Indigenous Artsworker Training
In our continued mission to support economic development and culturally strong best practice Indigenous art enterprises, IACA is delivering an Artsworker training program to extend artsworkers professionally.
In 2020/21 with thanks to the support of the Australia Council for the Arts Cherish Fund, IACA presented the 'IACA Indigenous Artsworker Program' (IIAP) artsworker professional development training pilot program.
Following on the success of the pilot program and with support from the Australian Government's Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund, IACA has continued delivering the Indigenous Artsworker Program for a new cohort of participants in 2021/22.
In light of COVID-19 lockdowns, the IACA team have adapted to online methods of training and embraced the opportunities that video conferencing affords. Ever-changing Covid situations permitting, the program also includes in-person training and field trips. IACA has developed a weekly online training schedule over a ten-month period. Sessions are recorded so that videos as well as supplementary learning resources can be made available for participants to access online anytime via the IACA Members Area Website.
Due to the small group sizes the training program is flexible, responsive and shaped to suit artsworker abilities, needs and requests. Artsworkers are assigned weekly tasks during training follow-up sessions and thereby given the chance to workshop outcomes with their peers in a safe, informal tutorial environment. Art Centre job roles are varied and involve a combination of highly specialised skills. The IACA Indigenous Artsworker Training Program (IIAP) has been developed with this in mind so that the subject of each training module correlates to Art Centre job descriptions and real-world practical applications.
In 2019 we asked artsworkers in the IACA network to tell us what they wanted, this is what they said: