Manager’s Report – Arts Ceduna

Arts Ceduna has been operating at the Ceduna Aboriginal Arts and Culture Centre for twenty years. Arts Ceduna previously received funding through Indigenous Visual Arts Industry Support Program (IVAIS) since 2001. The business has been funded under a different government section called ‘Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (Office for the Arts)’ since financial year in 2020, so over a year now. Arts Ceduna are appreciative to be one of eight indigenous-owned organisations well-known for Indigenous art Australia-wide.

Arts Ceduna are working to mobilise local knowledge through supporting local artists, leading artistic development, arts marketing, improving community engagement and building recognition of the arts in the Far West region of South Australia. Through a rigorous programme in arts, cultural and community development, we have supported 110 registered Aboriginal artists from our region. We support both In-house and consignment artists from homelands or communities such as Koonibba, Scotdesco, Yalata, Oak Valley, but we also support artists who are transitioning from the APY Lands to our region and those living in other larger towns like Port Lincoln, Port Augusta, Coober Pedy and Adelaide.

Arts Ceduna are very fortunate to have a larger arts team employed; six employee’s working for the art sector, to deliver a successful Visual arts program to our local Aboriginal community. The current arts coordinator has been with the business since 2015, but employed as the coordinator in June 2017, Serena Gunter enjoys building, supporting her staff and artists through training development activities that focus on reaching their goals as professional artists or arts workers. Last year during Covid-19 academic the business struggled with staffing as we kept working through-out the early stages of Covid-19 to keep the business running, with lock-down and other situations made it difficult for our employees to do so. The business implemented new safer ways to work under guidelines of Covid-safe procedures, as many other businesses also did. On behalf of the organisation, I would like to thank my staff members for continuing with the business throughout Covid-19 academic.

The business would like to quickly thank two staff members for their time & effort in the Arts Administration Officer position: firstly Jaime Newchurch employee with the business since 2017-2020 (three years). Secondly Thanks to; Connie Wright for your time with us at Arts Ceduna in the same position. Newly welcoming our New Administration Officer to the Arts team, Kelly Taylor is a past employee of the business during 2015. Kelly completed her graphic designing qualification with (tjutjuna art centre) she brings high skills and support to the art teams. Yana Tschuna our Marketing-Website Officer started in 2019, she enjoys documenting, cataloging all artworks to the arts website. Two of our Arts Workers Collette Gray & Beaver Lennon do a fantastic job with either supporting our artists in the arts studio or assisting our customers with sales.

Sherrie Jones the CDP Supervisor for CAC/Eyre Plus is still based at the arts studio overseeing the ‘Creative Arts’ program since November 2019. Sherrie the CDP Supervisor is highly skilled and brings high knowledge around the Arts industry being an artists for around 20 years herself, she encourages & teaches all of her participants who attend the ‘Creative Arts’ program from Monday to Thursday.

Arts Ceduna was involved in the following events:

Pottery, Lino-printing, basketing weaving, airbrush painting (fine), acrylic painting, drawing in the art studio
Stencil Light painting by idreaming facilitated by David Wilson
Marine Debris workshop by Jojo Spook artist from Robe in South Australia funded by the Sydney National Indigenous Artfair.
Governance Training through Ku-Arts
Cultural activities including cooking & making bush medicine

Staff Training and Development

Online SAM database Training with Desart
Online Covid-Safe awareness & Covid-Marshall training
Customer Service
Social Media
Three staff completed WordPress website training with Dave West DHW Computers
Photography & multimedia training
Stretching, priming canvas, framing
Pitjantjatjara Language & Culture Course funded through Ku-Arts by Iwiri
Multiple Covid grants for both artists & staff were secured by the arts coordinator

Arts Ceduna’s major achievements:

Due to Covid academic last year most of Arts Ceduna pre-planned events, exhibition and artists trips were postponed or even cancelled. Luckily one of our major events Tarnanthi Artfair in Adelaide did go ahead on a smaller scale in November instead of October 2020. Tarnanthi is presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia with Principal Partner BHP and support from the Government of South Australia.

Our Arts Coordinator Serena started the organising before going on maternity leave in October when Pam Diment filled in whilst she was away. Pam and the staff specially our Administration Connie Wright did an amazing job organising all artworks. Tarnanthi and Art Gallery of South Australia team curated the artworks for the artfair unfortunatly not all artists paintings were selected but under the Covid-19 circumstances the business was satisfied with the half a dozen paintings chosen. They sent Artefacts (Punu) from Yalata, OakValley artists who produced amazing works to be showcased at the fair but implementing Covid-Safe precautions and organised in a smaller scale then its usual large artfair held every year. Arts Ceduna were very grateful with the total sales of artworks sold at the fair, was good for the artists before Christmas.

Artists & staff Achievements:

Fantastic efforts by all our Artists under Covid-19 academic starting in the early year of 2020, they all kept in high spirit and motivated to continue their artistic art pieces working from both home and the arts studio entering few art prizes, and online exhibitions that still occurred. Well done to the staff who working through online studies and other development, or achievements they completed.

Arts Ceduna supported with the following artists grants:

1x Artists’ Benevolent Fund from (The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)
3x artist applied & successfully with Covid-19 small grant to assist with art materials (Country Arts S.A)
2x individual (Quick Response Grant — Regional Arts Fund country arts S.A)
1x multimedia equipment (Quick Response Grant — Regional Arts Fund country arts S.A)

Glad to announce the total art revenue paid to our artists totalling: $ 131,185.00 with the previous year totalling $159,856.00.

Future for Arts Ceduna:

Arts Ceduna moving forward in the future will focus on supporting the artists to return into studio to prepare new artsworks for upcoming exhibitions, artfairs with Tarnanthi Artfair set to go ahead December 2020 will be very different from previous years due to Covid-19 so there will be restrictions & precautions put in place, this will be the first year no staff & artists won’t be attending the artfairs, exhibition they usually attend. Arts Ceduna will also support CDP Supervisor to begin the ‘Creative Art Program’ back up to support participants artistic development & goals. Arts Ceduna have planned and will focus on SAM’S Database, wordpress-website, customer service, social media training, photography, basic computing, and studio training for artsworkers. Successful grant writing with support of Ku-Arts & Arts Ceduna we have been able to secure funding during May-July 2020 from ‘Australia Council for the Arts’ totalling $70k with arts Ceduna being top 10 grant writing be successful in a very competitive round. Arts Ceduna plan to run the projects; first project a ‘Womens creative cultural trip away’ and the other a multi-media training development project to support new ways of document Artists Bios. Arts will focus on staff to be trained in new media another way to capture artists story, Bio-CV, Capturing their artworks via recording, film, photography instead of written Authenticity certificate. All will go ahead 2021-2022 being two-year funding.

We would like to Thank the following for continues support: our local Artists, Arts Ceduna staff, support from Community members, Ceduna Aboriginal Corporation and Board members, SICAD Program through Ku-Arts (Adelaide).

Arts Ceduna would like to acknowledge the ‘Australia Government: Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (Office for the Arts)’, & IVAIS for ongoing support to our Visual Arts program, we greatly appreciate everything.

Serena Gunter / Art Centre Coordinator

Managers Report

Multi-media training

Staff Multi media training