-- Email melinda@subtle.net URL's http://www.zip.com.au/~melt http://www.magna.com.au/~nnc/YWAM.html http://www.geko.net.au/~bysa National Women's Media Centre http://www.isis.aust.com/nwmc/ Talking about projects run in the Newtown and Blacktown communities in New South Wales. And exploring the journey of the online artist. Question - Lylie Fisher For many communities working in collaboration with a online artsworker will be a new experience, in fact for many arts organisations the internet is a daunting medium. Can you explain from your perspective what has been your contribution to the YWAM and the Girlspace projects and what you may have discovered? Answer - Melinda Rackham Both projects, Girlspace - investigating safety in public spaces in the outer suburb of Blacktown, and YWAM! - exploring young womens' relationships to media images of themselves in inner west Newtown, comprised of workshops, video production and a net site. YWAM! also included art exhibitions and performances, and a group of women who met during the project formed a performance group producing the play "7 Ways to Digest a Woman". The main net site in these very different projects was constructed in conjunction with project coordinators. In Girlspace, http://www.geko.net.au/~bysa, I was brought in at the end of the project to document the video production, and to work with a group of girls from a local high school to produce the section .."A Girls Guide to Blacktown." This part of the project was done within the context of the school, and the original version of the site had been censored and removed from the school server after a complaint from a parent. Girlspace had no control over this. Question - Lylie Fisher What would you describe as the process of these projects and as how do you interpret these kind of community based arts projects? Answer - Melinda Rackham For me, as a community artist, the aim of the 'Girls Guide' was to familiarise the young women with the internet and to teach some html skills which could be used outside of the project, rather than producing a slick 'product' online. The completion of this section is now in the hands of the girls and it will be interesting to see what they come up with. With YWAM!, http://www.magna.com.au/~nnc/YWAM.html, a 9 month more exploratory project, the website was integral, and grew in three stages as the project grew, putting out invitations for art show entries and updating info until the final shows, performances, and documentation were uploaded. The site url was included on all project material, press releases, and YWAM! was live on the net on monitors in the final gallery exhibition, with web surfing an option. YWAM! uses digitised artworks from the workshops, some specifically produced for the site, the documentation is more intimate and personally revealing, and in this way the look, feel and content of the site was determined by the young women involved. More.......