Ananguku Arts

Projects

Anangu, Manta, Kurunpa: People, Land, Spirit
A sand sculpture/performance created by a collaborative team for WOMADelaide, Adelaide 2003.
MORE INFO MENTORED TRAINING: ERNABELLA ARTS

Ananguku Arts has a strong commitment to increasing Indigenous employment.

With generous funding over three years from the Fischer Family Fund, Ananguku Arts is working with Ernabella Arts to provide mentored training for Anangu women towards the creation of real employment opportunities in the administration of the art centre. This program addresses a range of topics, ranging from office management through to the cataloguing and despatch of artworks. Employment opportunities are few in the APY Lands and this initiative has been a landmark in piloting use of the art centre infrastructure as a platform for job creation and both formal and experience-based training.

This pilot has paved the way for wider Indigenous Arts Worker training, and new employment positions are now being created in Amata, Indulkana, Fregon and Mimili art centres, with the support of DEEWR STEP project, and the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

While APY artists and art centres are now well established in the national marketplace, a vital step is the opening of international market opportunities. While a broader export market development strategy is under discussion, pilot exhibitions took place in Spoleto and Milan Italy, in September 2007. Both activities were designed to test market acceptance and to introduce Italian galleries and collectors to APY art.

Ananguku Arts manages a comprehensive Industry Development program aimed at strengthening the capacity of art centres to plan for and build sustainable production and sales towards better outcomes for their artists and communities. With specific funding from the Australian Government through the Federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Industry Development provides art centres with: strategic business planning assistance; business learning programs for art centre management committee members and artists; links to external training and professional development resources; expertise and advice in market development; staff recruitment and review services; a developing body of regionally consistent, best practice policies, procedures and protocols supporting business and artistic management; and special projects tailored to identified development needs. The ID program dovetails with Ananguku Arts funding acquisition program where special funding is required for infrastructure or employment expansion.

Over a number of years, Ananguku Arts has provided funds to art centres for special projects and workshops aimed at fostering artists’ creative and technical development. Print-making, ceramics production and decoration, applied design and painting techniques are among past initiatives enabled by Ananguku funding. This support continues on an identified needs basis.

The majority of the region’s art centres operate in very basic buildings that afford little scope for growth and the comfortable servicing of artists’ needs in a rapidly expanding sphere of activity. Ananguku Arts is an active advocate for improved infrastructure and equipment for artists and has brought about some significant developments in recent years. These include: a series of minor but essential works ranging from the installation of upgraded air-conditioning and sales display systems to extensions of art centre work-rooms; purchase and installation of industry-standard cataloguing software for recording art works, artists’ sales records and so on; the building or upgrading of staff housing; provision of directional signage for art centre visitors; and the supply of art centre vehicles

SICAD is now in its fourth year and has recently been extended for another three years through the generous support of the South Australian Government. The project is an important initiative that makes the experience and expertise of the relatively mature APY Lands’ contemporary arts sector available to many other Indigenous communities and artists around regional and remote South Australia. It arose from a visit to the majority of remote and regional communities by representatives of Ku Arts, Arts SA and Country Arts SA in 2003.

The program has delivered a range of workshops to communities ranging from Ceduna in the far west and Oodnadatta and Coober Pedy in the north to the Riverland and Mount Gambier. SICAD has also established the first viable network of Indigenous artists and arts project managers across the state, which culminated in the Sharing Our Stories forum of August 2006, which brought together over 100 Indigenous artists to discuss the specific issues confronting arts practitioners and developers in non-metropolitan SA. SICAD has enjoyed the support of the South Australian Government, the Regional Arts Fund through Country Arts SA, and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Recent funding from the Australia Council has seen two Indigenous Arts Workers employed to provide community cultural development support to artists in the Mid North and South Eastern regions of the state. With funding just announced by the Federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, a third Indigenous Arts Worker will be employed on the West Coast, servicing Port Lincoln through to Ceduna and up into Oak Valley.

October 2006 saw celebration of the 25th anniversary of the handover of freehold title to the APY Lands. Ananguku Arts was engaged by the APY Lands Council to manage and direct a two-day festival at Umuwa: Nganampa Manta (Our Land). Over the two days, an estimated 2,500 of the regional population of 3,000 converged on Umuwa and enjoyed inma, contemporary music and visual arts activity that involved over 250 performers and artists – young and old – drawn from across the region. As both a reflection on the past and a stimulus for discussion of the future, the festival was a landmark event and one generously supported by both South Australian and Australian Governments.

Ananguku Arts is supported by: the South Australian Government through Arts SA; and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Project support is also received from : The Department of Premier and Cabinet, Country Arts SA; and the Federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. The Federal Department of Education. Employment and Workplace Relations.