Community-engaged practice with Jade Lillie and Lia Pa'apa'a

Theory of Creativity

How can cultural organisations make sure their community engagement is meaningful and impactful? In this episode, we talk with Jade Lillie and Lia Pa’apa’a about best practice when it comes to community relationships, in all forms.

They cover topics such as culturally and creatively safe spaces, starting a project the way that we want to finish it and the importance of being able to share failure and learn from it.

We cover:

• Why community-engaged practice is so powerful
• How to relinquish curatorial power and create culturally and creatively safe spaces
• The reason you need to start a project the way you intend to finish it
• How to leave a legacy in the context of finite project funding
• The importance of sharing failures and learning from our mistakes
• Why it’s an issue when CACD is seen as a separate artform rather than a way to work all the time
• Why we need to watch out for ‘deficit model’ thinking and adopt a strength-based approach instead
• How practitioners can think about self-awareness and take responsibility to learn about a community before starting work.

Jade Lillie been working as an executive and leader in arts, culture, health, community and international development, education and training for the past 15 years. She is a specialist in strategy, community and stakeholder engagement, facilitation, collaboration and partnerships, people and culture.

After 5 years as Director and CEO with Footscray Community Arts Centre, she was awarded the prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship for 2018 - 2019. As the Director, Public Affairs with cohealth, she leads research, policy, advocacy, strategic and government relations, marketing, communications and sponsorship.

Read about Jade’s new book project, The Relationship is The Project at www.therelationshipistheproject.com

Lia Pa’apa’a is a Samoan/Native American woman who works across Australia as artist and community arts worker. Pa’a’a’a started out as a teacher, trained in Indigenous Education. She has spent the last five years working on Indigenous and Pacific festivals in urban, regional and remote Australia. Lia lives in Cairns where she works with the local community to produce contemporary dance shows and is developing her own platform Plant Based Native to investigate the intersections of food/art/community and wellbeing.

For more details, including the full transcript of the conversation, you can head to the episode webpage: https://www.thepatternmakers.com.au/podcast-episodes/episode2

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