Nicholas Mills

Thank you. My talk is going to be a bit dry and anal because I've got lots of these words on bits of paper in front of me so I apologise if I read a lot. I'd personally just like to thank DARE for having me here and also thank the traditional owners of this area for allowing DARE to be held on this land.

I work at Grafton Arts as an arts project development officer and both the centre and my position work in diverse youth and community arts and cultural practice, yet today I'm concentrating basically on one aspect of Grafton Arts practice. My topic for discussion today is youth arts and industry and this paper is prepared and framed by my experience in working in regional far north Queensland, primarily through Grafton Arts.

Grafton Arts is part of Cairns City Council. Sometimes we like to admit it, sometimes we don't. It's a Cairns-based youth and community arts centre providing diverse resources and services to the Cairns and far north community. The centre has evolved into a dynamic creative hub and a vital link in the regional arts infrastructure. In 1996 we won the excellence award from the LGAQ.

Youth arts offers the community cultural development sector, I believe, and the art sector some unique opportunities for future direction. Today I hope to try and illustrate what these might be. I'll be using the Expression youth music program and contemporary music industry development as an example. Expression is a youth music program through Grafton Arts that involves monthly gigs, training and development at an annual festival called the Little Day Out festival, media programs and CD video recording production and support.

In the presentation of this paper I was sort of finding it difficult to frame a lot of stuff that was in my head and that's in our practice in Grafton Arts. I was finding it difficult to try and articulate it all in words. I sort of come up with this, a diagram that I'm going to show you and it's not necessarily definitive of what youth arts is all about but it's sort of a little bit about how Grafton Arts approach youth arts.

Grafton Arts views youth arts and community cultural development in holistic terms and works from a social justice and community cultural development framework which embraces training and employment, contemporary arts and cultural practice and industry development. In the Grafton Arts experience the key has been to focus on the process rather than the product. Process is and should be defined in the policy. I'll just explain the little diagram. I'm sort of saying that youth arts in a holistic framework can embrace all these different areas. It doesn't have to, of course, and it can have all of these different outcomes. It can have industry outcomes, training and employment outcomes, arts cultural practice outcomes or CCD outcomes.

The Grafton Arts mission statement is 'the provision of resources and the implementation of services which cater to the diverse socio-economic cultural needs of the community, especially youth, for the further development of the arts in Far North Queensland'. Two key aspects of Grafton Arts' process and policy are access and flexibility. Both physical and human resources are easily accessible and program delivery responds to and is moulded by the needs of the community. This allows for the participants, whether amateur, emerging or professional, to experience personal community or professional development and be suitably supported to achieve the best artistic results.

It also allows for many more individuals and groups to pass through the process. This focus doesn't denigrate the importance of good cultural products or the promotion of excellence in the arts but rather it concentrates on maximising opportunities for young people to participate in and contribute to arts and cultural practice, maximising opportunities. Indeed, it is young people that will determine and define artistic excellence in the future and by allowing broad access to opportunities, a numbers game approach would dictate that with more participation and more output of varying degrees, there would be more product of high or excellent standards, thus a policy of broad access with a focus on process can be a valid vehicle for the promotion and development of artistic excellence as well as many other outcomes.

For the past six years Grafton Arts has played a role in the development of a sustainable contemporary music industry in Cairns and far north Queensland. Through six years of gigs and other community and music projects and support for individuals and groups, Grafton Arts is active as an industry development mechanism, through ongoing live music programs, such as Expression, industry networking, promotion and advocacy, audience development, skills-based training and professional development, festival and event development and participation, group and individual support, employer artist liaison and market development.

In a regional environment where pub rock cover bands are still flavour of the month, it has been extremely hard for many bands and artists performing original material to find outlets for their expression. Yet a commitment to original music has earned Expression a positive reputation and established a growing base of performing bands and artists for the emerging industry to utilise.

