Makeshift Workshop: Site Responsive Cultural Production
Lana Nguyen and guests
Presented by Arts House
Thursday 20 – Saturday 22 March 2025
10am – 5pm
Call out opens: Wednesday 29 January, 9am
Call out closes: Friday 21 February, 5pm
Notification: Friday 28 February
Workshop location
Two days of this workshop (Thursday & Friday) will take place at Arts House North Melbourne Town Hall and one day (Saturday) will take place at In Place Garambi Baanj, an off-site rural location at Laughing Waters Eltham. Travel support will be provided to off-site location to and from Arts House.
Access notes
This workshop will involve hour long periods of listening, talking and writing. All presentations will be recorded. Captioning can be turned on for these sessions. Elements of the workshop at Garambi Baanj may include outdoor activities including walking in the surrounding landscape which sometimes has uneven surfaces.
Auslan and Audio Describer Guides can be provided on request – please include in your EOI.
Venue Access
Arts House is wheelchair accessible. Click here for venue access details.
Garambi Baanj workshop session will be held in a heritage listed house. Access into the house has a 1 – 2-inch rise. Vehicles can be driven right next to the house. For more access information please contact Sarah.Rowbottam@melbourne.vic.gov.au with your enquiries.
An Access Guide will be available prior to the workshop.
Site Responsive Cultural Production is a workshop surveying and engaging with a range of artistic structures and cultural projects that centre relationships to place.
While art can bring us closer to understanding connection, it can also often echo and rehearse environmental separation by moving ideas into particular walled off locations, removing them from their context. This can create abstractions and distractions, moving our attention away from the realities of the reciprocal relationships that create meaning and sustain our lives. In this workshop we will be looking into how we can do this otherwise.
How can we move away from the prevailing worldview in art that land is a background or an environment to be shut away from? And how could this move shift objectified understandings of land that create the conditions for it to be extracted from?
In this three-day workshop, curator/producer Lana Nguyen will speak to the artists, thinkers and organisers behind three projects that bring environments to the fore – Millie Cattlin and Joseph Norster from The Quarry on Gadubanud Country, Alex Wisser and Peter Swain from Cementa on Wiradjuri Country and Eugene Howard and Zena Cumpston from In Place on Wurundjeri Country.
Together, we will aim to track what methodologies and structures make this type of practice possible, the capacity of site-responsive work as a form of climate response, how it can grow, and how this can open different perspectives and possibilities for the worlds we hope to create.
Who is it for?
This workshop welcomes artists, arts workers and the arts-interested who are curious about site-responsive practice and want to contribute to a community of knowledge building.
How to apply
This Makeshift Workshop can support up to 12 participants. All participants are provided with a $100 daily honorarium and lunch.
Lead Makeshift artists determine the application and selection process for participating artists.
You will be asked to respond to the following questions:
- Please share your interest and connection to cultural production as climate response.
- Tell us about your interest in site responsive practice.
- What do you hope to contribute to this workshop?
About the facilitator
Details
Presented by Arts House
Thursday 20 – Saturday 22 March 2025
10am – 5pm
Call out opens: Wednesday 29 January, 9am
Call out closes: Friday 21 February, 5pm
Notification: Friday 28 February
Workshop location
Two days of this workshop (Thursday & Friday) will take place at Arts House North Melbourne Town Hall and one day (Saturday) will take place at In Place Garambi Baanj, an off-site rural location at Laughing Waters Eltham. Travel support will be provided to off-site location to and from Arts House.
Access notes
This workshop will involve hour long periods of listening, talking and writing. All presentations will be recorded. Captioning can be turned on for these sessions. Elements of the workshop at Garambi Baanj may include outdoor activities including walking in the surrounding landscape which sometimes has uneven surfaces.
Auslan and Audio Describer Guides can be provided on request – please include in your EOI.
Venue Access
Arts House is wheelchair accessible. Click here for venue access details.
Garambi Baanj workshop session will be held in a heritage listed house. Access into the house has a 1 – 2-inch rise. Vehicles can be driven right next to the house. For more access information please contact Sarah.Rowbottam@melbourne.vic.gov.au with your enquiries.
An Access Guide will be available prior to the workshop.
Supported by –
Site Responsive Cultural Production has been supported by City of Melbourne through Arts House.
Image credit: James Farley
Image description: Three people walk on a desire line towards a community garden next to the Murray river.
