From cultural safety to cultural authority: Insights for collaborative culture building

WEDNESDAY 1ST DECEMBER

NZ – 12.30pm | VIC/NSW/TAS – 10.30am | SA – 10am | QLD – 9.30am | NT – 9am
WA – 7.30am

Links to join all conference sessions can be accessed via the program page of the ADSA conference website

In this opening address, Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts Richard Frankland shares stories from his extensive cultural leadership and practice experience over thirty years. Richard will share his knowledge about – and strategies for – attending to cultural safety and will speak to the ways in which these approaches lead to cultural strengthening and genuine cultural authority for First Nations colleagues and communities. Richard will be joined by Bonnie Dukakis from the Koorie Youth Council and together they will reflect on key protocols in cross-cultural creative collaborations that are emerging in Australia, and how these protocols empower diverse participants from cultural leaders to audience, observers, backstage, and creatives.  

Beyond Inclusivity

WEDNESDAY 1ST DECEMBER

NZ – 6pm | VIC/NSW/TAS – 4pm | SA – 3.30pm | QLD – 3pm | NT – 2.30pm
WA – 1pm

Chaired by Kate Hunter

Links to join all conference sessions can be accessed via the program page of the ADSA conference website

The panel takes Jodee Mundy’s (2009) pursuit of what she terms ‘beyond inclusion’ as its starting point. The work of panel members Jodee Mundy OAM, Bron Batten, Tristan Meecham and Glen Walton, seeks to articulate a space where diversity is inherently valuable to art, rather than a point of difference. This focus considers diversity as a point of commonality and offers a space for bold innovation and radical invention. The panel seeks to initiate a conversation between a cross-section of artists working through live performance in communities to interrogate their notions of inclusivity, their projects, and their practices in relation to the space beyond inclusivity.  

Decolonising Teaching and Research

THURSDAY 2ND DECEMBER

NZ – 12.30pm | VIC/NSW/TAS – 10.30am | SA – 10am | QLD – 9.30am | NT – 9am
WA – 7.30am

Chaired by David O’Donnell

Links to join all conference sessions can be accessed via the program page of the ADSA conference website

This panel comprises a round table discussion by scholars based at institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand responding to the theme of decolonising pedagogy and research practice. In the last few years, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen an increased emphasis on engagement with Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles including the need to protect and promote indigenous Māori knowledge, for Pākeha to work in partnership with Māori, and to address inequities in tertiary enrolments, outcomes and employment. This engagement has been accompanied by increasing efforts to decolonise curricula and pedagogy at educational institutions. Additionally, a recent review of the country’s national research assessment body (PBRF), has recommended adoption of a more ‘capacious definition of research excellence’ that encompasses diverse research cultures and, called for new funding incentives to address the underrepresentation of Māori and Pacifica researchers in the academic workforce. This panel will seek to pose questions to and discuss the experience of academic colleagues from Aotearoa in engaging with decolonial thinking and practice in their teaching and research.

Relationship and Participation in Cultural Leadership: Models of Practice  

THURSDAY 2ND DECEMBER

NZ – 6pm | VIC/NSW/TAS – 4pm | SA – 3.30pm | QLD – 3pm | NT – 2.30pm
WA – 1pm

Links to join all conference sessions can be accessed via the program page of the ADSA conference website

What key leadership practices intersect to decentre known hierarchies? How do we drive leadership transformation and create participatory models in our cultural spaces? Where do co-leadership models thrive best? 

Through story, conversation and reflection, this Keynote Panel brings together four cultural leaders from the live performance sector in Australia, who are doing it differently. They offer insights into their approach and reflect on the shifts in cultural leadership they are a part of, and the multiplicity of approaches that open up leadership in practice – to enable shared opportunities, relational processes and widening participation. 

Jamie Lewis (Next Wave), Zainab Syed (Belvoir, formerly Performing Lines WA), Anna Weekes (Darwin Community Arts) and Gunditjmara theatre actor, director and playwright Tom Molyneux