 How are you today? How perfect is this weather? It's like summer has arrived as the perfect backdrop to Australia. I'm Liz Day, I'm the State Director of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Office here in Adelaide, and it's my absolute delight to welcome you all here today to share with us this event, The Arts as a Bridge to Asia. We've woven together three disparate themes today, which is AusAsia, of course, the leading Asia Arts Festival, Contemporary Arts Festival of Australia, the Australia Awards Program and the New Colombo Plan Scheme. This event is part of the Momentum New Colombo Plan knowledge sharing series, and I'd like to give a very warm welcome to everyone who's joining us by livestream. To formally commence, I'd like to invite Robert Taylor, a senior garner man, to give us a welcome to country. I would just start by beginning by saying I like the term senior garner man, thank you very much. Not quite worthy for the elder status yet, I've got a long time for that one, thank you. Even some of our troops in our dance groups start calling me Uncle Rob, I say don't call me Uncle, just not just yet, not just yet. But ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Robert Taylor. I come from three different Aboriginal groups, the Narendri from the Korong, the Narendra from New York Peninsula, and the Garner people being the traditional owners of this land that we meet on today, that we now call Ad Delayed, yeah? Funny word, that one, but we'll get back to that. So that's just a formal introduction to myself in English. I'd now like to welcome you in Garner language. Here in our beautiful country, we don't just have one Aboriginal language, we actually have over 250 different surviving Aboriginal languages. So the language that I speak to you today is the language of my ancestors, my ancestors being the Garner people, the traditional custodians of this land here. Having said that, I say, Nyanke Nya Mena Na Mani, Manina Burna Nyaloko Yarta, Tanda Ganya Ganya Yarta, Nyanyay Robert Kari Karamotayla, Narendri Niranga Kumagana Mena, Manina Lutampinti Gana Mena, Kumanyalobana Yatanga Mbrendi, Tapendalo Bukyana Burkana Kumagana Mena Yalara, Nayakandalya, Yungundalya, Ladies and gentlemen, can I have a show of hands if you understood any of that? No? Well, as I mentioned, the language that I just spoke to you was the Garner language. And I said, Nyanke Nya Mena, Ladies and gentlemen, I said, Na Mani. Na Mani means are you good? Yeah? If you're speaking to one person, we'll say Ni Na Mani. Two people, we say Ni Wa Mani. Or three or more, we say Na Mani. So Na Mani means are you good? And if you're good, you reply with Mani I, yeah? And it's a beautiful spring afternoon, so should we try that one? All right, Na Mani. Na Mani. Mani, Mani, Mani. If you're not feeling too good, you reply with Yakumani. I suppose some of us would have felt like that about six o'clock this morning when the alarm clock went off. But other than that, it's a beautiful day today and we're here for a beautiful occasion. So as I mentioned, where I come from in three different Aboriginal groups, but specifically here on the Gana, or Taranaganya, the traditional name of Adelaide, as I mentioned, Adelaide's a funny word. But of course, for thousands of years, to Gana people and surrounding tribes have been known as Taranaganya. Can you pronounce that one? Taranaganya. Taranaganya, Mani, Mani, Mani means good. So that's very good. So Taranaganya is the big red kangaroo. Ganya is the rock. This is the dreaming place of the big red kangaroo. This dreaming story runs from here all the way through the middle of Australia, right up to the Northern Territory. If you ask them followers up there, they'll probably tell you that it started up there and it runs all the way down here. Ganya is the rock. We don't see many rocks around Adelaide, around Taranaganya these days. Plenty of cement, mind you. But many years ago, along the River Torrens, especially, once again, another funny word there, River Torrens, River Torrens, traditionally known as Gadawera Puri. Can you say that one? Gadawera Puri. I hope you're paying attention because there's gonna be a little piece of paper you've got to fill out on your way out. So Gadawera Puri basically means red gun river, yeah? That's what it's been known for as thousands of years. River Torrens came about in 1836 when Colonel Light named it after the commissioner, the chairman of the Colonisation Act, Robert Torrens. So that's when they named the River Torrens, the River Torrens. I prefer to call it just the river, basically. If I can't pronounce Gadawera Puri or Red Gun River, I'd prefer to call it the river because at that time when the act came in, the Colonisation Act, it was a bad time for not only Gana people here, but also for all Aboriginal people around Australia. It gave the British Empire the rights to so-called lease the land or as we now know, take the land. So I prefer to veer away from the term River Torrens and use the term river or Red Gun River or Gadawera Puri if you can roll that one off the tongue. So on behalf of my Gana elders and ancestors, past and present, it's a pleasure to welcome you all here today and I acknowledge that this is the traditional land of the Gana people. And for those viewing on live stream, I also extend a further welcome to each and every one of you. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, when I do my welcome to country, I don't stand before you and do my welcome at you. I've seen some welcomes conducted in the past and when I was a young fella growing up, I thought to myself, you know what, one day if we don't know what the future holds, but one day if I ever get to that position, I'm gonna conduct my welcome a little bit differently. And when I extend my welcome to each of you, I stand beside you, alongside you. We all live here in this country, yeah? We all respect this city. We all respect this land. So it's very important that we all come together as one, as united front as one. And we all respect each other and that we all feel welcome and warm here on Gana country. So we mustn't forget the past, but we also mustn't dwell on the past. And it's very important that we come together as my late Aunty Josie Agus used to always say that we come together and we walk together in harmony. It is 2021 and we do live in a very multicultural country and well, at this time of, which is actually sort of unfortunate to say, but at this time with what's going on in the world, one of the most multicultural countries, cities in the world. So it's a pleasure to be here today. And I think this event is very important to hold, especially at this time, with the struggle that we've going on, with that we have going on throughout the world. So it's important to come together to celebrate Aus-Asia. I had the privilege of doing something at Victoria Square on Saturday and I had the opportunity to take my daughter down to Elder Park along Gadawera Puri, the river, River Torrens, and we spent some time down there at the Aus-Asia Festival, which was really a lot of fun, lots of different foods to try. And it was wonderful to see so many different people from all over there. So not only to those of you who live here in Adelaide and grew up here, but also to those of you that are visiting, I hope that you feel blessed in the time that you spend here on this country. I'd now like to sing a song. This is a blessing song where I call upon the good spirit of our ancestors to come here, bless this land and bless each and every one of us here today. But more importantly, I ask my ancestors to call upon the good spirit of your ancestors, of whom the shoulders you walk upon today to come together and you know at us all as one. For those of you who