L-R: Western Plains Cultural Centre Curator Kent Buchanan, me, theatre director Imara Savage & artist Lottie Consalvo. We collaborated on the development and delivery of Kaldor Public Art Project’s pilot regional youth engagement program as part of Project 30 - Marina Abramovic: In Residence, 2015.
I specialise in arts partnership work and my practice is grounded in collaboration and a belief in the importance of capacity building and de-siloing expertise. Over the last 15 years I have worked across a range of projects with multiple stakeholders and have considerable experience in:
Identifying and establishing partnerships for both short- and longer-term projects including educational and public programs, national touring exhibitions, complex digital projects and artist- and youth-led programs
Managing stakeholder relationships, including artists, funders & community members
Relationship management, including internal & external communication strategies and evaluation & reporting processes
“I think for any kind of partnership to really work, or any kind of creative ideas, particularly when it comes to working with young people, the things that I have come to value most are empathy, trust and risk-taking.” - J. Higgins & S. Coffils, 2018, p.171.
Previous collaborative projects that I have developed and/or worked on include the pilot regional youth engagement project for Kaldor Public Art Projects, in partnership with Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo; the three-year Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project in London, working for the South London Gallery in partnership with Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and the Royal Academy of Art; and MCA GENEXT Goes West in partnership with Parramatta Artists Studios (2017), Casula Powerhouse (2018) and Bankstown Arts Centre (2020).
I have also researched and written about collaboration. In 2016 I contributed a peer-reviewed paper with my former South London Gallery colleague Sarah Coffils, “Collaboration or Cooperation: Peer-led Learning & Institutional Partnerships through Two Case Studies” to Beyond Community Community Engagement. Transforming Dialogues in Art, Education and the Cultural Sphere (UNSW/Common Ground Publishing), 2018, pp.161-192
My 2019 Churchill Fellowship Report also includes a Section on “Collaboration, Capacity Building & Knowledge Sharing,” pp.88-93.