Being in and of local communities: An Australian regional gallery’s response to climate disasters

Anna Lawrenson and Chiara O’Reilly

In Australia, environmental catastrophe is part of our identity: the country and community have all been shaped by repeated droughts, floods and fires. The experience of the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires was, however, unprecedented. It destroyed vast swathes of country, impacting places, lives, livelihoods and communities, and its duration and severity caused untold grief. These catastrophic fires occurred in close succession to sustained droughts and devastating floods and by March 2020 the community was dealing with the new and dramatic changes brought about by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This health crisis highlighted the vital role that museums and galleries can play in supporting communities during difficult times. Lockdowns exacerbated isolation leaving a considerable role for local services, often provided by local government, to support communities. In this context, regional museums and galleries remained a trusted and enduring presence. Such cultural institutions have the potential to become community hubs or, as Ian McShane and Brian Coffey argue, ‘anchor institutions for addressing vulnerability [and] building community resilience’.¹ This idea accords with the more philosophical position of museologist Robert Janes in relation to the civic function of museum and galleries. As Janes has noted, museums, as ‘civil society organizations’ have the capacity to ‘generate the networks, norms, trust and shared values’ of a society.² In doing so, they help ‘to hold society together’ by ‘facilitating an understanding of [its] interconnectedness’ and the shared interests and experiences within it.³

Building on these theories and extending them through the analysis of a case study, this article hypothesises that regional cultural institutions are uniquely placed to understand, and respond to, the needs of their communities because they are structurally embedded within those communities in terms of physical location and governance. Research prior to the pandemic showed how regional cultural facilities were embedded within local government structures, demonstrating their integral role within communities.⁴ Investment in culture was seen as ‘vital to community identity, inclusion, liveability, reconciliation and survival’.⁵ Importantly, the scale and embedded nature of regional institutions affords them ‘nimbleness and adaptive capacities’ that are difficult to emulate in larger organisations.⁶ Therefore, our research argues for a critical consideration of the social value of regional cultural institutions to better understand how they are working beyond the remit of preserving and exhibiting cultural memory—particularly in the wake of significant natural disasters and the pandemic—and are moving towards McShane and Coffey’s concept of ‘anchor institutions’.

To support this argument, the article employs a mixed methodology approach that includes a survey, case study and the collection of qualitative data resulting from semi-structured interviews that were contextualised with exhibition collateral and publicly available information. These primary data were then examined in relation to critical literature and policy documents as a framework for analysis.

The focus of the research was initially honed via an online survey launched by the authors in 2021 to investigate the operational context of small to medium cultural institutions in New South Wales.⁷ The survey incorporated multiple-choice and open-ended questions that were designed to allow participants to reflect on their pressing challenges and successes. It captured a snapshot of the small to medium sector in NSW, including community-run organisations, public museums and galleries and Aboriginal cultural centres.⁸ The largest proportion of respondents were local government-funded organisations that were situated in rural, regional or coastal areas outside of metropolitan Sydney.⁹

An important finding of the survey, for the purposes of this article, was the extent to which small to medium cultural institutions in regional areas were impacted by, and responding to, natural disasters.¹⁰ The researchers subsequently identified innovative responses to these challenging environmental circumstances that formed the basis of more comprehensive analysis in the form of case studies. These case studies were framed around in-depth interviews and site visits to build a rich picture of the way that such organisations were seeking to engage with, and be present for, their immediate communities in the face of challenging circumstances.¹¹ This article presents the results of one such case study—the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery located in Nowra on the south coast of NSW.

In the 2021 survey, the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery declared that it had been affected by natural disasters and had responded to those crises within programming. It nominated several projects that it considered important in response to the 2019–20 bushfires. Subsequent research revealed that the gallery is embedded within its community, and empathetic to the challenges it faced on its journey of recovery after the fires. This shows the unique role that regional cultural institutions can play as ‘anchor institutions’ that contribute to building community resilience.¹² This article focuses on three exhibitions—Wonder + Dread: Art in a Land of Weather Extremes (2020–21),¹³ Truth in Fire (2020–21)¹⁴ and Regenerate (2022)¹⁵—to build a picture of an institution immersed within its community and responsive to its experience. The gallery demonstrates how, via its enduring presence, it created safe spaces for connections and conversations by speaking to the lived experience of its community.¹⁶ Shown on the one- and two-year anniversaries of the fires, these exhibits became part of a collective journey of recovery. As a suite of projects, they are used here to illustrate or model how a gallery can become a site of civil society.

The article begins by charting research into the social role of museums before moving onto the case study of the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery. Here it critically examines how the series of identified exhibitions became tools that supported the community on a journey through grief after the Black Summer fires and COVID-19. These seemingly small steps are positioned as radical acts of care—an investment in social connection and worth—that demonstrate the importance of cultural services as nodes in a support network across regional Australia.

