Tamworth Regional Gallery: The beating heart of arts and culture in Northwest NSW

26/03/2026

Why do we need regional galleries? According to the last census (2021), almost 40% of NSW’s population (about 3.2 million people), live in regional NSW. This statistic alone shows us that there is an audience there that deserve access to arts and culture.  

Create NSW, the NSW Government’s arts policy and funding body, have recently made regional arts and culture a priority in their new 10-year strategy, Heartland: a plan for regional NSW arts, culture and creative industries. The strategy acknowledges the way that a vibrant arts and culture ecosystem fosters identity and connection, and drives economic vitality in regional communities. It also addresses funding shortfalls and shows the government’s commitment to helping them overcome the unique challenges of distance. This prioritisation of regional arts shows us just how important creative spaces like regional galleries are. 

Last year, I spoke to Bridget Guthrie (Director) and Emma Stilts (Operations and Visitor Experience Coordinator) from Tamworth Regional Gallery. The Gallery not only provides the area with equitable access to high quality art experiences for visitors of all ages, abilities, genders and cultures, but collaborates with and serves the surrounding communities.  

They show us that the impact of regional galleries is vast, promoting small-town renewal, providing opportunities to enrich the lives of locals, creating a safe place to have difficult conversations and inspiring young people to think, ‘Maybe I could do that too.’  

Tamworth Regional Gallery was founded on 1 June 1919 by artist and collector John Salvana. His motivation was to provide a rural centre with an art gallery, so that young children and those with an interest in art could study it by viewing original artworks first hand. In the collection he included unfinished artworks, so that students might have a better understanding of how a painting or drawing is constructed.

To this day, the mission of the gallery remains one of service to Tamworth and surrounding areas. They aim to “… provide a visual arts and cultural ecosystem that inspires, enriches and collaborates with community; enhances life experiences through the visual arts; and strives for best practice in our delivery of cultural services to the community.” (Source: tamworthregionalgallery.com.au/Our-Purpose)

Encouraging and educating young artists continues to be a core pillar to achieve Tamworth Regional Gallery’s mission. Growing up in Warialda, NSW (about 2 hours north of Tamworth), this something I experienced firsthand on school excursions, where I was able to see major exhibitions like the Archibald Prize in person.

But it goes further than just providing opportunities to see art in real life. Participation is key to Emma’s work in visitor experiences. The gallery prioritises practical activities and workshops that allow people participate in gallery life. For example, each school holidays they run an animation workshop for school students, and the final works get projected in their outdoor gallery in Fitzroy Plaza. The goal is to encourage kids to consider if a creative career is for them.  

Image: ‘Bushlines’, with curator Liam Keenan, Tamworth Regional Gallery, 2025 (installation view). Photo: Tamworth Regional Council. 

 Of the program, Emma states, “This type of programming is crucial as it changes screen time from being passive engagement to a creative – making time. Then your family comes out at nighttime and you’re in the plaza and you can see your work and it’s 20 metres tall. That’s the sort of thing you remember as a kid and could be what flips the switch and makes a person go, ‘Oh, this is something I could do.’” 

Bridget followed up by saying, “It’s a cliche saying, but it works so well: ‘You have to see it to dream it.’ That exposure to the arts helps young people see that being an artist is possible and achievable.”  

During my visit to the Gallery, this effect was on full display. At the time, they were showing an exhibition called Bush Lines, which expressed our connections to the vast range of regional and remote landscapes in this country. It was curated by Liam Keenan, a former student of Tamworth South Public School, who has pursued the arts and curated this show in his former role as Assistant Curator of First Nations Art at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney. He is now a Senior Producer, First Nations at Museums of History NSW.  

Image: RANSW CEO, Dr Tracey Callinan at the opening of ‘Overhead and Underneath’, 2025. Tamworth Regional Gallery. Photo by Tamworth Regional Council.

Another key part of what they do is making sure the Gallery is an inclusive place where everyone feels comfortable entering.  

“We’re trying to make it a space where people feel welcome to come in and are working to connect with all communities, First Nations, regional and remote artists and schools, our rainbow community.” said Emma. 

To achieve this, they try to make it easier for people to walk through the doors in the first place. They hold free events and try to use the space in unexpected ways. When I visited, there was a free yoga session happening in the gallery space itself. They also host community choir and studio nights, where people can come and make art in a social environment, and visible mending workshops for people wanting to learn Japanese and Indian clothing repair techniques.  

Encouraging difficult but important and respectful conversations is also important to the Gallery’s goals.  

Bridget says, “One of our values at the Gallery and Museums is courage. And it is quite important for us to ensure that we exhibit works that challenge audiences, push buttons and create a safe place for an unsafe discussion. We don’t do that all the time. But we’re ensuring that in the exhibition mix, some of our content is deliberately about thinking and questioning.” 

The Gallery also works to collaborate and support communities around the whole of Tamworth Regional Council’s area. One example of this was a 2025 project called Overhead and Underneath, which was funded by the Regional Arts Fund administered by Regional Arts NSW (RANSW).  

The project involved an exhibition featuring mid-career artists from both the Kamilaroi (Tamworth) and Wiradjuri (Albury) regions that was about “taking the time to look overhead or underneath your feet” a process that can be, “a centring experience that makes one appreciate that exact moment in time.” (Source: www.tamworthregion.com.au/event/overhead-and-underneath-lessons-in-observation)

But it also took this further, working to support the community in the nearby town of Manilla. Manilla is a town with a population of about 2300 people and is located 45 km from Tamworth. Its name in the Kamilaroi language translates to ‘meeting of rivers’, named after the fact that it is located at the junction of the Naomi and Manilla rivers.  

