Artist Hannah Brontë will be creating a Mount Druitt Block Party as part of C3West’s August project; Still I Rise, 2016. Image courtesy and © the artist.
Recognition of that hotbed for culture has been slow. And while the spotlight has been directed on more contentious moves West, such as that of the Powerhouse Museum, a quieter, more immersive arts program has been collaborating with community and business for over a decade across the breadth of Western Sydney.
C3West is a long-term program that creates situations where artists can work strategically with business and non-arts government organisations, with a focus on contemporary issues of local concern. What sets the program further apart is where it’s institutionally located; it sits under the custodianship of one of our major art institutions, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), pushing against the stereotypes of contemporary art practice.
The idea for the program originated in 2001, when MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor caught a conference paper by Jock McQueenie, who spoke of the three Cs model – community, commerce and culture – and how they might be brought together through collaborative projects that open up the experience of art to new audiences.
Under the directorship of MCA Senior Curator, Anne Loxley, C3West has been doing that now for 12 years, and has delivered 18 projects that range in focus and scale. It’s soon to deliver the next in Blacktown.
Loxley said: ‘Everybody has different opinions about what social practice is, but for artists to be validated by a bigger institution and to have the opportunity for exchange and reflection – that is the story of C3West.’
Key to this vision is the investment of a non-arts partner. ‘We are very adamant we are not a provider of public art services. We are about creating a role for artists in the world, and it’s about believing in the way artists think, and we are getting better and better at doing that all the time,’ said Loxley.
Sean Millwood, NgAl-Lo-Wah Murrutula, 2018, produced by Moogahlin Performing Arts. Moogahlin are performing in C3West’s next project at Blacktown in June. photograph: James Photo.
Shifting perceptions from community art to social practice
In the book Civic Actions: Artist’s practices beyond the museum, Macgreggor writes: ‘C3West has had to perform a tricky balancing act. On the one hand, there is suspicion from the community arts sector, which has traditionally regarded organisations like the MCA as inherently elitist and antagonistic to the desire to democratize the arts. On the other, there is the contemporary art world, which views the instrumentalisation of art as a threat to the freedom of the artist to produce work without the constraints of tangible outcomes.’
Loxley speaks of working in Western Sydney when Macgreggor first arrived in Australia, adding her surprise to see the curators from the MCA march out to see what she and others were doing.
She added that in those early days, they had to be extra brave. ‘The people who worked on those first projects relied on their own contacts, their own passion and resources, before a level of trust was grown.’
‘We were saying, “Are you interested in an artist working with you? We don’t know how it will be exactly, but we know it will be good.” We have always worked with artists of a high calibre. That benchmark of the MCA has been very important curatorially to each project,’ said Loxley.
She reminded that the program is very experimental. ‘We are not afraid of failing, but we have to be ethical.’
Working with business as partners
Loxley said that there are three things they require from a project partner: ‘We require from partners money, a collaborative attitude, and to share our belief that artists can make an impact in the real world.’
On C3West website page they describe what they do as “ethical partnerships”.
‘It is very business like – the front end is determining what the project is, what is the investment and what is the timeline, and we do all that work before we start talking to artist,’ explained Loxley.
‘There is always this utopian vision and this passionate belief in artists and then this strategic reality, and they butt up against each other all the time,’ she added. She said that the projects are not so much driven by outcome, but by the issue they will address.
‘But if I don’t keep those business partners happy I am in trouble,’ Loxley said with the voice of reason. Part of the C3West agenda is not only bridging communities and giving visibility to the topics that count to those communities, but nurturing and teaching business and government what creative community engagement can be.
‘Today we can talk to business about precedence, the work was out there in the domain and people noticed it. People now come to us,’ she said.
Working with community is complex
In the arts, terms like community consultation, community access, and community projects are thrown around with ease. But in reality, Loxley says the community part is very complex work.
‘You are constantly learning. Everyone makes mistakes but when you trust someone it makes a difference.’
Loxley said that the main changes she has witnessed over the 12 years of the C3West program are internal ones. ‘We know what we are doing – we know ourselves – and we know how to communicate with community.’