Museums and social connection in regional communities

The social role of museums, arts and culture, and their benefits for communities, is well established.¹⁷ The literature positions museums, as spaces of social and cultural engagement and education, as having the potential to broker ‘partnerships’ that can be deployed to support broad ideas of community.¹⁸ In many respects, this conceptualisation extends Stephen Weil’s 1999 claim that museums had shifted from being about something to being for somebody by reframing the idea of ‘somebody’ to a more collective experience of community.¹⁹ This is especially important during periods of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and is likely to increase as the frequency and scale of environmental crises puts even more pressure on communities. Other studies recognise the social benefits of cultural programming that can be categorised across several domains, such as ‘Arts and Social Inclusion; Arts, Health and Wellbeing; Arts and Community Resilience; Arts and Cultural Identities’.²⁰ This categorisation helps to locate social impact as entwined within overarching efforts to develop individual and community wellbeing and resilience.

In Australia, for example, bushfires, floods and droughts are central to the environment, and the country’s disaster risk management response has seen it ‘recognised globally’.²¹ Yet, the growing scale and frequency of such crises—now often ongoing and combined—has highlighted a need to concentrate on strategies to build resilience, especially in regional communities. This traverses physical resilience (i.e. infrastructure that will withstand ever-increasing natural disasters) and emotional resilience to support communities. This philosophy has been enshrined nationally in Infrastructure Australia’s Resilience Principles, which champion a system-wide approach to resilience that includes developing resilient processes, places, assets and communities.²² The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) echoes the focus on resilience, which it defines as a community that is ‘socially connected and has infrastructure that can withstand disaster and foster community recovery’, promoting ‘individual and community wellbeing and cohesiveness’ to meet the challenges of ‘everyday’ and ‘extreme’ events.²³ Regional communities have been identified as more vulnerable because they are more likely to experience natural disasters, and have limited resources to respond, than their urban counterparts. Parsons et al. argue that ‘regional and remote areas face barriers to disaster resilience that are generated by policy, economic, infrastructure, and social settings that privilege service delivery and economic capital to populated metropolitan areas’.²⁴ It is unsurprising, therefore, that organisations like ALGA support communities to not just prevent and prepare for disasters but also to build resilience in support of recovery. When we recognise museums and galleries as sites of social engagement, we can position cultural infrastructure as one node in a system that contributes to the overall resilience of communities. Importantly, cultural infrastructure comprises enduring, resilient, physical infrastructure and dynamic settings that provide a focal point for supporting community.

Local government is a key stakeholder in this discussion because, as scholars like McShane have stressed, in Australia, ‘local authorities own or manage around 80 per cent of community facilities’ covering ‘recreational, cultural, educational, health and civic facilities’.²⁵ So, while significant cultural infrastructure exists at the federal and state levels, at the local government level there is a considerable network of art galleries, museums and heritage sites²⁶—or community facilities—that are key sites in the ecosystems of regional communities and are increasingly being integrated into resilience-focused planning. In doing so, they are positioned as sites that can help communities absorb ‘shocks’, respond ‘to local needs and crises’ and, because they are networked, can learn from each other’s experiences.²⁷ Moreover, they are open for, and to, community in sometimes profound ways. As Ross Gibson explains, these are cultural and social spaces where communities see value ‘not only physical but also mental and emotional … [places] to offer yourself more resiliently to the world of everyday experience’.²⁸ Or, to put it another way, ‘they are the community lounge room’.²⁹ The familiarity of this articulation points to a significant aspect of local cultural organisations, which is difficult to replicate in major state or national institutions. Local cultural facilities are embedded within their communities. In a 2016 survey of municipal councils, the ‘critical social value’ of cultural provisions was noted as ‘enriching the identity, quality of life and health and wellbeing of the community’, despite challenges of funding staffing and capacity.³⁰ The report found that local cultural organisations are closer physically, and by their governance, to local communities and are therefore uniquely placed to meet the specific needs of their communities. For example, in regional areas where essential services like banks and post offices were closing—meaning that there was ‘diminishing availability of places where the community meets [and] people find it harder to connect’—community infrastructure like museums and galleries filled the gap, providing a social space that builds community cohesion.³¹ Local cultural organisations have an intimate knowledge of the issues that their communities face.

For Australian small to medium organisations this represents a huge potential to develop systems and models of engagement that offer cultural sustenance and help to foster community connection and resilience. Through the close study of the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery it is possible to see that this is not a fundamental reimagining of the role of the museum, but an opportunity to value what these organisations already do well: to acknowledge their sensitive understanding of the communities in which they work and to highlight their capacity to be responsive to their needs.

