Footscray Community Arts Centre

News

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2008 Footscray Arts Highlights

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2008 has been a huge year at Footscray Community Arts Centre and now that it’s almost over, it seems a good time to share some of the many highlights!

It all kicked off, as has become tradition, with the January School Holiday Arts Program. Each school holidays throughout the year, arty young 6- to 12-year-olds enjoyed intensive creative classes taken by some of Melbourne’s top artists. They had a fabulous time and created some incredible performances and works of art.

Summer was all about the sounds of music from around the world and around the corner with the Footscray Arts FREE Summer Music Series. Over five consecutive weeks audiences brought a picnic and enjoyed performances from The Mighty buZZniks, Drums and Lions, Western Dub All Stars and Dya Singh World Music Group before the series came to a close to the sumptuous sounds of My Friend the Chocolate Cake.

My Friend the Chocolate Cake’s Footscray Arts performance was also part of FEED a smorgasbord of food-related arts activities at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival that included an exhibition, workshop, cooking class and of course the concert. FEED was a whole lot of fun and a huge success, especially the exhibition I Love Phở. I Love Phở. combined the recipes and poems of six Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese artists to explore the Vietnamese beef rice noodle soup dish, phở, an integral part of Vietnamese cultural heritage.

Footscray Arts was excited to announce a brand new initiative in 2008 – the Westie Ambassador Program. As part of this program, high profile community members are invited to act as an advocate for the Centre to government, business and benefactors, with Rob Moodie installed as the inaugural Westie Ambassador.

There were plenty of opportunities throughout the year for people to get involved in Footscray Arts activities. Once again Footscray Arts was instrumental in the initiative The Gift of Light, a collaboration with Federation Square. As a partner organisation in this unique cultural event, Footscray Arts facilitated community collaborations with artists to create installations that explored the cultural meaning of light.

Community participation was also key to the success of the remounting of 2006’s hit event, The GO Show. The stakes were higher this year with The GO Show being part of the 2008 Melbourne International Arts Festival but the sell-out crowds were wowed by the incredible talent to be found in Melbourne’s West.  The GO Show was basically an artistic tour of Footscray that took in iconic venues around the area. This enormous live performance event created under the artistic direction of choreographer and director Rebecca Hilton featured over 150 professional and non-professional artists and community members from across the western suburbs.

Footscray Arts was also involved in a very special event as part of Melbourne International Arts Festival – the Children’s Choice Awards. Grade 5 and 6 students from Footscray City Primary School worked with Canadian artists from the research-art group Mammalian Diving Reflex and Footscray Arts staff to form a very special festival judging panel. After a gruelling schedule of attending festival events, the team presented their handmade awards in categories created by them at a very glitzy, glamorous awards ceremony at the Spiegeltent.

In 2008 the Footscray Arts Crowd Theory project continued with the staging of Crowd Theory Port of Melbourne. Once again artist Simon Terrill was behind the camera to create a large-scale photographic artwork exploring the historic, economic and romantic symbolism of the Port of Melbourne and capturing community responses and connections to it. Crowd Theory Port of Melbourne now takes pride of place in the Crowd Theory Collection, which features images from photo shoot events at Footscray Community Arts Centre, Braybrook, Footscray Station and Southbank.

And as if all of that was not enough, the Footscray Arts year is ending in krumping style as the Centre plays to two huge hip-hop events in December. First up is Australia’s biggest krump event, THE GAME, a dance competition featuring high intensity battles of style, power and finesse and the raw urban street dance and culture of the new generation. Then comes the final free concert for 2008 from one of the hottest new acts in the country. Grrilla Step features musicians and dancers transforming Pacific Island log drumming, dance and song through modern hip-hop krump music and dance.

It certainly has been a huge year and Footscray Arts has more in store for 2009!