The Rural Arts and Cultural Symposium will be held on Saturday, November 15 and is co-hosted by the Kalari-Lachlan River Arts Festival committee, Forbes Shire Council and Arts OutWest, with support from Barrick Gold.

People from all over the central west will come to Forbes for the symposium including the Centre for Cultural and Creative Research at the University of Canberra, Central NSW Tourism, Musica Viva, Mitchell Conservatorium, Forbes Shire Council, National parks and Wildlife Service, galleries and cultural facilities, Aboriginal artists and festival organisers from the region.

The idea of the symposium is to come up with a plan to develop the creative industries sector in the central west, as well as sharing ideas with others doing similar things around the region and exploring the benefits of the arts in rural communities.

“There are two big ideas we’d like to explore,” founder of the Kalari-Lachlan River Arts Festival, Merrill Findlay said.

“The first is the contribution that those of us in the creative industries sector are making to the wellbeing of small rural communities through our arts practice and through our small festivals that creative people are organising and performing in and sharing.

“We’re hoping to bring together many people who are involved in creative festivals in our region beyond Forbes.

“We’ll be talking about lots of really exciting and stimulating ideas that will inspire us all to try new things and learn from each other, which is most important thing.”

Ms Findlay said the second part of the symposium is to discuss ways of capacity building.

“We’ll talk about ways we can all get better, upgrade our skills, upgrade our understanding of the creative industries, what opportunities are available to us to exploit and what training opportunities are available for us to get better at what we’re already doing - such as marketing, audience development and production,” she said.

The importance of the creative industries in regional communities will in particular be highlighted at the symposium.

“We’ll be exploring multiple benefits that our creative industries bring to our small country towns and in particular what festivals bring to our small towns,” Ms Findlay said.

Ms Findlay said some of the benefits of the arts bring to rural communities include personal development in that art makes people feel good and as if they’ve achieved something worthwhile; a sense of belonging and community; inspiring people to be innovative and adapt to change; and of course the economic benefits in arts festivals which attract many people to small towns.

The symposium format includes panel style discussions, 20 x 20 project presentations and group discussions, plus time over lunch to network and chat.

Ms Findlay said that the ultimate aim of the symposium is to discuss where to go in the future with arts in small country towns.

“I would like to propose that we create a three-year capacity building strategy and apply for funding to develop a community initiative to help us do what we’re already doing, better than we’re doing it now,” she said.

“It’s important that we have a regional profile to market how creative the central west is and to attract people to all of our festivals.”

Everyone with an interest in the arts is invited to attend the symposium.

“Everyone is invited because everyone is creative,” Ms Findlay said.

“In fact, more people in Australia participate in the arts than they do in sports - everyone watches movies, or listens to music, or goes to a gallery every now and then, so in that sense Australia loves the arts.

“It’s time we boasted about ourselves as art lovers instead of sport lovers.”

The Rural Arts and Culture Symposium will be held from 9am to 4pm on Saturday, November 15 at Jemalong Regional Education centre.

Cost is $10 or $5 for concessions, which includes lunch.

Register at artsoutwest.org.au or call 6338 4657.