Perspectives on creative arts in higher education
Collaborating with colleagues outside our own creative disciplines can bring tensions as differences in terminology, understanding and methodologies are drawn to the fore. It also brings unexpected benefits by creating a deeper understanding of ones own practice while adding new dimensions that serve to expand and blur rigid disciplinary boundaries.
There’s a question I used to dread: “So, what do you do?” It has a second part to it, assumed and unvoiced: “ … for a living”. And what I dreaded was the rabbit hole this opened. If I told a taxi driver “I work in film”, there’d be a follow-up.
The Limited Hangout: in the field project, was a series of site-specific long form compositions for performers, and optionally electronic sounds in the environment. Six composers … were asked to create works for the project with the following brief …
There is no doubt that as the effects of industrial and material interventions and corresponding climate change on the country increase, our unique non-human ecologies are experiencing significant change. In response, some Australian theatre-makers are leaving behind long held national landscape myths, by exploring how intensifying climate and corresponding ecological deterioration is affecting non-human nature and other more than human species.
Music could serve to distract from the weight of everyday stressors, lift our mood, and provide relaxation. Put simply, the speciality of music lies in the fact that it invariably conflates three key drivers of health wellbeing, namely, culture, creativity, and community … rendering it inherently interdisciplinary.
Listening to place offers a rich and dynamic way to understand patterns and inspire connections. Listening as method has been integral to a series of interdisciplinary collaborations on Kabi Kabi Country in Queensland that have explored the idea of listening with images, listening with Country, and listening as an active method to inspire action and engagement with the changes taking place in our environment and communities.
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In the spirit of reconciliation, the DDCA acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.