Gillian Harrison
Artsupport Australia’s Northern Territory Manager, Gillian Harrison, works with Indigenous artists and arts organisations in remote and urban communities.
Originally from Melbourne, Gillian worked as a musician and in a range of community music initiatives at local and national levels before moving to Darwin in 1993.
She first came into contact with the Australia Council in the 1980s as a consultant, helping to pioneer community music programs through the Music Board. She subsequently held committee/board roles with the Music and Performing Arts Boards and the Community Cultural Development Division of council.
Among other things, Gillian has served on the music and multicultural arts advisory committees for the Victorian Ministry for the Arts, been the Australian member of the Commission for Community Music Activity of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) and was inaugural Chair of the Northern Territory (NT) Arts Grants Board.
In the Top End, she spent many years focusing on Indigenous music training, employment and industry development, working for organisations such as Arts Training NT. Gillian was involved in the delivery of NT University’s first-ever Vocational Education and Training course for contemporary music in remote Aboriginal communities and also worked for the Yothu Yindi Foundation.
From the Top End she moved to Alice Springs in 2000 to take up a position with the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) as Manager of CAAMA Music, an Indigenous owned and operated record label and recording studio.
In 2003 Gillian was awarded a fellowship by the Australia Council’s Community Cultural Development Board. She later returned to Darwin to research and write From Outstation to Out There; Nabarlek, a music industry case study for the CHARTTES industry training council. She worked again as consultant to the Yothu Yindi Foundation, to Skinnyfish Music and was project officer and mentor for Music NT and the NT Indigenous Music Awards.
In 2006, Gillian took up the position with Artsupport Australia.
‘The role provides a wonderful opportunity to keep working with the many Indigenous artists and organisations within my networks throughout the NT, to maintain those grassroots connections and to contribute to building their capacity and high levels of creative output through increased philanthropic funding,’ she says.
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