Page 767 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 March 2019
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for young people interested in developing a career in the arts. We have the Canberra Youth Orchestra and the Canberra Children’s Choir, which you mentioned, Madam Deputy Speaker. We also have the Gugan Gulwan music program, which engages with and supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people in the ACT region.
Arts education has the added benefit of helping to combat mental health issues, giving our young people a creative and safe outlet to express themselves. The Messengers program at Tuggeranong Arts Centre is an arts-based early support program for young people with mental health issues. Belconnen Community Service has the Bungee program, an inclusive resilience-building program that promotes emotional wellbeing through the arts.
Getting quality tuition early on is a really important factor in the ongoing career of artists. It is sad that there have been budget cuts to the arts sector and cancellations of arts education programs such as ANU’s music for colleges program and the H course, as mentioned in some detail by Ms Lee earlier.
It is so important that young artists who have so much to give to our community have adequate support to continue to do so. We must continue to support local arts institutions that offer grants and prizes specifically for young artists. The ACT Writers Centre has the Anne Edgeworth writers fellowship for emerging young writers. ScreenACT has the low-budget feature pod funding program, which developed Declan Shrubb’s 2015 film Me and My Mates vs the Zombie Apocalypse. And the ANU School of Art has the emerging artist support scheme. Then there are the dancers whom I go to every year: the QL2 Dance program.
There are arts groups that are making a concerted effort to reach out to young people and encourage them to join, such as the Canberra Gay and Lesbian Choir. These groups need our support to continue their outreach so that we do not have some arts as the province just of older people. Supporting our young artists and supporting the institutions that help develop their art practice can only improve Canberra.
We have a number of young talents currently doing us proud. Sacha Jeffrey, who paints under the name Sacha Pola, has just been awarded the $50,000 Muswellbrook regional art prize for his work Having Reached Utopia, It Was Then Time. He went to Telopea Park School and then the ANU School of Art and Design.
We have award-winning writer and film director Vanessa Gazy and young Canberra writers such as Simon Mitchell, Annabelle McInnes, Jack Heath and Zoya Patel. Chiara Grassia received a Great Ydeas grant in 2013 and went on to launch the first Girls Rock! camp in Australia here in Canberra in 2016.
Then there is 26-year-old Leonard Weiss, a Canberra conductor who leads the National Capital Orchestra and the Canberra Youth Orchestra. And there is young artist Dean Cross, who was born and raised on Ngunnawal country, who this year is
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