2006-02-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

Regional Talents©

Development team:
Maher Berro
Peter Hindmarsh
Laurent Pernetta
Dorothy Tan

Digital Media Project
Master of Interactive Multimedia
University of Technology Sydney

RegionalTalents.net has a modest aim: to make a contribution towards raising the profile of artists and creative talent working in rural and remote locations.

New technologies, and changes to media structures are creating opportunities for this aim to succeed. Those new technologies are also sweeping through the high-density living urban cores of most countries with the same ferocious affect on craft industries as the introduction of the loom had hundreds of years ago. Then, fear and isolation contributed to a rise of swarms of luddites.

This time around, the way to go is not to smash mobile phones and laptop computers (although there might be some justification), but to find ways that the new technologies and media can work for arts and crafts out there in the backblocks.
Within the label "regions", we include provinces and towns and country centres and remote property. Those places where kids might complain that "there's nothing to do here", or jobs are scarce, and help is hours away, or they rely mainly on the generosity of strangers, called "tourists", to keep their community together.

The environment for creative work, in out-of-the way towns and by-ways has been called " … a godforsaken wilderness". The arts and creative outputs of regions are often ignored, or lumped in with the whole of a state's funding, as if they benefit through some obscure trickle down effect - More money for an Opera in London or Paris, will somehow benefit the country boroughs. And yet there's many advantages for developing creativity and talent outside the frenetic hubbub and bustle of metropolitan nerve centres.

The crew working in the back end of RegionalTalents can't do this alone; it will take many small contributions of ideas and support from many talented people. Individually, each person, or small arts group may not be able to raise their profile outside their own regions very easily. They rely on a government funded "peak" organisation for help. But if individuals and the regions combine; there's a chance their voices will travel further and their talents seen on the fringes of the dust cloud generated from the noise and babble of favoured ones concentrated in big cities.

regionaltalents.net