Many southern promoters, festivals and events utilise bands through Expression for their gigs. A recent festival called Hot Days in Cairns a few weeks ago featured the Cruel Sea and Regurgitator amongst others, but it also featured four Expression bands as part of the line-up. This flow chart in front of you here, I guess, sort of flows on from this wobbly circle diagram. Essentially, I'm saying that process has been our key. Process is enshrined in the policy. Our sort of policy encapsulates access, flexibility and that aspect of maximising opportunities.

This is sort of just, I guess, complementing my words here. As one part of one strand of industry development, these are the four strands I'm sort of going to be talking about now. Skills base, enhancement of skills base. Being able to meet the long string of people's developmental needs on an ongoing basis has enabled an air of self-sufficiency to prevail within the sector. Professional development takes place in a variety of contexts that could be both formal and informal. A hands-on approach allows for quick insight and indeed the provision of a gig itself is a valuable professional development tool.

Performers proceed through a process of creation, rehearsal and performance in an industry environment and develop at their own speed. Young sound, lighting and video operators have found Expression a valuable playing field and learning experience in their emerging crafts. A number of bands have also produced CDs with appropriate assistance from Grafton Arts.

Involvement in all aspects of organising a gig allows young people to gain skills in a whole range of disciplines, including marketing promotions, stage and production management and audio-visual production in a regional environment. With little performing arts training options available, flexible programs such as Expression fill a gap in the industry and provide a stepping stone for further development. This approach enhances the region's skills base and allows the area to become more self-sufficient.

Community arts practice of open sharing of skills and knowledge allows communities to establish infrastructure for self-determination. Expression, as an example, produce a monthly radio show on 4CCR FM. They produce all their own promotional materials and produce all ad copy and editorial for press. They will next year be developing a music magazine and an Internet zine. Audience development; audience and market development has been a natural outcome of a continuous commitment to performing opportunities for young people. More gigs equal more punters, equals audience development in a simple sort of frame. Today's youth arts audience is tomorrow's contemporary arts audience and the sector needs to recognise the valuable developmental role that youth arts can play in future audience development.

The utilisation of the press on an ongoing basis has helped to establish a profile of the contemporary music sector in the psyche of the Cairns and far north community. Strong links with the media sector have enhanced access to the media, provided valuable promotion and exposure for an emerging sector. Networking and advocacy with a variety of regional, state and national organisations and departments and industry peers allows for the on-the-ground CCD work to be acknowledged and considered in the bigger industry picture.

This year has seen the establishment of a number of new performing opportunities for new bands in the commercial sector as well as an increase in touring contemporary acts and performers. The unique aspect of the Cairns marketplace with a mix of international, domestic and local punters offers the contemporary music industry many options for audience development.

Market and cross-sector development. As a venue, support service, trainer, producer and facilitator Grafton Arts has enabled the market to grow and mature through a cross-sector developmental approach. Future market development in Cairns is, I believe, tied to this approach. Cairns and Far North Queensland offers the regional, state and national music industry the unique potential of maximising cultural tourism opportunities through a focused geographical area and market. Cairns has a distinct domestic and international audience and could act as a showcase vehicle for Australian performance. It could also provide valuable opportunities for export of product, both through direct point of sale to visitors and through the Cairns International Airport and its proximity to Asia.

Through a process of strategic collaboration and cross-sector partnerships a thriving industry can be developed and marketed to a national and international tourism marketplace while community cultural development gains are appropriately catered for. Training and employment opportunities would be created and there would be an emphasis on wanting to showcase the best of Australian cultural product.

In this future industry context the desired outcomes lie firmly in the four areas outlined in the diagram, those being industry development, community cultural development, training and employment and contemporary arts and cultural practice outcomes.

I'd like to sort of try and pull it together and sum up now. Firstly, I'd just like to relate four examples of young people's involvement in Grafton Arts and how they've gone on to bigger and better things. I guess what Grafton Arts does is it tries to meet the string of needs in people's development, so if someone is coming in here, we're trying to meet those needs here. When theyıve developed a bit further, we try and meet their needs there as well, so it's been really flexible with the sort of support and resources and training or advice or professional development that you can offer to young people.

