ARTS8: the Australian Roundtable for Arts Training Excellence, is a selection of eight national elite performing arts training organisations that promote artistic and cultural excellence.
Along with NAISDA, they include:
- Australian Ballet School
- Australian National Academy of Music
- Australian Youth Orchestra
- Flying Fruit Circus
- National Institute of Circus Arts
- National Institute of Dramatic Art
- Australian Film Television and Radio School
Earlier this year, the Australian National Academy of Music, and the National Institute of Circus Arts, co-hosted the first ARTS8 student collaborative experience since the pandemic. Two students from each of the ARTS8 training organisations spent the weekend together, undertaking workshops in each other’s creative disciplines.
We took the opportunity to speak with Angie Diaz, NAISDA’s Performance and Production Unit Manager, to find out more about the collaboration.
Angie, tell us a bit about your role during the event.
This year, I was able to attend the ARTS8 collaboration as a lead facilitator for NAISDA. The facilitators from each organisation had the space to share their disciplines and creative process with the student participants. My role was to nurture that space, allowing all the artists to have a voice and share their calling and discipline and to gently guide the artists along a journey of collaboration.
Tell us about the new art form creative sessions?
Facilitators would guide small workshops that everyone could participate in. The two Developing Artists from NAISDA who came along, Harlisha Newie and Tayla Jackson, shared the beginnings of the choreography process, revealing how they find movement, what devising tools they use, and more.
The sessions were about stepping into each other’s worlds, taking the embodiment of that experience, and embedding it into a creative process to come up with a piece that all the emerging artists collaborated on and shared.
Was there a central theme throughout the collaboration?
The whole collaboration was centred around ‘Calling’. We looked at a quote from Twyla Tharp about how we are hardwired with creative DNA, and wondered ‘if it was our calling to be an artist, and what was that calling?’ Being able to share the workshop and share our creative processes in our given fields, enabled us to explore that and share why we do what we do.
What would you say are the main benefits that participants gain from an experience like this?
It is a wonderful networking opportunity for young artists who are emerging. They are on their journey of learning, and this experience teaches them insights into how other art forms are processed and navigated. It is interesting to see artforms such as dance, music, and film, be perceived as different, and it is exciting to see how it all blends together.
This type of collaboration offers young emerging artists a point to start developing their own creative processes. It is important to have opportunities where they are front and centre. This is a place where they can take the floor and start to allow their processes to be experienced. It allows them to take leadership and gives them a chance to strengthen their voices.
Were there any standout moments for you?
Absolutely the final performance. Seeing what the artists had created, you saw everything they had experienced, and how this all culminated in one performance. There were 16 people from different artistic backgrounds, and in that final performance, everything had its own place. It was a beautiful ensemble work. A beautiful balance with equality in the space.