Executive Director Corporate Resources
Robyn Cowdery
I have always understood money (I’m good at it) and I’ve always loved the arts but when I took up this role, I realised that I didn’t really understand artists. Sometimes it was a bit of a struggle even making sense of the language. It was like we were from different planets.
I’m a country girl originally. I grew up on a farm in a little place called Nundle, near Tamworth and I was never off a horse’s back. I don’t think there were too many artists in Nundle in those days. Our principal was a very good painter and I remember choral concerts at the Town Hall and playing bad recorder at school but that was about it. After studying in Sydney, I went bush again in my twenties and lived in the north-west of the state for twenty years. I was raising a family and studying for my MBA and working mainly in the cotton industry, for the Cotton Research and Development Corporation.
I suppose cotton seems a long way from the arts but in fact the questions I now ask in this role are the same as the ones I was asking before. Where is the strategic direction? Where are the gaps in our organization? How can we help strengthen the sector? It’s still all about helping things to grow. It’s just that instead of growing varieties of cotton, we’re growing music, visual arts, literature, dance…
I have had the most glorious time re-discovering the arts since I moved back to town and suddenly it seems that all around me I’m finding opportunities to understand artists and what drives them. I think we’re probably on the same planet after all…
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