Art Atlas Launch Speech

Here is the speech that Acting President Haydn Smith made at the launch of the ArtsAtlas… Hear Hear:

Councillors, Council representatives, Men and Women of the Arts Community.

Thank you Daniel for inviting me to speak on behalf of Ballarat Arts Alive.

I would like to pay my respects to our cultural and historical predecessors, including the Wada wurrung people who inhabited the land on which we meet today.

Ballarat Arts Alive, is a community group of Artists and Arts supporters, from Ballarat and surrounding shires.

It was born out of a forum, held in July 2011, where 200 Artists met to identify the barriers and issues facing Artists and their work within our communities.

Our mission is to provide a collective voice for Discussion, Advocacy, Development and Action around the Arts, enabling a vibrant creative culture in Ballarat and surrounding areas.

To this end, Ballarat Arts Alive works with other organisations to deliver projects, such as ArtsAtlas, for the benefit of Artists and the communities they enrich and support.

In the 2011 forum, Artists identified the need for a virtual space to: foster sharing of information, enable networking and collaboration, and as a channel to promote their work and connect with their audiences.

Subsequently Ballarat Arts Alive teamed with VicHealth’s Localities Enhancing Arts Participation project to bring the ArtsAtlas into reality by forming the Project Working Team which specified the features of the ArtsAtlas that you will see shortly.

Our members provided their expertise to this project, through some 200 volunteer hours of in-kind support, and I would like to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge the following members who generously committed their time and expertise to this project:

Merle Hathaway,
Chai Lim,
Dave Knowles,
Lucinda Horrocks,
Jary Nemo,
Karl Schenk,
Aldona Kmiec, and
Pauline O’Shannessy-Dowling.

Ballarat Arts Alive acknowledges the support of the Golden Plains, Hepburn, Moorabool and Pyrenees Shires, the Digital Enterprise project for training funds, and the Neighbourhood Houses for supplying the training venues.

Ballarat Arts Alive also acknowledges and thanks the City of Ballarat’s in-kind and cash contributions to this project. We look forward to working with The City in the ongoing governance, promotion and development of this valuable resource.

We also look forward to the further developing our working relationship with The City; to deliver on our shared goals and objectives; building on
the strengths of our artistic community and its contribution to the social, cultural and economic life of this city.

Finally, I wish to thank VicHealth for providing the bulk of the funding to enable this project, and particularly their local LEAP Project Co-ordinator, Carolynne Hamdorff, whose leadership, energy and resilience saw this project through to completion.

Thank you.

Haydn Smith

Acting President BAA