have hearing aids, I'm sorry. You might want to turn them down a little bit. They don't quite, I'm guessing this hall doesn't quite have the acoustics of, you know, Beneathen Hall or Adelaide Hall, but it's, this is a song that comes from the heart. So it's sort of like driving a 5.7 litre, you know. It's sort of hard to kick it out of second gear. But this one here is Manitawala Bukiana, the good spirit for the ancestors. It's okay to clap, ladies and gentlemen, that's all right. More importantly, just as equal as everybody here, I extend a strong welcome to all of you who are viewing in on live stream and I hope that you feel blessed by the spirit of our ancestors. I hope that we all do as we shall. Having said that, it's very important that I sing that song because we call upon the good spirit of our ancestors to come here and bless this land. Not only through dance, when we stomp our feet through the vibrations, we also do it through smoke, through the cleansing ceremonies, and also through language. I'm lucky enough to be a young elder man, still saying young, I'll be 70 saying that. I'm still lucky enough to be a young elder man who learnt from some of my elders in the community the likes of Ani Josiagis and Uncle Stephen Goldsmith. Many, many years ago, they came out and taught me when I was a young man, young boy going to primary school. So I followed in their footsteps and I learnt so much from them. So I'm very proud to be one of the first, I think as time goes on, maybe the second generation of the mission that is actually allowed to legally speak their language here in this country. And it is 19, sorry, it is 2021 by now already. So being an 80s baby, not quite long before the 80s, we wasn't allowed to leave the mission and allowed to speak our traditional language. So it's quite a privilege to be able to be here today. I'd also like to pay my respects to Jack Buxkin, who I also work alongside of. We're very close and we work alongside each other and what he's done in the community with the language I think is excellent and it's very strong and very important because we're getting that message across that language is important. Culture is entwined in many different ways, not only from spending land on country through speaking language, singing songs, but it's very entwined all in one through our law and that's our L-O-R-E, not our L-A-W. So once again, my name is Robert Taylor. It's a pleasure to be here today on behalf of Kumakaro Cultural Services. Kumakaro means one blood in Ghana language. Within our cultural services, we have a few different Aboriginal people and they represent many different tribes. As I said, I mentioned three different Aboriginal groups, but really, if I was going into my grandparents and grandparents and grandparents country, as you know through kinship, I could probably write an essay on how many different Aboriginal groups I represent. So I think kuma being one, kura being blood, kuma kura, it represents the diversity within our cultural organization. So I'd like to thank you very much for inviting me out here and I hope you all enjoy the rest of the evening. Just before I leave you, we don't have a term for goodbye because I say final. It's like we're never gonna see you again. It's like goodbye, you know? So in Ghana language, we say nakura. Can you say that one? Nakura and that means we'll see you again when our paths meet. So for myself and Kumakaro Cultural Services, I say nalchalia. Thank you and nakura until we meet again. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, Robert. Nyadlu tampundin, nyadlu gana, yatanga. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that we meet on today, the Ghana people, and to pay my respect to Elders past, present and those emerging into the community as future leaders. I'm conscious that members of our audience today are probably not familiar with the Australia Awards and New Colombo Plan scholarship schemes. These are the Australian government's flagship scholarship programs designed to help educate our regions leaders and strengthen links between people, institutions and organisations. In 2022, the Australia Awards will enable over 2,000 students from 27 developing countries of our region to undertake study and research and professional development in Australia. All those fabulous Australia Awards students here tonight, it'd be great if you could just give a quick wave. I think there are a number of you with us today. Welcome, it's great to have you with us. The New Colombo Plan aims to expand young Australians engagement with the Indo-Pacific by supporting undergraduates to study and undertake internships in the region. I think we've got a number of NCP scholars here with us tonight too. Put up your hand if you're an NCP scholar. Hi, it's great to have you with us. Thanks so much for coming. And hello to all of the NCP students joining us by livestream. We wish that you could be here with us in Adelaide tonight. Shortly, you'll have the opportunity to hear personally from one of our NCP scholars, Lucy Zola, who will be the moderator of today's event, as well as one of our Australia Awards scholars, Ricky Fernandez from Indonesia, who's gonna be one of our fabulous panelists. But first, I am delighted to introduce to you our keynote speaker. In the metaphorical bridge to Asia, our speaker is one of the most solid pylons. Having lived in Asia for 25 years, he served as the director of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the deputy executive director of the Hong Kong Tourism Board, the director of the corporate affairs of Star TV, and head of music and arts for radio, television Hong Kong. He was also the founding vice chairman of the Asian Arts Festival Association and board member of the Asian Cultural Council. He's currently chair of the Association of the Asia Pacific Performing Arts Centres, a member of the Australia Singapore Arts Group, a board member of the Global Cultural Districts Network, and an advisory board member to the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations. In 2016, he was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for services to arts and in the community. Currently CEO and artistic director of the Adelaide Festival Centre. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Douglas Gautier. Thanks, Liz. That's a very nice introduction. Thank you, I appreciate that very much. Let me too acknowledge that we meet today on the traditional land of the Ghana people. I do want to acknowledge, there are many distinguished colleagues in the room, and I'd be here a while if I were to go through each one, but I do acknowledge Liz Day, head of DFAT in this state, and a great champion for soft power and cultural diplomacy. And of course, I also want to acknowledge our artistic director of AusAsia and at Chinois, and you've been hearing from her later on. Well, you know, it's a great privilege for me, I think, to be allowed to speak to NCP and Australia Award alums, because you are the future custodians of the success of our multicultural community and our good relations within the Asia-Pacific region. And as I said before, we've been tremendously encouraged, I think, in the arts sector, not only in this town, but across Australia with the support and good encouragement from DFAT, including the person who's just been appointed our new governor, Frances Adamson, when she was head of the department and also as our ambassador in Beijing, to value and see the value of cultural engagement and what it can do in terms of long-term good relationships. And I'm also very glad to welcome you here to Her Majesty's Theatre, which, you know, the redevelopment of this grand old theatre, I think is a very good testament to the way that in this community we do value