Arts Gen is a space for learning, sharing and artmaking based at Footscray Community Arts in Melbourne’s inner west.
Through socially engaged creative practice, we promote self-representation and platforms that support the creative potential of communities from Melbourne’s West and North.
Our work aims to address the social and cultural determinants of health, including ongoing colonisation, racism and other forms of structural discrimination have direct negative impacts on wellbeing.
We believe that when communities have the power and access to the arts, to develop and determine health and wellbeing initiatives, it leads to truly representative culture making.
Arts Gen is proudly supported by COHEALTH
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We are present and responsive with movements for change.
We are listening, learning and adapting our practices.
We are open about what we do, how we do it, what is possible and our limits.
Nothing for us, without us.
We value our relationships and are accountable to each other.
We make space and speak back to power.
Tania Cañas is an artist researcher based on unceded Kulin Territory. She began her practice as a theatre performer and subsequent Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner and has since developed a creative arts research practice, at the intersection of performance, community, socio-spatial and cultural enquiry.
Priya Pavri is an independent curator currently based on the unceded land of the Kulin Nations. She has a history of growing community projects and organisations through unique and creative endeavours and is committed to seeking alternative models of working with community that challenge existing leadership and governance structures. Informed by a background in Law and Arts, she has lead community projects in the not- for- profit and government sector in urban and remote Australia, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
Yasbelle Kerkow is an Australian-born, Fijian (vasu Batiki, Lomaiviti) artist. Her work focuses on promoting Pacific communities in Australia and communicating Pacific stories through the arts. Her practice centres weaving, using pandanus, flax, coconut fibre, cotton core and fabrics. Yasbelle is a community arts facilitator and leader of the Kulin Nations (Melbourne) based art collective New Wayfinders.
Liang Luscombe’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, and moving image that engage in a process of generative questioning of how images and film affect audiences. Alongside her own visual arts practice, she has over a decade of experience working in curatorial and editorial roles in the contemporary art sector and is currently editor of Liquid Architecture’s journal Disclaimer.
Fiona Spitzkowsky is a writer and arts worker living on the unceded land of the Kulin Nations. Having worked in communications and youth programming across the arts and community service sectors, Fiona is interested in exploring the role and impact of creative practice in service delivery and community development. She also likes to play footy.
Arts Gen’s primary supporter is COHEALTH.
We are also thankful for the support of: