Holding Space – A Guide to Community Engagement

Fuel for your artistic evolution

This Winter Nights, we’re delivering 10 professional development workshops designed to spark creativity and build industry skills. From performance to producing and marketing to design, these sessions are here to empower, inspire, and strengthen our arts community. 

Join Community Arts Network (CAN) producer Michelle White and CAN Project Manager Rebecca McCauley as they share the practice, pitfalls and payoffs of producing works of scale with the community. The pair are the driving force behind CAN’s Unfinished Business Matriarchal cultural preservation project with the last of the Elders born on country at Badjaling in the Wheatbelt. The project has received significant Creative Australia and Lotterywest funding and part of the success of this project is that it is deeply rooted and led by the community. Rather than a presentation, followed by a Q&A, this session is designed to be an informal conversation about making art in community contexts.

About Facilitator

Michelle White is the Executive Producer at Community Arts Network. Michelle is an award-winning former ABC journalist with more than thirty years’ experience in television, film, radio, print, digital media.

A proud Yamatij storyteller, she is passionate about sharing the stories of First Nation people, and they have formed the basis of many of her creative projects, including short stories, publications and plays.

For the past 15 years Michelle has overseen CAN’s First Nations programs. She is currently driving two major projects, Unfinished Business and Legacies – both of which are story based digital media and visual arts projects, grounded in truth telling.

Rebecca McCauley is an artist and arts worker. Often working collaboratively, she has shown, facilitated and worked on outcomes across the country for a range of galleries, festivals and artist-run spaces. Working from her position as English/settler-descendant she is interested in work that confronts the complexities of the present and the role of art in shaping how we see and imagine the world.

Rebecca is a Project Producer for Unfinished Business, assisting with project facilitation under the lead of Executive Producer Michelle White.