Comment: ‘Road trip’ with Joel McGuinness
Earlier this year, Joel McGuinness, former general manager at Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre, and Director of JAM Creative Arts, travelled all over Western Australia as part of a ‘Needs Analysis Project’ for the Department of Culture and the Arts and CircuitWest. The Needs Analysis Project was developed in conjunction with two other West Australian businesses: West End Projects (project manager) and Creative Community Consultancy.
Joel’s first trip away was to the Matt Dann Theatre in Port Hedland on March 22 and the last of the site visits was to Karratha on May 5 & 6. With many, many kilometres travelled in between, Joel:
- Spent more than 60 hours just in travel time, both flying and driving;
- Went to Mandurah, Beverely, Tammin, Merredin, Bruce Rock, Kalgoorlie, Narrogin, Broome, Margaret River, Albany and Karratha all in just under 8 weeks;
- Met with over 50 stakeholders to talk about the needs of performing arts centres across the state.
Regional Performing Arts venues and community presenters met with Joel to discuss culture and the arts at a regional level and to talk about the need for their centres to be vibrant and sustainable.
“There is amazing work happening all over our state, with so many passionate, amazing, hard-working people that are mostly under resourced and still delivering incredible outcomes for our industry, their own communities and the whole state.” Joel said on his return. “It has been a real privilege to meet so many arts workers around the state and to contribute to this project. We look forward to working on the final report and hope that the end product will be a valuable resource for people.”