Shoalhaven case study

The community of the Shoalhaven located south of Sydney was devastated by the 2019–20 bushfires, with just over 80 per cent of the local government area effected.³² The scale of the experience and its impact, both in the short and long term, are difficult to imagine. One local reporter reflected on his experience:

It’s been more than 60 days since the Currowan Fire began to consume the South Coast. Unlike most disasters, which are singular in nature—a flood, an earthquake, a cyclone that strike one location—this one just keeps rolling on. It’s destroyed towns and villages, laid waste to forests and farmland, disrupted lives and distorted our very sense of time. On the South Coast, we’re calling it the Forever Fire. It’s like a psychotic home invader we can’t get rid of, quiet one day but triggered into a violent, unpredictable rage the next. And it’s changed the way we live.³³

This description captures the extended impact of the fires and the compounding effects they had on day-to-day life. His reflection was written in February 2020. Just a few weeks later life changed again when major events began to be cancelled as COVID-19 restrictions were incrementally implemented; by the end of March, the state was in lockdown.³⁴ In August 2020, the region experienced its worst floods in 30 years.³⁵ Since then, the impact of the fires, the pandemic and continued periodic floods have endured.

The Shoalhaven Regional Gallery is in Nowra, the administrative centre of the region, where it services a geographically distributed population that includes coastal and rural residents alongside holiday-makers. It is a council-run facility that, importantly for our argument, is positioned within the ‘resilient, safe and inclusive communities’ pillar of the Shoalhaven City Council’s Strategic Plan.³⁶ This structure places the gallery as part of the council’s core community service provision.³⁷ It attracts a considerable local audience and has a clear focus on responding to their needs through a changing exhibition program that sees it representing ‘global issues with a Shoalhaven lens’.³⁸ This hyperlocal focus and approach is an asset for the institution and the community, which is thus empowered to experience the world differently.

The annual exhibition program includes a range of in-house curated exhibitions and touring shows alongside a community gallery space offering local artists an opportunity to show and sell their work.³⁹ Access and inclusion are fundamental, as evidenced through the diverse exhibition program and suite of public programs targeted at broadening audiences. Other efforts to broaden access include extending beyond its physical walls via the creation of a public square at the entrance to the gallery—an attempt to make the gallery more welcoming and friendly. The provision of art activities at the local shopping centre, participation in other council-run events and online activities initiated during COVID-19 provide further evidence of the gallery’s desire to be present for its community.⁴⁰

On the one-year anniversary of the Black Summer fires, the gallery staged Wonder + Dread: Art in a Land of Weather Extremes—a major exhibition, scheduled during the prime summer slot, which situated weather extremes as integral to the region and Australian experience. Although it had been in development prior to the 2019–20 fires, its final form was shaped by the Black Summer experience, demonstrating the adaptability of regional organisations. The show featured works from 1816 to the present, illustrating, as curator Danielle Robson noted, how ‘weather extremes are a defining feature of life in the Shoalhaven’.⁴¹ This was echoed by Bronwyn Coulston, gallery director, who saw the show and its associated programs as a way to situate the recent fires within a continuum of extreme weather events, providing a space of reflection and hope for a community dealing with trauma. Coulston reinforced this point, stating: ‘We have done this before and we can do this again.’⁴²

In many respects, the gallery’s approach aligns with broader discussions in the arts sector around the role of cultural organisations in supporting community recovery in the face of COVID-19 and environmental disasters. The Australia Council for the Arts has, for example, developed an interest in how the arts can be positioned as an essential element of recovery, and has called for better integration of cultural services and mental health support, arguing that ‘the arts support the articulation and expression of lived experience, which is integral to trauma therapies’.⁴³ This represents an acknowledgment, at the national level, that the arts can be important in this realm.

Wonder + Dread featured works by a wide range of Australian artists, many with Shoalhaven connections, but it was the commissioned works that were particularly effective at creating a space for the ‘articulation and expression of lived experiences’⁴⁴ that is crucial in opening a dialogue about trauma. These commissions responded to the recent environmental catastrophe in intimate and emotional ways that supported a collective conversation around the experience. Aunty Deidre Martin, of the Yuin Nation, and Nicole Monks, of Yamaji Wajarri, Dutch and English heritage, brought the experience of the healing landscape into the gallery in their installation Connections: Your Connection, My Connection, OUR CONNECTIONS (2020). Designed to evoke a sense of ‘walking through Country’, the floor-based work juxtaposed burnt tree trunks, sand, rocks and native plants in the process of regeneration. In doing so, it situated the fires within a First Nations’ framework of caring for country, in which the cycles of destruction and regeneration are intimately tied to generational knowledge of place.⁴⁵ The work celebrated an idea of communal connection by symbolically linking elements—the destruction and the regeneration—and reinforced a deep connection between people and place to foreground a sense of ongoing survival and rejuvenation.

Lara Merrett’s What We Leave Behind (2020) developed this sense of connection to shared experiences on a number of levels. The work, which consisted of three ‘colour-soaked drop-sheet paintings’, was a direct response to the artist’s experience of the fires and their aftermath. The paintings were created in her South Coast studio using pigments derived from the surrounding landscape to imbue the fabric with physical markers of the post-fire landscape. Once suspended in the gallery space, visitors were invited to cut into the fabric and take a part of the work home. While the work did not visually reference the fires, the holes created by visitors invited them to consider ‘what remains when something is taken away’, thus exploring notions of grief. It acknowledged the holes—in nature and in the community—created by the fires, and revealed ‘the beauty alongside the loss’.⁴⁶ Through the process of cutting and removing pieces of the fabric, the work evolved and changed, reflecting the changing vistas that were revealed in the aftermath of the fires. Visitors were also connected poetically to each other as each fabric memento took on a new life, giving the intangible experience of grief after the fires a tangible marker of regeneration.

The two commissioned works, through their content and their generative and interactive experience with visitors, helped to reinforce a connection to Country and ideas of care through a compassionate engagement with the community. As Robson explained, they helped visitors to see not just the ‘terror, dread and destruction, but also beauty, hope and resilience’.⁴⁷ Public programs extended the opportunity to consider the experience of the fires beyond the gallery by inviting participants to walk the burnt landscape—in effect, taking the gallery to country. Leanne Waterhouse and Penny Sadubin developed an artist-led walk, Fire: Ground (2020), in which community members were invited to meditatively walk through the fire-affected landscape in the Morton National Park.⁴⁸ This process of walking through the area, feeling the devastation and witnessing the regeneration offered another supported space for reflection and community conversation that embraced individual and collective experience.

A second exhibition, Truth in Fire, presented by the Australian Centre for Photography in partnership with Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, was on show at the same time as Wonder + Dread. This show, which featured deeply moving works by filmmaker and photographer Tim Georgeson and Guringai artist and South Coast resident Amanda-Jane Reynolds, sought to represent the ‘complexity and ferocity’ of the fires.⁴⁹ The exhibit had prominent street frontage, as it was shown in a pop-up gallery in a repurposed retail space in the Nowra central business district. Here the gallery recognised, due to the affective nature of the works, that they needed to adopt a proactive approach to support visitors. The director of the Shoalhaven Gallery anticipated that the community could find the works triggering and so organised for attendants to be trained by the Red Cross to offer immediate assistance and direct distressed visitors to connect with formal support services.⁵⁰ The director was right. As Coulston observed: ‘We did have people come into that show, and just cry, sit in front of [Georgeson’s] works and sob.’⁵¹ Through this proactive approach, the gallery demonstrated not only compassion within the space, but also positioned the exhibition as a community hub through which allied services could be connected. In a reversal of the usual process, which sees doctors prescribing museum visits to alleviate social isolation, this example positions the gallery as a conduit through which visitors could connect with health services.⁵² By working with the Red Cross, the Shoalhaven Gallery demonstrated not only its connection to and awareness of community needs but also the capacity of regional cultural institutions to positively contribute.

As a pair of exhibitions, Wonder + Dread and Truth in Fire became platforms for the gallery that, in acknowledging the trauma, also celebrated the survival of the community. Both exhibitions drew strong audiences, suggesting an appetite from the community to reflect on the experience of the fires.⁵³ Through its programming, and its closeness to community, the gallery created opportunities for collective reflection, and a sharing of the lived experience of the fires that was facilitated through participatory and embodied encounters. This exemplifies the idea of the gallery functioning as a community hub—a space that was for the community and responsive to its needs and, most importantly, acknowledged the toll of the fires. As Coulston explained, a vital aspect of her approach is to use art to speak ‘to the stories of the community’.⁵⁴ For Coulston, this was most clearly seen in Truth in Fire, which, for many members of the community, became ‘a point in a healing journey [that allowed them] to actually show emotion’. For some visitors, it was the first time that they had had the space to acknowledge and express their feelings.⁵⁵ Importantly, the gallery was an enduring presence throughout this journey.