the arts and of course the location of it in probably the most multicultural part of the city, which is a very good thing. So the topic is the Arts Abridge to Asia, and I thought, I just threw out a few thoughts about the value of cultural engagement to what is a task for all of us, I think, in the way that we treasure, not only our multicultural community at home, but the way that we must treasure and we must foster those relationships abroad. I always feel that the opportunity to connect through comparative cultures and ideas and values as soft power, as opposed to hard power, if you like, which is sort of economic and military and political coercion, which none of us are particularly interested in, but it's there, soft power are much, much more sensible and rewarding way, I think. So a few starting points. As Liz said, I spent a long time living in Asia and involved in both popular culture as well as some would say traditional or high culture, but I saw a lot of cultural diplomacy, I saw a lot of countries and communities working to try and stimulate that dialogue and put in the hard investment or long-term investment in people-to-people engagement. And whether it's Korea or China or Japan or smaller communities, state and provinces, it's pretty impressive. I think people genuinely have attempted to try and walk this path. One of the things that I think impressed me quite a lot was an organization which is actually non-government. It's called the Asian Cultural Council. I served on its board for a while. It's the Rockefeller Foundation, David Rockefeller, and it's an organization out of the States, but it's actually initially, but now it's pretty strongly based within Asia. And it's based on the kind of idea that any young person in the cultural sector from architecture to photography to music in Asia, if they wanted to come to the States and spend some time with a mentor in the States, the Asian Cultural Council would make that possible. And there have been some remarkable people who have gone through that process over the last 60 years. And interestingly enough, it's supported by business groups and private sector and other foundations within Asia. It's not just simply coming out of the States. But over the years, people like the composer Tan Dun have been through it, two Thai cultural ministers, many wonderful architects, performers, et cetera. And what it's done is built a very strong people-to-people presence between Asian folks in the cultural sector and creative sector with the United States. And I think it's been a great investment. And perhaps it's a model for something that we might do or one of you might put together in the future. Speaking for my own organization and the kind of ambitions as a team, board, management group, and with our colleagues across the sector, arts sector in Australia, and I would say with our Asian colleagues. I guess we feel that it is an arts for all approach that really when you look at art centers and galleries, particularly over the last 100 years, in most societies, they've been built and have had at least an idealized view that they are there to democratize the arts, make it more available to people. And one of the guiding lights for us has been the UNESCO charter on cultural diversity. And people who know me well know that I trot this thing out quite regularly. And it's a pretty short document. You can go online and have a look at it. It's really a good document. In many ways, it's guided what we've been doing right across the board, I think, in terms of engagement with Asia in particular and thinking about Asia at home. And indeed, diversity right across the board. It says many things, but one of the things it says is it notes that culture is at the heart of contemporary debates about identity, social cohesion, and the development of a knowledge-based economy. And it affirms that the respect for the diversity of cultures, tolerance, dialogue, in a climate of mutual trust and understanding are amongst the best guarantees of international peace and security and the vitality of civil society. So it's got a lot of great nuggets in there and a lot of great aspirations. And in many respects, I feel that sort of aspirations in terms of what we do with cultural diplomacy, what we do with self-power, what we do with things like odds Asia grown out of the sentiments in this document. But you know, it's interesting, I think, when you look at the 2016 census, Australian census, so it's five years old, that put up to 16.3% of Australian population claims some Asian heritage. That was what they estimated to be at that stage, 3.55 million people or thereabouts. They listed after English, the main language spoken in our country, Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, and Vietnamese in that order. So let's talk about the bridge to Asia, but let's start at home. And so I think, you know, we've thought a lot about Asia in Australia, and of course we started the AusAsia Festival 15 years ago, and it initially was predicated on trying to bring the best of Asia to Australia in festival form. But the more we worked through it, and the more, you know, I had discussions with Annette and other people, the question arose, why aren't we celebrating, you know, the work of the great Asian communities that are part of what we call our multi-cultural community. And so we've worked very hard to look at that. I think the festival in particular is now driving along that road, thinking about how we do that, how we celebrate Asian, Australian artists, how we get the debate going in other words, and I think hopefully there are a few of these brochures around, do have a look at this because at the end of the festival, we'll have a two day seminar on literature and ideas about the place of Asia in Australia. And these sorts of ideas, these sort of paths are really important for us to think about and practice and develop and foster here at home as a basis, I think, for what we do sensibly in the region. But to go back to the region and to go back to UNESCO, and if we're talking purely, I guess, economic and transactional, it's good just to think about the creative arts and creative industries in our region. So two years ago, two and a half years ago, for COVID, UNESCO and Ernst & Young conducted a worldwide study on creative industries. And according to them, it generated $2,250 billion of revenue in that year and nearly 30 million jobs worldwide. And that's all very well, but interestingly enough, 33% of those dollars, but more importantly, 43% of those jobs are in the Asia Pacific region, Asia Pacific by far the leader worldwide in creative industries. And if you start to think about it in television and design and music and all those sorts of things, well, there's no wonder that it is. So that's a really important thing, I think. And so that we are connected to that, we are connected to that great force of ideas and possibilities. To me, it seems such an opportunity and such a wonderful thing that many of you will pick up. You'll be working in Asia, you'll be connected to Asia in some way or another, but there is no question that cultural and creative content, I think, drives the digital economy in many ways. And cultural production is by and large when you look across the region, young, inclusive and entrepreneurial, which I'm sure all of you are, at least I hope you are. So let's just follow that UNESCO path for a moment, because I think it's rather important and it's a very good connector. So some of you will know that about five or six years ago, the city bid to become a UNESCO creative city for music because the city, amongst other things, has a very strong background in music, both pop music and classical music, traditional music, all sorts of things. And so we