Emma has a particularly strong connection to Manilla, describing it as a sort of tranquil refuge from busy contemporary life. She says, There are so many spots along the river, and it is so beautiful up at Warrabah. A day feels longer out here as it is really relaxing. The main street is a beauty, with great shops and fixtures.” 

Emma leads an organisation called Manilla Community Renewable Energy Inc, which centres on wholistic sustainability and regeneration in Manilla through both agriculture and social interventions. It was created in response to frustrations from locals about the expansion of the coal and gas industry when there are more sustainable alternatives. They decided to build a solar and battery which can produce five megawatts of electricity. After 13 years, the project is planning to begin construction in 2027. 

Image: ‘On River Time’ mural in Manilla by Jordan Lucky, 2025. Photo by Anthony Hands.

The Gallery has also worked with the thematic synergies between the town’s values of environment, habitat and water and the works in the Overhead and Underneath exhibition. Together, the gallery and Manilla Community Renewable Energy Inc organised for a mural by artist Jordan Lucky as an additional part of the project. Though the community was sceptical at first, this mural, titled On River Time, has since become a well-loved piece of community life.  

“We’re trying to build that consensus of things we all support rather than sitting in the corner saying, you know, ‘I’m against this’ or ‘I’m for that’. The real question is ‘What do we all value?’  The river and its beautiful inhabitants like the platypus are clearly celebrated by the mural,” Emma said.  

The partnership between Tamworth Regional Gallery and Manilla Community Renewable Energy Inc is ongoing, united by the goal of serving the Manilla community.  

Image: Renewable Manilla Festival, Workshop. Photo by Manilla Community Renewable Energy Inc.

Recently, Bridget suggested that Manilla should become one of the focused regional centres for RANSW’s RALLY project. RALLY is a year-long program where we are trying to support rural arts-led regeneration, helping small towns become more vibrant places through arts and culture.  

A significant part of this project involves RANSW partnering with five strategic regional centres where this work has already started. For each of these centres, our CEO Dr Tracey Callinan and Alex Wisser (Co-Founder of Cementa Festival in Kandos) are delivering tailored professional development workshops to help plan or expand the initiatives that are already in place. Each centre will also receive some funding to help them make these things come to fruition.  

In conversation with Tracey, Bridget identified Manilla as a town with significant potential for the RALLY project. Bridget identified three reasons why.  

“When I was talking to Tracey about Manilla for RALLY, there’s a few key features that we thought were significant in relation to its development. One is the architecture. There’s some beautiful architecture in the main street. The next one is that it’s right along where the Namoi and the Peel rivers meet. And then the final one is that Warrabah National Park is about half an hour away. So, Manilla can almost be the gateway to this beautiful national park.” 

RANSW has been working with Emma to support the Renewable Manilla Festival, which is a yearly event by Manilla Community Renewable Energy Inc. They already have a long history of enlivening their community through arts-led regeneration, in tandem with environmental regeneration.  

Each year, the festival attracts around 200 visitors to Manilla, where they can share a meal prepared with ingredients from farmers in the surrounding area that use sustainable practices. There are also multiple free arts workshops with an environmental focus.  

Emma said, “It’s about sustainability in regional centres, which is community sustainability as well as energy and food and water and so on. It’s getting together and having fun, enjoying food and each other’s company.  The creative workshops and presentations have an environmental focus. There’s eco-dying, or there’s synthesisers that are charged by solar powered batteries and presentations on soil ecology and mental health. There’s a wheelie bin that’s got a big solar panel that becomes the amplifier. We try and find fun and novel ways to talk about new approaches without forcing it on people.”

RALLY isn’t about enforcing the ‘right’ way to do an arts regeneration project on each individual community. This project is about partnering with people who are already doing things like the Renewable Manilla Festival and to share what they’ve learnt with other communities in regional NSW.  

In June 2026, Tracey and Alex will spend a day with Bridget, Emma and others in the community who are interested in this arts-led regeneration in Manilla. The goal is to help facilitate a conversation for them to understand what is unique about their town and how they can expand the initiatives they already have in place.  

Another goal is to help them deliver more for their community as the festival keeps growing and developing. Ultimately, this work seeks to help both Tamworth Regional Gallery and Manilla Community Renewable Energy Inc in their mission of serving their community.  

Image: Renewable Manilla Festival 100 Mile Dinner. Photo by Manilla Community Renewable Energy Inc.

This work also highlights how important it is to have organisations like this on the ground in regional communities. At RANSW we don’t have the intimate knowledge about what makes Manilla unique and what they actually need to enliven their community. But by working together, we can provide training and funding to support Emma and Bridget in the work they are already doing.  

In light of all this, it is clear that regional galleries have a much larger role to play than providing equal access to art exhibitions for regional audiences. When we consider Tamworth Regional Gallery’s programs, and the way they partner with rural towns outside of Tamworth itself, we can see that service to their community is an essential part of what they do. Regional galleries are the beating heart of arts and culture in regional NSW and one of the main connecting forces, helping artists find opportunities and helping organisations like us support regional artists.  

The NSW Government’s recent investment in regional art and culture acknowledges this fact and is an excellent first step toward addressing the challenges that communities face. At Regional Arts NSW, we are excited to see this unfold, and work with Create NSW to continue to build upon it with the shared goal of enriching regional life.  

Written by Beatrice Waller, Operations and Engagement Officer, RANSW 

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