About
The Blue Mountains Creative Arts Network
The Blue Mountains Creative Arts Network (BMCAN) is a community-based NFP that aims to support a vibrant, sustainable, creative arts community through leadership, member services and collaborative partnerships. It does this through a range of activities such as:
- Auspicing grants for artists
- Arts Trails and Open Studios for artists
- Group exhibitions for members
- The TalkingArtZ Project
- The Wild Mountain Collective Project
- Collaborative partnerships with other organisations such as R$Adio Blue Mountains, BANC, Blue Mountains Accommodation and Tourism Association and Blue Mountains Regional Business Chamber.
- The Mountains Art Xpo, An annual event, celebrating artists and artisans of the Greater Blue Mountains and surrounding partner regional festivals.
The Blue Mountains Arts Community
Our community of talented artists are here to welcome you to our beautiful Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, and to share with you their enjoyment of the world of art and creativity. From arts trails to exhibitions, from performances to workshops, it’s all here and available in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. To further this approach we are restarting the TalkingArtZ Project which will primarily continue to attempt to inform and ultimately educate all creatives in the Lower and Upper Blue Mountains with regular talks, gatherings and formal events aimed at providing communication between artists, musicians, writers and all creative souls who wish to become part of a growing community. In collaboration with Radio Blue Mountains it will also be part of the reimagining of the Populkar arts program ARTHouse, famously hosted by author and presenter Julie Ankers.
The Talking Art Project
Artists often work in isolation, and the aloneness can lead to a kind of self or process-absorbed madness. After artists leave the collegiate world of creative arts education, they have to find within themselves the will to succeed, to find that thing just around the corner that at long last makes what they do make sense.
In the great cities of the world like Paris, Berlin, New York and London, academies and salons provided training and opportunity for artists to exhibit. Similar places are part of the artistic legacy of Australia—Kings Cross and East Sydney in Sydney; Heidelberg and Montsalvat/Eltham in Melbourne and their more recent expressions in the nooks and crannies of inner city areas in our major cities. The haunts of painters, writers, philosophers, musicians where the exchange of ideas fostered movements and shaped the future of art and culture are part of the treasured heritage of society.
In today’s world of expensive inner city housing, with artists now living on the urban fringes, how do artists find other artists with whom they share values? How do they create opportunities for conversation and building a vision for the future of culture and the arts in their region, in Australia and the wider world?
How also do they network to find the right pigment, or access to a kiln or a life drawing class where models hold their pose for hours instead of minutes?
Guided by the insights of our Creative Leaders, the Talking Art Project will address this challenge. It will facilitate a series of gatherings in both the Upper and Lower Mountains led by leading thinkers and practitioners and local creatives whose work links to the themes that excite us:
- Art and well-being – Art and living well in the age of anxiety, trauma and depression
- Art and dangerous times – exploring disruptive impacts of technology
- Art and culture—beyond the stranglehold of economism.
Shaping the Talking Art Project
The reboot of theTalkingArtZ Project in collaboration with RBM89.1FM’s arts program ARTHouse, will begin with a launch in combination with the Laneways Art Project being held on the 29th of January 29th. If you would like to become involved in shaping the new TalkingArtZ Project, join us by contacting:
Brad Diedrich
Media and Marketing Manager
brad@bmcan.com.au
Blue Mountains Creative Arts Network