Heartwork: great arts stories from regional Australia

Profiles and celebrates the huge range of artistic activity occurring beyond Australia's metropolitan centres, providing inspiration and models for creators in regional and remote communities.

Heartwork seeks to enhance the profile of regional arts in Australia.  Through its 35 innovative, moving and inspirational stories, this book celebrates the huge range of artistic activity that occurs beyond Australia's metropolitan centres.

The stories in Heartwork sit under six headings, each describing major themes or contexts for the arts in regional Australia:

• Artists and communities: working together to develop and present quality art
• A springboard for young people: providing new skills, life opportunities and a sense of self
• Celebrating place and history: promoting a distinctive regional identity
• Sustaining arts practice: enabling artists to develop skills and promote themselves
• Creativity and diversity: projects that draw on many Australian stories
• Art out there: providing art in remote areas or in new ways.

The stories were supplied by project coordinators or administering bodies from across Australia in response to a call for submissions from the Australia Council and Regional Arts Australia. The selection is not intended to be comprehensive but rather a snapshot of the very complex and progressive cultural landscapes of regional Australia.

These projects are innovative, often achieved in partnerships, and show determination and responsiveness to change.

Each story is structured around: motivations for the projects; the key issues; processes and resources used to complete them; the elements that contributed to their success; and the challenges they faced.

A joint project between the Australia Council and Regional Arts Australia, Heartwork provides inspiration and models for artists, artsworkers, organisations and volunteers in regional communities across Australia.