You Are Here is a Canberra based, independent arts organisation dedicated to supporting artists in developing their practice and fostering critical community.
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Our purpose
Foster critical community, nurture artist development.
Deeply embedded within the community, You Are Here aims to nurture the development of Canberra artists. You Are Here is constantly becoming; never finished or polished; rather open and alive to the possibilities present in failure.
Our organisation is producer and artist-led. We believe in tangible support for artists, and inclusivity and accessibility for artists and audiences. We believe in opening out and challenging the definition of art, and blurring boundaries between art forms. We keep barriers to entry low with collaborative and engaging experiences for artists and audiences.
What we do
We’ve become more than a festival.
We are:
An artist and producer development program
That means that we help Canberra artists to develop their artistic practice, skills, relationships, values, audiences and opportunities. We work with artists from all artforms who are engaged with some form of experimentation. We also work with emerging creative producers, and train them in You Are Here’s unique model of producer engagement.
An artist’s residency
Our core activity is an 8-month program called Cahoots. We select a diverse group of Canberra artists and/or producers (8 per year), and create a bespoke development experience for each of them. We identify a way to measure the development of their practice in a way that makes sense for them, and then we work alongside them to make sure that development happens. Cahoots artists are selected through an open public callout at the start of each year.
A critical community of artists
Canberra artists have told us the thing they want the most is to be part of an artistic community that is supportive, critically engaged, and intellectually rigorous. A place where their own artistic practice is forced to develop against a high standard, where they feel safe to experiment and take creative risks. Cahoots aims to model this kind of environment on a small scale, so that it can be ultimately achieved in the Canberra arts community as a whole.
A value-driven organisation
You Are Here has a strong set of guiding principles that drives what we do, what we won’t do and where to focus our efforts. These are driven by our primary values – accessibility and inclusion for artists and audiences, relationship-building as the core of best practice, and experimentation as an essential societal and artistic need. Any working model we create for artists and audiences is based around these values.
An arts and events presenter
The secondary activity of You Are Here is to connect experimental artists with audiences. We produce an annual season of arts events that represent the shared ideas and values of our Cahoots artists and the creative communities that they are a part of. Cahoots Lab takes place over the last three weekends of September. We exclusively present work that is in development by Cahoots artists and their collaborators.
A peak body for experimental and innovative arts in the ACT
Across ten years of operation we have developed unique expertise in the areas of artistic production and innovation, across all artforms. Our models for connecting general and specific audiences to innovative and exciting arts activity are the equal of any in Australia. Our staff and board are experts in the many nuanced details and mechanics that make up high quality arts production.
Who we are
Our organisation is producer and artist-led.
Staff
(they/them)
Ketura begins their fourth year with You Are Here in 2022. They are an arts administrator with over a decade of experience. They have worked as a stage and production manager for independent theatre companies around Australia and are highly experienced in event management. They have worked for Canberra based arts organisations as a creative producer or event manager including Ainslie Gorman Arts Centre, Dionysus (Art, Not Apart) and Little Dove. Ketura was the Front of House Manager at The Street Theatre, and an events manager on the Haig Park Experiments. Ketura is also the Creative Producer for CLUBSCORE, a Canberra based queer art and sport collective. Ketura is a performer and director, has studied performance with Perform Australia and holds a Diploma in Live Production from Melbourne Polytechnic. Ketura is the Deputy Chair of the Minister’s Creative Council.
(any/all)
Former You Are Here President
Nick Delatovic is a creative producer and interdisciplinary artist from the ACT.
Nick has served as a creative producer for You Are Here since 2011, and in this time has produced hundreds of art events across dozens of different artforms. He has also worked in an artist development/ creative producer role for Screen ACT and Noted Festival. Nick is an alumni of The Street Theatre’s Hive program for emerging writers and has acted as a writer, producer and performer on multiple national and international touring works. He has been active as a musician and bandleader in the ACT music scene since 2002.
Board
(She/her)
Vanessa Wright is a creative producer based in the NT with experience in multi-arts festivals and grass roots creative spaces. Vanessa has worked nationally for organisations including Melbourne Fringe Festival, Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art, Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres and is currently the Senior Producer at Darwin Festival. Vanessa has previously participated in Next Wave’s Kickstart Helix program and is an Australian member of the Asian Producers Platform. She started her producing career at You Are Here Festival in 2011, and was a co-director from 2013-2016. She has been a member of the You Are Here Board since 2016.
(they/them)
Morgan is a producer of many things – video games, arts festivals, and creative arts projects. They have worked as a Producer for Crack Theatre Festival (Newcastle, NSW, 2018-19) and You Are Here festival (Canberra, ACT, 2015-2017), and as a Creative Producer on a number of shows that have toured across Australia.
They are particularly interested in developing sustainable practice for artists and festivals, to avoid creative burnout and mitigate environmental impact. Currently based in Naarm (Melbourne, VIC), Morgan works as an Associate Producer on Gods Unchained, a digital trading card game.
(She/her)
Deb Cleland is an artist, a political adviser and a visiting fellow at the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance. Over the last 15 years, she has worked on various community boards and government committees, as well as in physical theatre, academia and conservation. On the You are Here board, Deb aims to bring her work on participatory democracy, justice, sustainability and social inclusion into arts governance.
Ordinary members
(She/her)
Alice Fleming is a creative producer in theatre and film. Her producing practice is focused primarily on community-engaged projects. She has extensive experience in touring performance work to international markets. For Australia’s Back to Back Theatre, she produced their first feature film SHADOW, created in collaboration with the ensemble of actors who are perceived to have intellectual disabilities. The project also undertook an ambitious internship initiative that nurtured 30 artists identifying as having a disability to work as paid placements across the entire production in all departments. She is currently co-designing a project in Berlin for the Humboldt Forum which will work with a group of young people over a five-year period modelled on previous projects commissioned by the London International Festival of Theatre which she co-designed.
(She/her)
Joanne is a Conservator and specialises in objects, photo, film and sound, time-based media, plastics and materials analysis. She is currently a Senior Conservator at the Australian War Memorial in Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. Prior to this, she worked in the Middle East for 15 years in Conservation and Art History. She completed degrees in Conservation Science, Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies, and Media Arts, and has a deep interest in experimental and contemporary art practice. She also currently sits on the ACT Historic Places Advisory Committee and is Secretary of the AMaGA Art, Craft and Design National Network.
(he/him)
Maarten is a lawyer, radio producer, DJ and event organiser, with experience in running not-for-profit organisations and being an artist. A litigation lawyer with some 20 year’s experience, Maarten has transformed his legal practice from predominantly dispute resolution matters into providing advice to musicians and the music industry (record companies, festivals, and the like) over the last 10 years. Maarten runs a radio program, Liquid Sunshine, which was first broadcasted here in Canberra on Artsound FM and then 2XX FM. Liquid Sunshine show now broadcasts on The Face Radio in Brooklyn, NYC to a significant local and worldwide audience.
You Are Here is supported by the ACT Government through artsACT.