The importance of connection and being present for community was also at the heart of the Regenerate project, which happened almost a year after these shows and two years after the fires. At this point, the community was further into its recovery from the fires but was still in the midst of COVID-19, enduring lockdowns and the associated disruptions and anxiety. The concept of Regenerate was developed by Sally MacLennan of Orange Regional Museum and Cecilie Knowles of Orange Regional Gallery in collaboration with the SPARKE Learning Network.⁵⁶ It was originally designed as a school-based program examining the experience and impact of fires, but was subsequently packaged as a toolkit and made freely available to cultural institutions to develop ‘their own iterations’.⁵⁷ For Shoalhaven, the flexibility of this toolkit allowed them to adapt to the experience of their community in 2021. Rather than connecting with schools, which was impractical due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the gallery sent out ‘Art at Home’ packs with a template inviting people to decorate a cardboard leaf and return it to the gallery. This invitation afforded participants a distraction during lockdown and, through their art-making, an opportunity to connect with the gallery and come together in a conversation about the fires. The gallery posted around 750 art packs out to community members and was overwhelmed by the response.⁵⁸ The leaves that were created, like the scraps of fabric cut from Merrett’s work, were a physical point of connection between the gallery and the community, coalesced around the experience of the fires, despite the isolation of lockdowns. When lockdowns relaxed, an art-making station was set up in the local shopping centre to further engage community, with around 200 children participating.⁵⁹ The decorated leaves were amassed and exhibited in the gallery and, when the show opened, visitors came to look for their contribution and to see how others had responded. As with the two previous exhibitions, the show cleaved a space for conversations within the community at a time when the rawness of the fires was beginning to heal, but the experience of COVID-19 was ever-present.

The epitome of the idea of a gallery as a community hub, the project worked with and for the community by being attuned to their needs and weaving their imprint into the spaces of the gallery in an active, participatory, manner. Importantly, the Shoalhaven’s Regenerate exhibition was subsequently shown at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, continuing the conversation and extending it to a national venue, thus raising its profile and impact and further celebrating the voice of community. The ability of this project to build community across the experience of lockdowns was a significant achievement for a small regional gallery and helps to underline just how central such institutions are as critical community infrastructure that is central to wellbeing and embedded as civic sites.

The approach at the Shoalhaven has been one in which programming and the social function of the gallery has been extended to offer moments of connection for community and pathways to support. The small acts of care implemented within the projects—a commissioned artwork inviting moments of reflection, an invitation to walk collectively through the landscape with artists to see it anew, the training of staff to support visitors in distress—are examples of being of, and for, a regional community. Across these projects, the gallery positioned programming and support for community as central to its purpose: being part of the recovery from the 2019–20 bushfires and the isolation of COVID-19. Further, the projects reference trends across international literature, particularly in response to COVID-19, that stress the importance of museums as community hubs.⁶⁰ For example, the Centre for the Future of Museums’ annual TrendsWatch report, Museums as Community Infrastructure, highlights how museums can make a positive contribution to society via five key pillars, including ‘Emergency Response in the Face of Disasters’ and ‘Mental Health for All’.⁶¹ This burgeoning research area, derived from academia and sector-based professional bodies, is especially strong in the United Kingdom.⁶² Such literature informed the analysis of the Shoalhaven case study to foreground the important role that cultural organisations can play through seemingly small acts of care and connection.

Conclusion

Australian communities and organisations carry significant scars—experiences of drought, catastrophic fires and floods, and now the additional burden of the ongoing challenge of COVID-19. Regional communities are especially vulnerable, as they lack the wide networks and resources available in urban centres. Connal Lee and Sarah Northcott hypothesised that community galleries ‘can act as important focal points for creating networks and connectedness within the community … which promote well-being, through reduction of social isolation and creating bonds that promote solidarity’.⁶³ The example of Shoalhaven Regional Gallery provides evidence for this claim. In this discussion, a regional cultural space is presented as a core civic space—a community hub. Closely embedded within its community, and responsive to its changing needs, the Shoalhaven Gallery harnesses its role as a social space to offer not just services but also opportunities to support, build and expand on ideas of social connection and resilience. Approached in this way, cultural institutions can become trusted sites of education and long-term repositories and dynamic organisations that are entangled within communities.

In regional settings, this entanglement is enhanced because of strong connections to local government. It is widely acknowledged that ‘local government is at the heart of every community, and often best suited to build local civic pride, inter- and intra-community relationships, and strengthen resilience through stronger social bonds’.⁶⁴ From a governance point of view, council-run cultural organisations are best placed to develop close relationships with allied services that can close the loop of community support. This can provide the holistic approach to wellbeing championed by those who support using cultural institutions to reduce social isolation. Evidence of this was seen in the way that Shoalhaven Gallery was prepared to connect distressed visitors with support services in Truth in Fire. There is scope to increase this impact by working across portfolios to better connect services and deliver more holistic support to communities. Some steps have been seen in this area: for example, representatives of the Shoalhaven Gallery were present at the Thrive Together Fair—‘a free one-day event that connects people doing it tough with local services and support’—in July 2022.⁶⁵ This collaborative endeavour shows the potential role that the gallery can build upon to further augment its status as a community hub. McShane and Coffey argue that, in response to the challenges of the twenty-first century, we need to view community hubs as vital parts of ‘social systems’, a shift that will better ensure that ‘vulnerability is addressed and resilience is most effectively built’.⁶⁶ Community and cultural hubs have an important role to play in supporting, building and expanding on ideas of social connection—both at the level of the individual and the community.

