The creative and cultural industries are essential to the development of thriving communities. If enabled with cultural sensitivity and real value, arts and culture can be embedded deep within solutions to some of regional Australia's key challenges.
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Across the north of Australia, two key challenges we face are; 1) Community Safety & Youth Engagement, and 2) the Diversification of our Economy & Enhancing Local Impact of the Visitor Economy. I am currently developing Broome's first arts and culture strategy and I have found myself exploring three key themes relating to how we can better harness the power of arts and culture to grow sustainable, resilient and thriving communities: 
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1) The need to better articulate the connection between creativity and social development, whilst maintaining a balance of the intrinsic and instrumental roles of the arts. It is often easy, as an arts advocate working in local government, to be criticised for moving arts and culture into too much of an 'instrumental' space, i.e.: 'we will only support the arts because they help us engage youth', rather than supporting the arts for their intrinsic benefits. However, I hold that local government arts investment needs to focus on the inter-relatedness between creativity and social development in order for the arts to be truly valued and considered as part of region-wide solutions. I would like to see better collaboration and inter-relation between local government, state/territory governments and the arts sector, improving links and pathways for the arts to be deeply embedded in social development strategy. 
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2) The need for the arts and tourism sectors to work more closely together and for arts audience development tools to be applied to tourism to ensure artists benefit from the visitor economy. Here in Broome, my role is to develop strategies to support Aboriginal artists to connect with markets for their work and be protected by resale royalty, copyright and IP legislation. I work in partnership with Australia's North West and Tourism WA whose remit it is to develop tourism across the region and I have been surprised by how little these organisations understand the psychology of the market. I have introduced the concept of Culture Segmentation to the discussion, and identified key market segments for growth, which would grow remote artist sales and revenue. The process has shown me that arts audience development strategy is advanced compared to that of other sectors, and considering the growing demand for Aboriginal cultural tourism amongst domestic and internal travellers, both the tourism and the arts sectors would benefit through improved collaboration and shared knowledge. 
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3) The third theme is an overarching one, and one which I would like to centre a proposed Artlands discussion on: 'What is local government's role in attracting and retaining experienced arts advocates to the regions?'. It has become clear to me that neither of the above two themes can be addressed without experienced arts advocates embedded within communities. Whilst some states have RADO models that enable this, many of the models are flawed and local governments need to play a role in this space. However, my experience in Broome has shown me that regional local government is a very difficult place for professional arts advocates to work - we are so isolated from creative networks and from professional development opportunities and we ultimately need to leave the regions in order to progress our careers,  I would like to explore, at Artlands, how RAA and local governments can better support regional arts advocates to stay where they are most needed and help drive the contribution of the cultural and creative industries to the development of thriving communities.

1) Art and Technology / My organisation is in a remote and small community but serves a region the size of Victoria. Our town population is around 10,000, and the region has just over 20,000 (smaller than the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda). In 2022 I was selected for the Australia Council's CEO Digital Mentorship Program, in partnership with ACMI, and this has helped us begin experimenting with and investigating new technology and digital tools we can apply to our organisation and community. I would like to be involved in any conference content or panel discussions involving how regional arts entities are using technology to support artists, live performance, visitor experience, interpretation and museology, and community identity

‍2) Artist Residencies / I am interested in presenting, or possibly leading a panel, on Artist-in-Residence programs in regional locations, including the group model known as the Artist Colony that is more rare in Australia. In my 30 years as a cultural manager, I have founded a half dozen artist residencies/colonies (The Studios of Key West, Sedona Summer Colony, Whakatane Volcanic Artist Residency, Wellington (NZ) Asia Residency Exchange, a performing arts troupe-based residency while Director of Cairns Festival, and in the late 1990s the Pritchard's Island Artist Retreat off the coast of South Carolina). I would be happy to lead a talk or panel addressing artist residency models, developmental process, essential ingredients, funding sources, application process, pitfalls, etc.

I would like to share ACT Natimuk's new Creative Lab program and hear of other like models.
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Following on for the impact on artists of COVID and also in-line with a new strategic direction that grew out of our strategic planning sessions late 2020 and early 2021, ACT Natimuk created a new Creative Lab Program with the following aims: -
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•To encourage artists to connect with Natimuk and work as part of Natimuk’s small but vibrant arts community 
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•To create/seed work for Nati Frinj Biennale
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•To create/seed work that may be suitable for inclusion as a Made in Natimuk (MiN) product.
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•To help with the sustainability of maintaining a regional arts practice 
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•To encourage artistic exploration
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•To encourage diversity of artistic expression
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Over 2021 & 22 we supported 6 Creative Lab projects with a grant of $5000 each through a competitive project proposal process that was overseen by an independent panel. We expressly wanted the application process to be simple/straightforward and for the artists to be able to be process not outcome driven with freedom to explore an aspect of their practice. Although we hoped that the Creative Labs might lead to developing a work for Nati Frinj 2022, the only outcomes required were sharing their exploration at a session at NatiFrinj Festival 2022, providing images and content for a catalogue (a means of documenting the ephemeral), and filing a brief written report for evaluation purposes.

The arts sector itself needs to advocate more strongly for the professional arts sector. There also needs to be greater education of both artists and potential employers on what constitutes reasonable pay and conditions for arts work - including the payment of Super.
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There's much more I could say, but these are just a few ideas to throw onto to the table for discussion.

In 2013 Lindy Hume of Opera Queensland 'sounded a tiny alarm' around the need to:
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"urgently challenge the benign, feel-good language that's habitually used to describe cultural, intellectual and creative life in regional Australia, because it's a product of a national mindset that either can't see, or underestimates, our dynamism and our potential impact on the national cultural landscape. Until we change our language, mindset and practices, in the national cultural narrative, regional arts will continue to play the poor cousin to the 'excellent', 'elite', 'global' metropolitan arts sector."
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I am interested in exploring how language around, and the perception of, regional arts - it's purpose and value - has evolved over the past decade, particularly given the changes that Covid has brought about which sees more people moving to the regions to live and work, with improved digital infrastructure enabling this. Is the primary purpose of arts and creativity in the regions still viewed as 'community building', 'disaster recovery', resilience building' and so forth, or are we now acknowledging the talent and the inspiration located within regional Australia as 'excellent' and 'global', and offering appropriate support to realise this potential? 
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1GKl_tjyac