In the Beginning....

In the beginning there was Wynyard, a small rural seaside town. There came a dream to invigorate the town with a cultural hum. At the centre of this home was a small house that was to become the home for arts in the Wynyard community.

 Lets begin with a small story from the lady behind the idea, Michelle Walker:

"One of my passions is the arts. I wanted to find people to bounce off, explore ideas, talk to and gain inspiration from.

I live in a small coastal town in Tasmania Australia. The cultural life here was small and lacking.

I went to University and fell in love with the feeling you get being surrounded by others that were intently interested in creative endeavors. As the time got closer to finishing my studies i was aware that i would be outcast back to our community where i had no one to share these experiences with.

I set out to remedy this cultural desert by creating and founding a local community art centre where people could meet, talk, hold functions, exhibitions, create workshops.....whatever and however they choose.

Today the centre has been going for five years. We are run by a small committee that keeps the centres administration on track, creates its programs through out the year and tries to engage with the larger community regardless of their talents or abilities. We keep the programs at a level we can manage and remain open to programs that outside community members may want to operate.

We host exhibitions and openings in our gallery once a month with the assistance of exhibitions from Tasmanian Regional Arts and our in-house exhibition program.

My masters at Uni was based on our operation of this centre and i am happy to forward this info on to anyone that may be thinking of starting their own.

As for the future of this centre i have taken a step back from the management to try to let it stand on its own feet without my driving it all by myself....so far its looking good. Many new people have stepped into the committee and are really making the roles their own. Together as a group we really seem to be making a splash on the local community and we are expanding our membership base constantly.

 I do love seeing the centre growing and standing on its own two feet. We have many groups joining us and creating their programs under our umbrella and the hum of arts activity is steadily getting louder perhaps one day it will be a full scale racket." 

Stay tuned for more past stories and up-to-date detail on the working of the community arts centre.