This article has sought to recognise the key role that regional organisations play. The intimacy that comes from proximity—being part of a local community—is difficult to replicate at a state or national level, particularly as those institutions serve broader audiences and remits. The experience of Shoalhaven hints at possible ways to sustain community resilience as part of programs and events that encourage connection and work collaboratively beyond the cultural sector. It is vital that regional cultural institutions have a voice in the development of cultural and social policy. Greater recognition of their sustained impact on community wellbeing and contribution to a resilient society in Australia is an important area of research that could be expanded. A project like Regenerate is a perfect example of this potential: successfully initiated in Orange, it took on a new role in the Shoalhaven before finding a national platform at the National Botanical Garden to initiate a new conversation between local and national. Our focus now is to continue to speak with organisations to develop a richer and more detailed picture of current practice. We hope that this will help to make arguments for ongoing funding by drawing attention to the ways cultural organisations provide social value: being a voice for a civil society.

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1. 1 Ian McShane and Brian Coffey, ‘Rethinking Community Hubs: Community Facilities as Critical Infrastructure’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 54 (1 February 2022): 1, doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101149.

2. 2 Robert R. Janes, ‘Museums, Corporatism and the Civil Society’, Curator: The Museum Journal 50, no. 2 (2007): 223, doi.org/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2007.tb00267.x.

3. 3 Ibid., 223.

4. 4 Paul Ashton, Chris Gibson and Ross Gibson, eds., By-Roads and Hidden Treasures: Mapping Cultural Assets in Regional Australia (Crawley: UWA Publishing, 2015); Sally Watterson and Anna Lawrenson, Communities and Culture: LGNSW Research into Arts, Culture and Heritage (Sydney: Local Government NSW, 2017).

5. 5 Watterson and Lawrenson, Communities and Culture, 10.

6. 6 McShane and Coffey, ‘Rethinking Community Hubs’, 3.

7. 7 The survey was part of a larger research project, ‘Museums as Sites of Civil Society’, funded by the University of Sydney in partnership with Museums & Galleries of NSW. Original team members included Rachel Arndt, Dr Lee-Anne Hall, Dr Anna Lawrenson and Dr Chiara O’Reilly. See The Museum: Dangerous Ideas in Civil Places on Vimeo, Museums and Galleries of NSW, 2020, vimeo.com/480594527?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=12382802.

8. 8 The survey received 51 responses.

9. 9 Forty-one per cent of respondents were LGA-owned and managed entities, and 63 per cent were located outside of metropolitan Sydney in regional, coastal or remote areas.

10. 10 The survey asked organisations whether they had been affected by floods, fires and/or drought alongside questions about the impact of COVID-19. Of those who responded to the question about natural disasters, 48 per cent had been affected by drought; 36 per cent had been affected by fires; and 24 per cent had been affected by floods (noting that the survey was undertaken before the major floods in January 2022). For institutions affected by natural disasters, we followed up with a question about whether they engaged with these events through exhibitions, programs or other means. Forty-two per cent engaged with these natural disasters through programming at the time of the survey. Of that, the majority, 75 per cent, had been affected by more than one natural disaster.

11. 11 As the research focused on programs and exhibitions that were identified in the survey, the capacity to seek an audience perspective on the projects was limited to the data that the institutions collected themselves. In future iterations of the research, audience perspectives will be sought throughout to complement the institutional view.

12. 12 McShane and Coffey, ‘Rethinking Community Hubs’, 1.

13. 13 Exhibition ran from 12 December 2020 to 30 January 2021.

14. 14 Exhibition ran from 11 December 2020 to 30 January 2021.

15. 15 Exhibition ran from 5 to 26 February 2022.

16. 16 Bronwyn Coulston, interview by Anna Lawrenson and Chiara O’Reilly, 7 June 2022.

17. 17 The literature that relates to museums is especially rich in the space of the arts and health. See, for example, Paul M. Camic and Helen J. Chatterjee, ‘Museums and Art Galleries as Partners for Public Health Interventions’, Perspectives in Public Health 133, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 66–71, doi.org/10.1177/1757913912468523; Christina Davies, Melanie Pescud, Julia Anwar McHenry and Peter Wright, ‘Arts, Public Health and the National Arts and Health Framework: A Lexicon for Health Professionals’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 40, no. 4 (2016): 304–6, doi.org/10.1111/1753-6405.12545; Nuala Morse, ‘The Social Role of Museums: From Social Inclusion to Health and Wellbeing’, in Connecting Museums, ed. Mark O’Neill and Glenn Hooper (Routledge, 2020), 48–65, doi.org/10.4324/9781351036184-4; Carolyn Todd et al., ‘Museum-Based Programs for Socially Isolated Older Adults: Understanding What Works’, Health & Place 48 (1 November 2017): 47–55, doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2017.08.005. Broader literature related to the social role of museums includes Graham Black, ‘Embedding Civil Engagement in Museums’, Museum Management and Curatorship 25, no. 2 (2010): 129–46, doi.org/10.1080/09647771003737257; John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience Revisited (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc, 2013).

