HOMEGROWN: FOR THE PEOPLE
(ARTIST APPLICATIONS OPEN)
‘Since completing Homegrown, I’ve had this momentum with my projects. They’re getting better, they’re getting bigger — it’s everything I dreamed of when I was a young creative.
- Tim Birch
Did I hear commissioned art?
Rejoice local artists, there is support for those epic creative dreams. May we introduce Homegrown. An initiative from Horizon Festival, Homegrown funds three selected artists to expand their creative horizons whilst cultivating belonging and engagement in community.
Through professional development and mentorship from Horizon Festival (and in thanks to the Regional Arts Development Fund), ‘mixed-bag creative’ Tim Birch produced What Now? for Homegrown in 2020. What Now? was presented as part of Horizon Festival’s online program and commissioned as a response to the onset of COVID-19. The short film is an immersive insight into local artists Jandamarra Cadd, Tammy Brennan, Niki De Saint, and Dave Knobel as their lives and livelihoods were being re-shaped in the uncertainty of the pandemic. What Now? snapshots the diversity in the Sunshine Coast artistic community, from fear and stagnancy to a sense of freedom gained from a commercial world on pause.
As Tim reflects on the experience, ‘it really is about making an idea bigger than what you could ever imagine.’ The multifaceted learning experience for Tim took his vision into a new dimension. The ability to experiment with new camera equipment and a producer, as well as multidisciplinary approaches, was amplified with the interpersonal engagement across the broader creative industries.
‘I got to interview four esteemed artists, people in the industry, and they all had unique things to say…I learnt how they changed their practices, and what they were doing coming out of [COVID].’
For Tim, the community response to What Now? and the invaluable industry experience and networking have continued to enrich his projects today.
‘My Homegrown experience was everything. It was the deep end. I got to work with some people I would have never been able to reach [and] I felt a lot of confidence coming out the back of it’, said Tim.
Post-Homegrown, Tim has channelled his passion for video into a move towards crafting ‘installation audio-visual experiences’ for future ventures, as well as being involved in numerous projects sprouted from the experience.
‘I made a music video with one of the DJs I interviewed, and I’m in the middle of shooting a short documentary with one of the producers that I worked with, [and] ongoing work with the Horizon festival team.’
Alongside Tim, Homegrown 2020 saw the contemporary dance filmic collaboration Plastic Belly (Courtney Scheu and Itamar Freed); place-based visual art in Love Note to the Landscape (Helena Jackson-Lloyd and Rosie Lloyd-Giblett); the interactive digital artwork of Parametric; and the short film Transience (Glen Manning and Kathy Daly) and Trace (James Muller and Shannon Sol Carrol).
Interested? Are you ready to perforate the walls of your practice and see it ooze out into the street? Applications for Homegrown: For The People 2022 are now open to all established artists on the Sunshine Coast wishing to develop a solo or collaborative (new or existing) art project in and across disciplinary boundaries. Tear off those sleeves and aim at connection - for the people - at cultivating a sense of belonging in our Sunshine Coast community.
Horizon encourages attending one of the information sessions (16th & 18th of November) and getting in touch with one of their team prior to submitting your application.
So! drag those big ideas down from the ether and onto the Homegrown: For the People application paper: https://www.horizonfestival.com.au/homegrown.
p.s. applications close 6th of December 2021 for delivery as part of Horizon Festival (August - September 2022).