And, as John Lennon once sang, so this is Christmas. And the end of a year that lurched between troubled times, disappointing politics and the seemingly endless ability of the arts to respond in amazing ways. Certainly at Regional Arts NSW there was a sense of constantly shifting between the challenging and the successful.
For us, the highlight of 2024 will be the work we did with our cohort of women in the Work of Art program and the amazing time we had in bringing everyone together in Orange in November. We’ve been capturing the women’s responses and this is the word cloud that we have so far when they were asked to summarise the program in a word:
This brings me to one of the things I want for us all in the arts for 2025. It’s time we got better at telling people why the arts matter. All of us that work in this sector know it and feel it, but we don’t always succeed in getting others to understand why it is important. We need to have the words ready so that we can get the message across that the arts are vital to our lives, our communities, our environment, our souls, our wallets, our social fabric.
At the risk of being pessimistic, the arts is in a difficult place at the moment. So let’s all be kind to each other, look out for how we can help, and don’t forget that if you know an arts practitioner who needs a bit of extra support, there are free counselling services through Support Act.
I look forward to working with our arts and cultural community across regional NSW in 2025 and wish you all the best for this festive season.
– Regional Arts NSW CEO Tracey Callinan