18. 18 See, for example, Thomas Kador and Helen Chatterjee, eds., Object-Based Learning and Well-Being: Exploring Material Connections (London: Routledge, 2020), 5, doi.org/10.4324/9780429425868; Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum (Santa Cruz, California: Museum 2.0, 2010).

19. 19 Stephen E. Weil, ‘From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum’, Daedalus 128 (1999): 229–58.

20. 20 Deborah Stevenson, Sarah Barns, Jacqueline Clements, Cecelia Cmielewski and Phillip Mar, The Social Impact of the NSW Arts, Screen and Culture Programs (Penrith: Western Sydney University, 2019), 9.

21. 21 Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience’, accessed 25 October 2022, www.dfat.gov.au/development/topics/development-issues/building-resilience/drr/disaster-risk-reduction-and-resilience.

22. 22 Infrastructure Australia and Australian Government, Resilience Principles: Infrastructure Australia’s Approach to Resilience, 24 June 2022, 4–5, www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/publications/resilience-principles.

23. 23 Australian Local Government Association, ‘Stronger Community Resilience’, accessed 30 September 2022, alga.com.au/policy-centre/community-resilience/.

24. 24 Melissa Parsons, Ian Reeve, James McGregor, Peter Hastings, Graham R. Marshall, Judith McNeill, Richard Stayner and Sonya Glavac, ‘Disaster Resilience in Australia: A Geographic Assessment Using an Index of Coping and Adaptive Capacity’, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 62 (1 August 2021): 10.

25. 25 Ian McShane, ‘Community Facilities, Community Building and Local Government—An Australian Perspective’, Facilities 24, no. 7/8 (1 January 2006): 269, doi.org/10.1108/02632770610666125.

26. 26 As part of the 2018 Sector Census, Museums and Galleries of NSW identified ‘524 organisations which included 337 community run and managed museums, 58 public and regional galleries, 58 public and regional museums, 39 community run and managed galleries and artist run initiatives and 32 Aboriginal cultural centres’. See Museums & Galleries of NSW, ‘2018 NSW Museum & Gallery Sector Census. Data and Insights—Culture Counts’, accessed 14 November 2023, mgnsw.org.au/sector/resources/online-resources/research/2018-nsw-museum-gallery-sector-census/.

27. 27 McShane and Coffey, ‘Rethinking Community Hubs’, 5.

28. 28 Ross Gibson, cited in Ashton, Gibson and Gibson, By-Roads and Hidden Treasures, 8.

29. 29 Watterson and Lawrenson, Communities and Culture, 37.

30. 30 Ibid., 16.

31. 31 Ibid., 17.

32. 32 Shoalhaven City Council, End of Term Report 2017–2021 (Nowra: Shoalhaven City Council, 2021), 9.

33. 33 John Hanscombe, ‘Poignant Photos Capture Catastrophic Aftermath of South Coast “Forever Fire”’, Illawarra Mercury, 1 February 2020, www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/6604332/poignant-photos-capture-catastrophic-aftermath-of-south-coast-forever-fire/.

34. 34 Parliament of Australia, ‘COVID-19: A Chronology of State and Territory Government Announcements (up until 30 June 2020)’, accessed 21 October 2022, www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2021/Chronologies/COVID-19StateTerritoryGovernmentAnnouncements.

35. 35 ‘20 Years’ Worth of Water Overflows from Dam during Shoalhaven Floods’, ABC News, 11 August 2020, www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-11/shoalhaven-battered-by-wild-weather-worst-flood-in-30-years/12545262.

36. 36 Shoalhaven City Council, Shoalhaven 2027: Community Strategic Plan (Nowra: Shoalhaven City Council, n.d.), 13.

37. 37 As opposed to a more business-focused role in which museums and galleries are linked to ambitions associated with economic impact through tourism and might be positioned within corporate services, economic development or tourism or directorates. Watterson and Lawrenson, Communities and Culture, 30, 42.

38. 38 Coulston, interview.

39. 39 Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, [Home], accessed 11 August 2023, www.shoalhavenregionalgallery.com.au/Home.

40. 40 Coulston, interview.

41. 41 Danielle Robson, ‘Wonder + Dread Curatorial Essay’, Soda Arts | Curatorial Arts Consultancy (blog), 24 February 2021, sodaarts.com.au/blog-1/wonder-dread-curatorial-essay.

42. 42 Coulston, interview.

