Dr Vahri McKenzie, Zora Pang and Kirsten Wehner
Monday 11 April 2022
ABSTRACT
Over the last 9 months, CCCR has hosted four artists and a creative producer as part of the ACT Government’s 2021-22 Creative Recovery and Resilience Program, which was designed to focus on employment for the creative sector to enable recovery and building resilience for artists and arts workers. In partnership with Belco Arts, CCCR’s residences focused on cross-sector engagement and piloted an innovative approach developed through a transdisciplinary and co-creative curatorial lens. Instead of a productivity-oriented program, the approach sought to cultivate long-term relationships and professional development for all stakeholders. Resident artist Kirsten Wehner, creative producer Zora Pang, and acting project lead Vahri McKenzie share glimpses of the recently completed project that reveal the successes and complexities of caring relations in this applied creative arts research project. Kirsten will discuss her residency work to develop the creative cultures of Weston Creek, showing that caring for waterways is creative and cultural as well as scientific work, and reflect on how the residency contributed to building the network of relationships necessary to realising new understandings of urban places. Zora will talk about the importance of negotiating care and how that can be built into a project design. Vahri will discuss the project in relation to the broader Creative Recovery and Resilience Program and the framework used to evaluate its outcomes.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Vahri McKenzie is Research Fellow in Arts and Health within the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research.
Zora Pang is an organiser and a creative producer whose practice aims to care for the creative communities she is in and contributes to the process of making creativity accessible and well resourced.
Kirsten Wehner is a Canberra-based artist, curator and producer passionate about creating experiences that inspire, celebrate and transform places as multi-species communities. She was the UC/Belco Arts Creative Recovery and Resilience Program’s Established/Mid-Career Artist in Cross-Sector Engagement, formerly Director, PhotoAccess, and is now the James O. Fairfax Senior Fellow in Environment and Culture at the National Museum of Australia.