became part of the network. There are some 250 or more UNESCO creative cities worldwide now in a bunch of areas, like design, food, folk arts, all sorts of cities, some big, some small, some in, you know, out of the way places in Indonesia, to little small cities in Japan and Adelaide. And I think three years ago, four years ago, we held, because we drove it, we drove the first meeting of the Asia Pacific chapter of creative cities, UNESCO creative cities. And we had something like about 70 of those cities come to us. And if it hadn't been for COVID, there would have been a meeting the year after. But it's such a good way. And it will happen in a couple of years once we get past this. But such a great way for people and cities and individuals to come together. I saw so many possibilities in that room, whether we were talking about design, whether we were talking about media, whether we were talking about music, whether we were talking about literature, how these things crossed over, the patterns crossed over. And so much power, soft power in that room with people from the creative sector in Asia Pacific. So that's really a great thing. And we've made it our business, I think, as an organization and with the help with the state government and DFAT and others to really intercede ourselves into this great potential of Asia Pacific. Not only just from the creative point of view, but from the audience's point of view as well. It's not just doing the things, but it's having people to be involved in it and finding a way in. So consequently, we have been involved with the Australian Singapore Arts Group. We have chaired the Asia Pacific Arts Centre's association with something like about 70 centres around Asia Pacific. As you heard from Liz, we've been very strongly involved with the National Foundation for Australia-China Relationships. And we have set up a big intern program. So we've taken a lot of interns from Asia Pacific over the years. COVID kind of interrupted that. But not only did we take the interns here and we will continue to do that as we move through COVID, but importantly, we were able to move those interns around to many other centres and cultural organisations throughout our country. And that's important because these are people-to-people relationships. They don't finish when the person goes back to their own country. Those relationships continue. And where we can, where we can put cultural workers into those Asian cultural organisations, we love to do that if we can because it's like a ripple in a pool after you throw a stone in. Something could happen 20, 30 years down the track because of those connections there. One final, so there's lots of things that we're doing in that regard. And I think there's a lot of critical mass there and whether you're involved in our industry or whether you're a spectator or you like some of the things that are produced whether it's literature or music or whatever, who doesn't, or whether it's videos or movies. It's great to see Kate Crowsey here. So in all of those things, we just have such a big playing field, I think, with Asia Pacific and what an opportunity it is for us. One of the things that we did last year and I think is really important, we did this thing called, because people were asking us, what could we do for international students who are kind of stuck here, couldn't get home, et cetera? And so we launched this thing called Students Got Talent. Sounds kind of cheesy, but let me tell you, people were really into it and we're gonna do it again this year. We'd love to take it national if we could, but I think there's a really important thing here in terms of the way that we think about international students being with us in our country and we've just got to work a lot harder in that regard, I think, because a lot of focus on the transactional element of it, but really there's a much more important responsibility, I think, in making people feel welcome, setting up friendships, giving them an opportunity to have some effect on our community and open up our community to them. I could go on and on and on this subject of which me and my colleagues are very passionate about because it's a very important part of what we do. All I will say to you is the manifestation of a lot of that is in AusAsia. If you haven't been to any of it, please come to it. Certainly come to in other words, where a lot of these ideas are going to be platformed. And I guess the last thing I'd say is, and I spoke to Liz about this earlier on, I just think it's really, when we look at some of the work that these Asian cultural councils, whether it's Japan Foundation or whether it's some of the work that other Korea does, et cetera, it really is, I think, timely for us to think about an Australian cultural agency that looks specifically at the links between Asia and our country. Thanks for the opportunity, and I do regard it as a real privilege to be able to talk to you today. You've been given such an opportunity, I think, too, with New Colombo Plan and the Australia Awards. Good on you, go forth and good luck to you, and please stay in touch with us through AusAsia and other things we do. And if you've got any ideas or feedback about how we can do it better, we're all ears. So thank you. Hello, everybody. Thank you, Douglas. South Australia is really lucky to have you linking our institutions, people, and communities to Asia. So thank you very much. So my name is Lucy, and I am going to be your moderator for today. I am a 2021 NCP Scholar, and I haven't gone on my program yet, but I will head to Nepal, hopefully maybe mid-next year or the year after to undertake my Honours project. So I am a visual artist, a emerging curator and a musician, and I completed my Bachelor of Contemporary Art last year at the University of South Australia. Since graduating, I've co-curated an exhibition at the Urban Cowl Studio, and soon I will commence a mentorship at the Heltman Academy in the Graduate Exhibition curating that, which will be amazing. Through my NCP program, I will write my Honours Exegesis at the Kathmandu University School of Art and Design and then undertake some artist residencies and internships in Nepal. I chose to go to Nepal because I went there when I finished high school in 2014, and I spent about six months there, and I met a lot of really amazing people, and I really fell in love with the rich culture and warm people, and I stayed with a family, and I made a lot of friends, and I'm just really excited to see everybody there again. While volunteering in Patan Community-based Rehabilitation Centre while I was in Nepal, I really saw the way in which the arts can help to bring people together. At first, I didn't really understand or couldn't really find what my role was in this centre, as I didn't really have much experience, and I was quite young, but eventually I found that the best way to bring us all together, me and the students, was through music. So they would teach me Nepali songs, and then we would sing them together, and then I would teach them English children's songs, and we would sing them together. We ended up doing that basically every day, and it brought them a lot of joy, and me a lot of joy also. So our topic today is Arts as a Bridge to Asia, and I'd like to introduce our three esteemed panellists that have joined us for the discussion and welcome them to the front. So firstly, we have Annette Chan-Wa. Annette is a writer, broadcaster, producer and theatre maker. As an actor, she was nominated for an AFI award for her supporting role in the feature film, Floating Life. As a writer, she contributed to anthologies such as Growing Up Asian in Australia, and co-authored the award-winning Banquet, Ten Courses to Harmony, exploring the ways in which