. I like thin threads and will fight any woman who spies a ball of Azalea in an op shop before I do. Tightly-spun three-ply in gentle 1940s colours, still measured in ounces. But twist is tricky. The spin they put on thread causes more trouble than a politician’s one-liner. If you stretch it, or pass it by other threads, it wants to wind back on itself and get knotted, which, in lesser moments, you may find yourself telling your work to.
WHEEDLE THE NEEDLE
WHEEDLE THE NEEDLE
by
MRS CROTCHETTY H.
Some useful things to know about working with needle and thread, plus digressions on subjects of interest to those curious about the home arts, including stitching and crochet.
(Discourse on knitting not entirely discouraged.)
Wheedle the needle
I told my children – when they would listen – not to mistreat things. Don’t shout at the computer or your bike, I said. Respect machines. Now, when they are nearly as old as I think I am, they tell me I always shouted at things - the sewing machine, the car, the computer. Apparently it’s how they learnt appropriate forms of swearing. If you don’t shout at things you must find another way to win: plead with them, persuade them, negotiate a deal with them, wheedle a bit, with that tone in your voice used by children in shops. With needles, it’s the same. They don’t respond to bullying and they can draw blood. Best to wheedle.
BLOG 2
THIMBLES
Thimbles come in different sizes. They protect sewing fingers from a needle’s blunt end – still sharp enough to pierce skin if you push too hard. Pretty, decorative thimbles can tickle the fancy of any sewer. (Don’t you wish the vagaries of the English language hadn’t left us stitch artists with a close relationship to what flows down big underground drains?) I applaud those who collect lots of thimbles, but only if they play old-fashioned washboards in old-fashioned trad jazz bands. According to Wikipedia, the earliest known thimble was Roman, found at Pompeii. Made of bronze, its creation has been dated to the first century AD.
Wheedle the Needle is a weekly blog by Tutor Heather Horrocks. Heather teaches home arts on Thursdays at Footscray Community Arts Centre. Click here for dates and times.
Sure was an African Affair
Best shirt of the day!
Former artist in residence, Martyn Coutts with our good
friend Dan West (Diafrix’s guitarist deluxe)
Our beloved Tessema family from Harambe Ethiopian Cafe