43. 43 Australia Council for the Arts, Discussion Paper: Arts, Creativity and Mental Wellbeing: Research, Practice and Lived Experience (Australia Council for the Arts, 2022), 4, australiacouncil.gov.au/advocacy-and-research/arts-creativity-and-mental-wellbeing-policy-development-program/.

44. 44 Ibid.

45. 45 ‘Wonder and Dread—Aunty Deidre Martin & Nicole Monks’, YouTube video, 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=On_LMF4sDMA.

46. 46 Exhibition text.

47. 47 ‘Manyana Artist Shines in Wonder + Dread, Revealing Incredible Weather Events across 200 Years’, Milton Ulladulla Times, 9 December 2020.

48. 48 ‘Fire:Ground with Artists Leanne Waterhouse and Penny Sadubin’, Humanitix, accessed 27 October 2022, events.humanitix.com/fire-ground.

49. 49 They were produced in collaboration with Indigenous knowledge holders and the Firesticks Alliance. See Australian Centre for Photography, Instagram page, accessed 29 December 2023, www.instagram.com/p/CHXATvKL4CI/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.

50. 50 Coulston, interview.

51. 51 Ibid.

52. 52 Stephanie Tierney, Caroline Potter, Kathryn Eccles, Oluwafunmi Akinyemi, Jordan Gorenberg, Sebastien Libert, Geoff Wong, Amadea Turk, Kerryn Husk, Helen J. Chatterjee, Emma Webster, Beth McDougall, Harriet Warburton, Lucy Shaw and Kamal R. Mahtani, ‘Social Prescribing for Older People and the Role of the Cultural Sector during the COVID‐19 Pandemic: What Are Link Workers’ Views and Experiences?’, Health & Social Care in the Community 30, no.6 (2022), doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13949; Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Mental Health Australia and Consumer Health Forum of Australia, ‘Federal Government Urged to Tackle Mental Health and Wellbeing Crisis by Investing in Social Prescribing’, Media Release, 20 October 2021, chf.org.au/media-releases/federal-government-urged-tackle-mental-health-and-wellbeing-crisis-investing-social.

53. 53 Shoalhaven City Council, Delivery Program Operational Plan. Quarterly Performance Report 2020–21 (October–December) (Nowra: Shoalhaven City Council, 2021), 16.

54. 54 Coulston, interview.

55. 55 Ibid.

56. 56 Museums & Galleries of NSW, ‘The Regenerate Project and Toolkit from Orange Regional Museum & Orange Regional Gallery’, 25 August 2020, mgnsw.org.au/articles/regenerate-project-toolkit/.

57. 57 Ibid.

58. 58 Coulston, interview.

59. 59 Ibid.; Shoalhaven City Council, Delivery Program Operational Plan. Quarterly Performance Report 2021–2022 (January–March) (Nowra: Shoalhaven City Council, 2022), 24.

60. 60 Robert R. Janes, ‘Museums in Perilous Times’, Museum Management and Curatorship 35, no. 6 (1 November 2020): 587–98, doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2020.1836998; Amy Levin, ‘“Isolation as a Collective Experience”: Museums’ First Responses to COVID-19’, Museum and Society 18, no. 3 (2020): 295–7, doi.org/10.29311/mas.v18i3.3608; Philip McDermott, Breda Friel and Roisin Doherty, ‘Museums and Responding to Crises Post COVID-19: Places of ‘Community Healing’, Museums, Crisis and Covid-19 (blog), 16 May 2021, www.ulster.ac.uk/museumscovid19/blog; Rabya Mughal, Linda Thomson, Norma Daykin and Jayanta Chatterjee, ‘Rapid Evidence Review of Community Engagement and Resources in the UK during the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Can Community Assets Redress Health Inequities?’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 7 (2022): 4086, doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19074086.

61. 61 Centre for the Future of Museums, TrendsWatch: Museums as Community Infrastructure (American Alliance of Museums, 2022), www.aam-us.org/programs/center-for-the-future-of-museums/trendswatch-museums-as-community-infrastructure-2022/.

62. 62 Museums Association, ‘Museums Change Lives Awards 2021’, accessed 2 June 2022, www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/museums-change-lives/awards-2021/; Morse, ‘The Social Role of Museums’.

63. 63 Connal James Lee and Sarah Jane Northcott, ‘Art for Health’s Sake: Community Art Galleries as Spaces for Well-Being Promotion through Connectedness’, Annals of Leisure Research 24, no. 3 (2021): 370, doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2020.1740602.

64. 64 Polly MacKenzie, The Social State: From Transactional to Relational Public Services (London: Demos, 2021), 15.

65. 65 Shoalhaven City Council, ‘Thrive Together Fair 2022’, accessed 11 October 2022, www.shoalhaven.nsw.gov.au/Council/News/Thrive-Together-Fair-2022.

66. 66 McShane and Coffey, ‘Rethinking Community Hubs’, 4.