the Chinese integrated into Australian society through food. Since 2013, Annette has been executive producer of contemporary Asian-Australian performance. She has been involved with Aus-Asia festival events over many years, and in 2018, she was inducted into Adelaide Festival Centre's Walk of Fame. Annette, if you could please join us at the front. Thank you, Annette. Next is creator, choreographer, and performer, Raghav Handa. Raghav Handa is an Australian choreographer and performer of Indian heritage, and he is also an active collaborator, dance lecturer, artist representative, and mentor for young performers. Raghav's works combined traditional Catac principles and contemporary movement to explore modern Australian cultural identity. His creations incorporate diverse dance languages, spoken word, film and sculptural design. In 2019, with support from Australian Council, Raghav completed a residency with India's Atakalari Dance Company. At Aus-Asia Festival 2021, Raghav is presenting two shows, his own creation, Two and Double Deletious. Raghav, if you could please also join us at the front. And finally, we have Ricky Fernandez. Ricky is an Australia Award scholar from Indonesia, currently undertaking a Masters of Education at the University of Adelaide. As a singer, Ricky has immersed himself in South Australia's art scene during his time in Adelaide, including performing at the Adelaide Fringe RCC, the Indonesian Festival, and soon the Aus-Asia Lucky Dumpling Market. Organising a charity concert in collaboration with the Indonesian Student Association in South Australia and Adventist Development and Relief Agency International. And also, as a finalist in study Adelaide's recent Students Got Talent competition. Ricky is also passionate about sharing Indonesian arts and culture with Australians. If you could also please join us at the front, Ricky. Thank you, I have a couple of questions for you. So, this one's to all of you. I'll start first with you Annette, if that's okay. So, starting broadly with our theme today, throughout your own careers and experiences, how have you seen the arts build and inspire, collaboration, cooperation and understanding between cultures and countries? It's a very big question. Yes, it's a big question. But I thought I'd tell you about one of my experiences about 2014. I was very lucky to be invited to join a group called the Asian Producers Platform. It was actually a camp, a producing camp, you know, like boot camp, with producers from around the region. And it was organized by producers in Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Australia. So the plan was that every year we would go to one place and spend a week together, sometimes sharing rooms or houses and learn from each other. It was a way to learn about everyone's context within that country or that city, what the arts was like, what sort of set up they had, what sort of resources they had. But also, as a group, we got to research and talk and discuss all sorts of issues together. So that's seven years ago that that started. And all of us have sort of moved up, as you can imagine, through our careers to more senior positions. And we've brought with us those connections and relationships. And also all those conversations we started have also developed over those years and they have an impact on what each of us do as performance curators or producers or whatever it is that each of us are now doing. And me as artistic director with Oasisia. So those person-to-person connections, which Douglas was talking about, have been vital in opening pathways for artists in those countries through us to find collaborations and opportunities. And the most recent thing I did was another producing camp, but this time as a mentor for young producers coming up in Asia and Southeast Asia, this time organized by major institutions in Singapore, Tokyo, Korea, and Taiwan. And I've seen a shift in those artists and those producers in how they regard themselves within the region and each other. And I think that's been really exciting because in those seven years, there's much more of a tendency to look towards other Asian countries to discover new collaboration rather than what they used to do, which is what we used to do, which was to look to Europe. That's really interesting. Sounds like you've had some amazing experience. Absolutely. Thank you. Next, Raga, if you could, do you want me to read the question again? I'm a good at remembering lines. I tell you what, and if I get this wrong, I just put my foot in it and I... Look, to give it a bit of context, I have been quite fortunate to have created a style aesthetic and a movement signature unique in the Australian dance landscape. My style is heavily influenced by my training in contemporary and Indigenous contemporary dance styles. And I also draw in Katak, which is a North Indian classical dance form, to make sense of the world, really, and to talk about things that I'm passionate about. And I guess that's a context for one of the works that I had made called Men's Rare, which explored the concept of shape-shifting in Indian and Australian Indigenous storytelling techniques. And part of the work people viewed through 3D motion capture glasses and installation in space. And so it really was an idea to highlight not where my lineage, my dance ancestry has come from, but also to highlight the artistic kinships between the two countries and traditions. And so following on from that, I was invited by Australia India Institute to perform an excerpt of that work at their event and also talk about how art connects us deeper than we actually realise and possibly help that to promote the trade connections between the two countries. So that was one of the experiences that I've had, sort of personal, on a personal level. But if I fast forward all of that to now, I am performing in Ozejia Festival and I think I am highlighting that once again. So which I'm really fortunate in presenting the work here, in Adelaide. Yeah, wow. Thank you. I'm not sure if this answers your question. It does answer my question. I'm sorry. Thank you. Ricky, if you could let us know. So I've been actively singing since I was a kid back in Indonesia and then in 2019, I had a plan on being, OK, I want to be like a professional singer, like a really famous singer back in Indonesia. So I joined the voice Indonesia in 2019. So I didn't pass. I was disappointed. I stopped singing back then. Because I was in line for about 12 hours just to get into my audition, but I didn't get through. And then in 2019, OK, the Australia Awards application was open. Why not go through it? So I did apply for the Australia Awards scholarship and I did get through. And then COVID-19 happened and I didn't go anywhere. I had my online lessons, tutorials and stuff. And then in 2020, and then there was information about student score talent hosted by Saddle Adelaide and Adelaide Festival Center, so I decided to join it. And I didn't win it. So that opportunity brings me to a lot of stages starting from the university. So I was invited by students representative council to actually sing Indonesian songs and then English songs. And then I had an opportunity to perform for the RCC Adelaide festivals as well. So that was just an amazing opportunity for me to actually share this as Indonesia. And I also had an opportunity to learn from other performers, from local musicians and then international musicians as well. So I believe that that opportunity brings an open space for me to actually, OK, this is us. Let's collaborate together. So yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. It's great that music has given you that platform to share your culture. So my next question is for Annette. How might the greater reliance on