She said that the worst mistake you can make is producing a shiny flyer for your community project. And, when C3West launched its Women of Fairfield project in 2016, they produced their media material in three languages. ‘It is about knowing how to do that and knowing that its important – it’s knowing the tools we need to do things right,’ said Loxley.
‘You can never get it completely right, but we are working with full awareness. It requires bravery, that community stuff,’ she added.
Loxley paraphrased Nato Thompson, who also contributed to the Civic Actions publication: ‘Not every artist is good at community liaison but they might be good at working with people and social engagement.’
Thompson was then Chief Curator at Creative Time in New York. He continued: ‘Everybody comes to art with their own way of investigating what’s going on in the world. The idea of taste that persists in the art world is outdated…there are just points of entry, intrigue, complexity, power, performativity. Education people get that; that’s just a fact. Curatorial people are slower.’
Loxley said that one of the more recent developments in the C3West program has been the involvement of the MCA artist educators, and the impact they are making with youth in these areas is through very sophisticated programing with long legs and legacy.
Blacktown Native Institution Project 2018 artists, left to right: Tony Albert, Lily Shearer, Frederick Copperwaite, Liza-Mare Syron and Sharyn Egan. Photograph: Joshua Morris.
The next C3West project
Within a matter of months, C3West will roll out two new projects. For the Blacktown Native Institution Project 2018, artists Tony Albert and Sharyn Egan join with Moogahlin Performing Arts to work with Aboriginal communities, responding to the history of the Blacktown Native Institution – one of the earliest instances of institutional removal of Aboriginal children from their families operating from 1823–1829.
The project is, importantly, also about imagining a future for this important place. It builds on the previous collaborations Blacktown Native Institution Project (2014–2015) and Blacktown Art’s 2013 exhibition The Native Institute, and is a collaboration with Blacktown Arts.
Loxley said of the project: ‘Blacktown is amazing in terms of what they know about their community. Moogahlin are working with four different Aboriginal local dance groups; Sharyn Egan is working with a different two elders and local weavers; and Tony is working with ten young Aboriginal kids from Blacktown.’
Egan’s large-scale sculpture mimics endangered local vegetation and will become a marker for this place. ‘At the moment you just drive past and don’t know the significance of this important place. It will be there for at least five years,’ said Loxley.
A day of celebration, art and performance will be held on 9 June. For more information visit the Blacktown Native Institution Project website.
Then on 18 August, C3West will present Druitt Days Live with support from Blacktown Arts, Blacktown City Council, Street University Mount Druitt and MECA, and in collaboration with St Vincent de Paul Society NSW. This is the first time the MCA has worked with a charity organisation.
Druitt Days Live aims to bring together young people of diverse cultural and faith backgrounds, lead by artists Hannah Brontë and Dean Cross, who will work with young people in Mount Druitt over an eight-month period to craft projects articulating their views on diversity and identity.
Hannah Brontë’s Mount Druitt Block Party will use the art forms of hip hop, rap, spoken word and visual arts. She said: ‘Through art, you can be the best version of yourself. If you love art, you will know what I mean because art chooses you, and that inner space is magic.’
Project participants Marie Kamara, Moseima Fofana and Prince Flomo with artist Dean Cross (centre) at the Druitt Days Live Harmony Day event, 21 March 2018. Druitt Days Live is co-commissioned by St Vincent de Paul Society NSW and C3West on behalf of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photograph: Naomi Chilcott
The second component of the project, Dean Cross’s Pilot, responds to the iconic television show Home and Away. Cross will again working with a group of local young people to devise, write, perform and produce a pilot episode of a new Australian soap opera.
Cross explained: ‘I have been obsessed by Home and Away for a long time. It’s part of a meta-narrative, a myth, that Australia was and is a White country. Through this project, I want to empower the people I work with to tell their own stories, in their own voices.’
Loxley concluded that Australia has a good reputation globally for its work in creative social justice, and to have the backing of a major institution is very progressive.
‘The legacy thing is really important,’ she added.
If you are aged 12–25 and live in the Mount Druitt area, there is still an opportunity to get involved in Druitt Days Live. To find out more visit C3West.
