Festival seeks to make a difference as it grows

The small town of Queenstown (population 1800) in remote western Tasmania has some poor social, health and wellbeing indicators. Its name is synonymous with a mining-ravaged landscape, a ‘desecration’ that has evoked generations of scorn, particularly from visitors to the adjacent World Heritage wilderness of western Tasmania.

Some years ago, the community identified an arts event as one way to confront these challenges. Over three previous biennial events, the festival (formerly known as the Queenstown Heritage and Arts Festival) has evolved from this surprising and modest beginning into a significant Tasmanian cultural event that is authentically engaged with its community.

The Festival – reinvented as The Unconformity – is now a mature and permanent presence; its strategic aspirations and artistic policy have evolved in response to the twin tenets of community engagement and contemporary arts practice. The event is also contributing to the region’s tourism appeal; more than 1,500 locals, Tasmanian and interstate visitors attended the 2014 festival, injecting an estimated $530,000 to the regional economy. It has won major state awards for artistic quality, social inclusion and cultural tourism, and according to Festival Director Travis Tiddy, the Festival is ideally placed to further strengthen community cohesion and cultural development.

“We host artists in our town for a number of weeks: they engage with miners-cum-tour operators deep within a mine; they walk the landscape at their own pace; they meet the people. Immersed in our valley, artists build myriad relationships and absorb the spirit of our place to envision and shape their nuanced artistic responses.”

Tiddy, a fifth generation West-coaster, leads and is responsive to formal and informal community engagement and reports to a community-elected Board. Assisted by a newly established Artistic Directorate, he has steered The Unconformity into more challenging artistic territory and curated a high quality, contemporary, site-specific program.

“Queenstown is regional and remote; it can be bound by snow, ringed by bushfires, drenched by rain. It is physically isolated: a landlocked island within an island at the bottom of the world. The drive is beautiful but slow, there is little through traffic. There is nominal cultural infrastructure and many fine civic buildings lie idle.”

“Our Festival transforms the town. The main street becomes a tented Festival hub overflowing with performances, food, people, and street art; dormant buildings, industrial and environmental settings are given new life as venues for great art; locals open their doors to visitors; the Paragon Theatre – an art deco wonder – relives past glories.”

The Festival’s embrace of the town and celebration of its people is proving irresistible; both visitors and locals are enthusiastic audiences; at other times, locals are artists or program way-finders and invigilators. The town’s vitality is made visible in a sensitive and participatory manner, accessible and appreciated by all who gather there.

Most gratifying of all, when surveyed, 80% of local community respondents endorsed the artistic program; it is their Festival, their town, they are primed for more. By design, The Unconformity will be more artistically challenging, but visitors and locals alike are ready!

The Unconformity program and bookings for ticketed events (around 75% of its events are free) are available at theunconformity.com.au

Accommodation in Queenstown is fully booked, but intending visitors are encouraged to stay in Strahan, about a 40 minute drive away, and to consider staying on in the area for a day or two to explore the Western Wilderness. Bookings and information on what to see and where to go is available from the West Coast Visitor Information Centre westernwilderness.com.au
Andrew Ross