online communication and interaction during COVID-19 help the arts sector to spread their message across borders more easily? Actually, it's been something quite amazing, quite a phenomenon, hasn't it, in every walk of life, how we've managed to go online, not just the arts. And for someone like me who works mostly in live performing arts, it's been quite a dilemma because it's the liveness of what we do to be in a room together and have a communal experience is so special. And you can't do that online. But we've been forced to do it and we're speaking to some people or they're listening to us online right now. And the beauty of that is that you can defy borders and even time zones sometimes if you're not live streaming but catching up with things that are recorded. And so you can reach a wider audience. The interesting thing that persuaded me was to discover early on that some companies who had recorded plays or live performances and made them available, the audiences that watched that, when the live work eventually came to town, they were more likely to buy tickets to go and see it live, even though they had already seen the digital version of it. And so that encouraged me very much to take a broader view about that. And now, of course, many artists are trying to look at more interesting ways of developing and collaborating right from the beginning of making a work right through to presenting a work like all the different stages using online possibilities. And one of the works that we just had at AusAsia Festival last week, somewhere everywhere, nowhere, was two dance artists, Alison Curry from Adelaide and Yui Kawaguchi, a Japanese dancer choreographer from Berlin. They had met at AusAsia Festival in 2018, kept in touch, decided they wanted to work together and collaborate, and Alison was going to go to Berlin and start work. But of course, COVID hit, and she couldn't leave the country. So they started to collaborate online and recording sounds that might sort of inspire the movement choreography and the concepts of the work. And over time, they developed the work. And it was only four or six weeks ago that Yui came to Australia, did her quarantine, and for the first time, the two of them got together in the rehearsal room, finished the work, rehearsed it, and opened it just last week. Yeah, wow. Quite extraordinary. That's so extraordinary. Thank you. So Australia, on to the next question. Australia prides itself on being a modern cosmopolitan open society and seeks to portray these characteristics internationally. So first, my question is to Ricky. How is Australian art and culture perceived by audiences internationally? I have a huge crush on CR, for example, and then five seconds this summer. They're all amazing. So all we know from international perspectives that Australia has a lot of potential great singers. And then also, back in 2016, I had an opportunity to join the Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange program here in Adelaide. And then I had an opportunity to learn the Australian music as well with the local schools and also taught Indonesian songs, folk songs and stuff. So from that point, I could actually know that this is Australia, this is everything that they have and I could learn from them as well and share the stories, the music stories to people in Indonesia. So yeah, so that was actually an amazing experience for me. Yeah, thank you for sharing your insights. And now to Raghav. Do you think Australian art and performance is adapting to more accurately represent modern Australian society? Yes, but we have a very long way to go. I think this is quite a layered sort of discussion. But I think the diversity of nations and stories foreground how dance, performance and artworks become the projects of the nation, you know? They become pride of the nation, that hold memory, language, knowledge, population by linking geopolitics to the bodies of the practitioners. And I think we cannot get away from that any longer. So I feel it's by investing in a long, longer term communication strategy with the artists from all backgrounds because we cannot just buy in one work or two works and say, well, that's the diversity done. We are definitely getting better at it. However, it's not just about looking at the work but also looking at the pipeline of the artist's research process. Because sometimes the inroads or the experimentation that artists, risks that artists take by working with traditional cultural material can go unnoticed and can go unrecognized because of the insider outside and knowledge issues that sometimes aren't understood. And so therefore it's by just in an old fashioned way picking up the phone and saying, where are you at? What is this about? And I think it's about creating that dialogue over a longer period of time to look at the artist's research, where the innovation is happening and where the experimentation is and how is that perceived across Australia and internationally? Yeah, wow. Thank you. That's really interesting. Did I answer that correctly? Yes, you did. Very well. Thank you. And do you have anything to add to anything we're here? I don't think I can. Yeah, no, very well said. I guess from a different perspective too, I think that our culture, the job of our culture is to reflect and interrogate who we are, the story we want to tell about ourselves as Australians, as a society. And I think if we look at our mainstream, if you want to call it that, or our major cultural output, it doesn't reflect who we are. You know, the people we see on our stages and the stories we hear on our stages largely do not reflect the diversity of the people walking past that theatre on the street and the people we live with and get the bus with and study with and work with every day. We are not seeing ourselves reflected as much as we should on those main platforms or channels of exploring our lives as Australians. And that's important because it helps us understand ourselves, it helps us find solutions to problems, it helps us towards that ideal of social cohesion. And so I think that is the job of our cultural life and we are a long way from there. And in a sort of narrow way, we are trying to do that with Contemporary Asian-Australian Performance, which is the company that has made some of the works that Raghav is in and which I lead in Sydney and also AusAsia Festival. So we're just trying to make that change and open some pathways, if you like, career pathways so that artists coming through have that platform and that audience ready to speak to. Yeah, definitely. Thank you both. Very interesting insights. We'll go on to the next question. This is for you both, Annette and Raghav. Prior to COVID-19, international travel was relatively accessible. Is international travel and exposure to overseas audiences critical to the development of the Australian art sector? And should Australian artists prioritise a return to international travel when possible or should they focus on rebuilding the arts and cultural scene here in Australia? I don't think it was to go fast. You're getting buzzed. You forgot to read that question, didn't you? Look at that. I was kind of listening to Lucy going, oh, wow, there's more? Yes, yeah. A lot of questions. I could just start by saying that, I guess, there's two parts of that question for you. One is that a lot of artists, it depends on what the artist is doing and what they want to say and who they want to say it to. And quite often, artists are quite happy to be working within their own locality, their own context. And that might even just be a country town somewhere, let alone a whole state or a nation. Other artists might have work that does work across borders that they do want to reach out to wider audiences. And I guess Australia is a pretty small population. When you think about particularly filmmaking and performing arts, these projects are very expensive. They take a lot of resources, a lot of time, a lot of intellectual heft to develop. Months, often years before you get there. And so you spend all that time and effort to make something, you get to perform it a few times in Australia, it seems such a waste if that's it. And so you want that wider audience, you want to take this thing you've developed and continue to grow and keep growing it and make it into an even finer thing. So that means traveling and touring. And that experience of traveling internationally also feeds you as an artist. It puts your thinking into a different context, it broadens the way you think about your work, it adds to your skills. And your experience as a human being, let alone as an artist. And so you grow. So all of those things are incredibly vital. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. What do you think? Oh, I don't know. What did you say? I'm trying to add to that, see if I can add it in a different way. I feel more I look at the past, the diversity of perspective and the divergence of thought is not a modern phenomenon, as we often pigeonhole it to be. And I feel cross-pollination is in our DNA. And to preserve collaboration, to preserve the idea of... I mean, even just to... Okay, if I forget that, even just preserve collaboration and to opening up your perspective to things in general, you have to imagine yourself outside of yourself. And in order to do that, frankly, it's not gonna happen in my own lounge room. You know, I can't always have this notion of... If we train overseas, a lot of dancers, art-makers, go overseas, train overseas, and do international residencies overseas purely for that reason, because there is another perspective, there is another way to look at something. And I think to preserve that, absolutely, we need to sort of keep that as an open channel, where reciprocity happens. And so when artists come in and we go out, we are representing the Australian arts landscape. And with the artists coming in, it's vice versa. And I think so for that to happen, and also to promote the discourse around practice is very important. Because, you know, practice is somewhat bigger than what sometimes the show that is produced by it. And so for the practice to develop, and it takes a lifetime, years for that to happen. And so, and I think so, it's a bit like ingredients in a dish, you know. How are you gonna create something by only using one ingredient? So you need to go and try out a few different restaurants so you can copy when you come home, you know? So copying a good way, you know what I mean? So for that to happen, the reciprocity needs to be preserved? Yeah, definitely. Excited to go traveling once the border's over. Absolutely. For you, for going with Nepal, I mean, you know. I'm very excited for that. Absolutely. You'll be changed. Yeah, I will. I will come back. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So I'm keen to leave some time for some questions from the audience at the end. So this is the last question that I'm gonna ask. And this one is for you, Rikki. The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating and traumatic for people worldwide. What role can art and performance play in responding to crisis and bringing people together in times of trauma? Yeah, and that question tells me that I'm very likely to live in Adelaide. Yes, because Adelaide has a lot of basically amazing events. Back in 2020, for example, in November, starting from Asadi, Adelaide got, students got talent here, conducted at Her Majesty's Theatre that brought an opportunity, a big opportunity for international students to actually share like a devastating story so that we can go out to see our parents, to see our families. And yeah, that opportunity also brought a lot of different perspectives. For me, for example, when I saw a lot of amazing performers, contestants, they could actually share the stories behind why they chose to perform in that way, for example, on that stage. That told me that, okay, so we're in this together, basically. And then also when a massive landslide happened back in Indonesia in East Timor, the Indonesians Association and I, we collaborated together with the Adventist Church to actually hold a charity concert. And I believe that one was a starting point for me to actually, we are actually suffering. We feel devastated throughout this pandemic situations with a natural disaster with the COVID-19 back in Indonesia. So from there, we could actually feel empathetic with one another, we feel, and through arts, we could actually collaborate and share our stories here in Australia, especially in Adelaide. So I feel so grateful for that. Thank you, Rofi, yeah, it's amazing how arts can help to bring us together, and make us feel like we're not alone. Yeah. Great, so I would now like to open up to the audience for anybody with any questions. I will also just let you know that when you ask a question, just wait for a microphone to come to you, because if you don't use a microphone, then our lovely viewers online won't hear what you say. So who would like to start off with a question from the audience? Anybody? Yes, over here. Thank you. My name is Chan Huang Cai. I'm a senior lecturer from Elder Conservatorian. I'd just like to share my experience of appreciating one of the oldest, the Oprah, Quinn Oprah, when I was a university student. At the time, Taiwanese government invest hugely money to kind of educate how to appreciate a 500, 600-hour phone. And we have to learn Gongchi notation about 700 years of notation. And that sort of workshop actually opened for everybody who would like to learn how to appreciate that sort of performing our phone. And to kind of look back, that's why I actually feel often those Quinn Oprah performers from China, they really like the audiences in Taiwan because they feel the audiences in Taiwan really appreciate the art they try to preserve. So performing art take a long time to actually cultivate to learn. So my question to everybody is, do you think there's a room for the Department of Education, Skills and Employment to join us in kind of cultivating the next generations of Australians who are appreciating complex art phones? Very interesting question. Who would like to go first? Anybody? That's too heavy for me. I have something that I can add to that. Yeah. Yeah, so what was your name? Sun. Sun, thanks for the question. Look, there's perhaps not on a huge level, I suppose, but on a tertiary level, the dance board, the dance education in New South Wales, has got a program where they choose projects. And by choosing projects, they're also choosing the artists behind the project to educate their year 10, 11, 12 students to write and critically respond to that work. Yeah, critically respond to that work. And I think doing that, what they start to get is what Annette was talking about, the diversity of not just the practice and also what dance can be. Because dance is not just one thing. It is not just we are constantly moving away from ballet, so what dance can be? So, and I think so, having that kind, so why I say that is I was fortunate enough that they picked one of my works to show the students and they couldn't understand how the text and can marry with dance and how that can be used to create a dance that has a language of its own. And so I think it's about getting them young. That's what I think, I say get them young, right? And convert them and get them dancing as young as they are to provide that kind of pipeline of dreams, you know, basically and perhaps they'll grow up and makes works on other people's shoulders in a form of a cultural perpetuity, you know? Yeah, so that's one way of getting them young, I think. Thank you very much for that interesting question, interesting answer. We are running, oh, sorry, we're running out of time, so we have time for one more question. Did you have something to add or a question? Wonderful, well, we'll just get you a microphone and this will be our last question for today. Hi, I'm Felicia, I'm a new Colombo Plan Scholar. I had a question that kind of tied into the themes throughout, so I remember the speech in the beginning mentioned how Ozeja sort of also pivoted to look at how we could involve the diaspora and Asian community that's already here. And then we also spoke about, there was a question about how we could rebuild the arts community or the arts industry maybe to focus more inwards rather than outwards given the restrictions. So with all of that in mind and of course the question about diversity and the diversity of Australian arts has COVID sort of given us a platform and an opportunity to pivot to involve the diaspora more to actually build that bridge between Australia and Asia through the arts? Thank you very much. I think it has, I really do. In fact, I think what COVID has done for the whole sector is make them reevaluate what they're doing and why they're doing it because before COVID came along it was almost like we were on a treadmill. This is what we do and this is how we do it. We go out, we find some works that are a bit spectacular and then we just buy them and then we put them in our venue and then we move on to the next one and the next one and the next one. And a lot of venues when they had to close down during COVID and had time to rethink what they were doing and why they were doing it suddenly thought we have lost the connection with our own communities and our audiences and we should be working more closely. And so there's this really a different way of thinking about how they program, what they program, how they get involved at earliest stages of projects, not just wait for them to be ripe and then pluck them from the tree but actually help in cultivating the whole plant. And I think that in that sense and looking more broadly at who their community is and who their audiences could be opens up many more possibilities for this very important conversation. And they're much more open to it now than they have been in many years. So I think that's been one of the, if you like, silver linings of the situation. Absolutely. Because there's also through discussions over the last little while the idea of slow touring that's been talked about quite a lot, especially in the Australian performing arts market, APAM. Is that Australian performing arts market? That's it. Yeah, that's it. You know, the idea of slow touring. So they want, especially international presenters want, if Aussie artists are going abroad, they want them to actively engage with the community and not just perform or work and run away. And so I think similar in that similar way interstate opportunities are looking at that as well. So how to connect more with the community that you're going into, as opposed to just a one-off performance platform. Yeah. And certainly with Alsasia, this is a permanent change to make sure that Asian-Australian work always will have a higher profile while I'm there. I always say always. While I'm there, it's a very important part of my programming philosophy because I think if we're talking about cultural engagement, we have to include the people who embody that engagement, people like Raghav and Ricky. It's very, it's part of that continuum. I guess that engagement with Asia or the Asia-specific in general because if you're engaging more with Asian diaspora, does that give you a new means and new pathway and outlook? Absolutely. So it's just Australians looking to Asia. It does because in recent years, and I've really noticed a more of a look from producers around Asia, contemporary art makers towards their own region rather than, as I said earlier towards Europe, they've turned that focus towards their own region and that very much includes Australia and I've sensed a real curiosity about Asians in Australia and when I took on this job, many of my colleagues in Asia said, what sort of work is there? We really are curious to see it. And so it's just such a pity that they couldn't travel because I know many of them would have come towards Asia this year to witness it for themselves. And so hopefully next year, it will begin that opening up of that kind of work. And I also feel honoured to be invited as one of the performers at Ozi Asia Festival because that platform could give me an opportunity to actually share this is Indonesian music, basically. This is the contemporary style of Indonesian music and from there, a lot of Australians know that, okay, this is actually the starting point to know about Indonesian music. So yeah. But more importantly than that too, it's people in the community who already know and love that music who don't until now feel that they belong in these venues. They need to find a home in these big venues as well. They need to feel comfortable. They need to feel that the work that they see there somehow resonates with them, has a meaning for them. And I think that that's a very important bridge that we have to cross. Thank you so much. That was all very interesting insights. Interesting questions. Unfortunately, it's all we've got time for today. But I would like to thank you all so much for sharing your experiences and your stories and your insights to all these questions. Lucy. I would now like to invite Elizabeth to return to the stage and close the event. Thank you. Thank you so much, Lucy, to our fabulous panel. That was just excellent. I think that last question just hit the nail on the head. I think you've got an amazing enthusiastic group of young people here who would love to be a part of any arts activities that are running in South Australia if there are any opportunities to involve them in the events that we're running through Oasisia or through the South Australian Film Corporation or any of the other artistic groups that are here tonight. Please keep them in mind and send me an email and I'd be happy to link you up with some of these incredible New Colombo Plan Australia Award Program students. We've just got a small gesture of thanks for coming along tonight and giving us so much of your time and your insights. We really appreciated that. Thank you so much to our panel. But thank you too to everyone joining us online. We really appreciate you coming along and spending this evening with us. We just wish that you could be here with us in South Australia hopefully next time. I'd like to give a very special thanks to Erin Legget and the amazing South Australian State Office team for putting together tonight's event and all the work that they've done behind the scenes. But also a very big thank you to you, the audience, for joining us tonight, for showing interest in this topic and coming along and asking great questions. It's been really great to share this evening with you. I know that in the future these Australia Award students and New Colombo Plan students here with us tonight, but also all around Australia will be the trusses and arches, an incredible strong deck of the bridge that's going to connect Australia to Asia. And I am very much looking forward to personally benefiting from that amazing piece of human infrastructure. Thanks so much everybody for coming along tonight. Goodbye to everybody on the live stream. And for the rest of us here in person tonight, the fun has just begun. We've got some food and drink for you and I really invite you to have fun and get to know each other. Thanks very much everybody. Thank you.