Rather than being a producer of final products, Grafton Arts provides valuable support at a vital developmental stage in emerging artists' careers. To start with, and I'll go through these very quickly, first up, this fellow here Matthew Santon. Matthew Santon is a young visual artist musician and photographer, primarily a photographer. He's been involved with Grafton Arts on and off for probably five years. He's since been to Melbourne, done a lot of work down there as an assistant to professional photographers, done a lot of music industry based photography, etcetera and has been published in Rolling Stone.

When Matthew came back to Cairns this year he was looking for work. At the time we were in discussions with the local newspaper, the Cairns Post. They have an arts and entertainment section in their Friday paper. They were looking to revamp it because it was really dull, boring and anal and they knew young people weren't reading it. They probably still aren't but at least they think they are. So they came to us for some advice, I guess about how they can make it more youth friendly. I guess we gave them some advice and one thing that came out of it was a new position as part-time photographer.

I guess one of the points I made was that their photos were really dull and boring, obviously taken by a middle-aged has-been photographer and if they wanted to really appeal to young people, they really need to involve young people.

Another example, Anthony has been involved with Expression from word go. He's been just a dynamo, just does everything - sound, lighting-wise, and he's not just a young sound engineer. He's actually first and foremost a very good sound engineer. The fact that he's young is secondary to his skills as someone working in the arts sector. Anthony is now living in Brisbane, doing gigs, etcetera, tied to a couple of pubs. He recently did a gig for Charlie Owen and Charlie was so impressed that he's asked him to go on a national tour as his main sound guy.

Zebidie has again been involved on and off with Grafton Arts for a number of years, has been to Perth, then to Melbourne and come back, and at different stages we've been able to help her aspirations as an artist I guess. Zebidie is a dynamic performer. Anyone who lives in Brisbane, you've just got to go and see her if you haven't yet. Anyone who's seen her knows what Zebidie is. She's an enigma. She is getting a lot of gigs around town in Brisbane at the moment, gaining a lot of recognition and, as Sara pointed out, was recently featured at this year's Livid festival, which is a really competitive event and quite prestigious in terms of that sort of youth arts or contemporary music aspect.

The Pad Boys are a young Dyabiguy band from Kuranda in far north Queensland. Again, they've been involved on and off through Grafton Arts for four or five years. They're about 17 or 18 years of age; no, probably 18, 19 now, sorry. They're on a bit of a roll at the moment. There are two deadly bands. They play sort of reggae, roots, language stuff, right, predominantly their own material, and are inspired by their land, their family and their culture. Last weekend the Pad Boys were at Cooktown for the indigenous youth health conference. That performance went live around the country through the NIMA network. They played alongside Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter. They went off, big time.

They also played a couple of weeks ago at the Hot Days festival with Regurgitator. Don't be surprised if you see the Pad Boys touring with Regurgitator in the not too distant future. We're sort of doing some negotiating at the moment. The Pad Boys will also be featured at this year's Woodford folk festival. If anyone is getting down there, they will be able to check them out there. That's sort of the end of my discussion. I just wanted to say that I've used music as an example for today's discussion, but it's just one aspect of what Grafton Arts does. But I guess this sort of frame on this diagram applies or could apply to a whole range of other youth arts activity. Just to conclude finally, I'd like to summarise by saying that youth arts is an industry. It is part of an industry and it is a vital part of the future of the arts and cultural industry.

Youth arts is a cultural resource and a valid and valuable part of the national cultural identity and its continued support and development offers many opportunities. Perhaps it is time for some policy to reflect a more holistic vision. If excellence is contextual, then perhaps the definition needs to be broadened to embrace changing arts and cultural practice trends. Thanks.

Forward: Elena Jeffreys