Mission Statement

Darwin Community Arts enriches and inspires Darwin by facilitating arts and cultural development that reflects and celebrates our communities’ diversity and creativity. We do this by:

• Advocating for and supporting emerging and multi-arts projects;
• Empowering artists and communities and facilitating connections between them;
• Providing opportunities and spaces that enable skill sharing, experimentation and the development of excellence.
  

Background

Darwin Community Arts Inc is the new name of Brown's Mart Community Arts Inc, adopted by the Association's Annual General Meeting in April 2008. The change in name officially represents the change in direction of the Association towards grassroots arts development, specifically working at the neighbourhood level, which was set out in the Reinvention Plan of 2007. The change in name also seeks to remove any confusion or ambiguity about what the Association is about: it is about community arts in the Darwin region, not about a heritage building (Brown's Mart) in the City.

Darwin Community Arts (DCA) is a non-profit, incorporated Association that focuses on community-based arts and cultural development. It was established in the early 1970s as an outreach project of the Trustees of Brown's Mart, and originally named Brown's Mart Community Arts Project -- then simply Brown's Mart Community Arts (BMCA) in 1979 -- to resource the arts in Darwin. It was the first multi-arts developmental organisation in the City. Since then the sector has changed. There are now a number of art-specific production companies and service organisations, many of which were spawned by the then-BMCA.

BMCA was synonymous in Darwin with two areas of work: firstly, a diverse range of productions and projects currently encompassing the Darwin Fringe Festival, A Fist Full of Films short film festival, the Bamboo Lounge which showcases new artists and partnerships, and projects developing arts within the multicultural, Indigenous and disabled communities; and secondly the actual Brown’s Mart theatre, a venue consisting of an intimate theatre and associated spaces used for performances, workshops, gallery showings and other purposes.

Throughout its existence, BMCA has lived with the tension of being both a service organisation and a production house. This tension is one reason for inconsistencies in stakeholder perceptions regarding the role of the organisation. Other issues contributing to a climate of vulnerability and uncertainty that have affected Brown's Mart historically were differences in understanding of the term “community arts”, confusion about the function of the venue and the reach of the organisation, structural changes to the sector, and the enormously diverse – perhaps disjointed – range of projects and audiences.

Reinvention 2007

BMCA decided to resolve the long-standing tensions and confusions regarding its role in Darwin by adopting a plan for Reinvention through new directions and corresponding new priorities and ways of working. The Renvention Program for 2007 was launched officially by the Hon Marion Scrymgour MLA, Minister for the Arts, on 23 February, at Brown's Mart Theatre.

The launch celebrated BMCA's significant contributions to arts development in Darwin over three decades, including the incubation of arts organisations such as Corrugated Iron Youth Arts and Tracks.

Bong Ramilo, BMCA Executive Officer, highlighted new directions and priorities for 2007 during the launch:

We will be working closely with the Trustees of Brown's Mart to enhance the venue so it becomes the best small venue for multi-arts activities in Darwin. We will continue to promote Brown's Mart as the centrepiece of an arts and heritage precint in the City that will be one of the highlights of the Darwin of the future.

We will continue working with communities we've worked with before; but we will also be working more and more locally with communities in Darwin's suburbs and neighbourhoods, fostering arts and cultural practice at the frontline, at the coalface, at the grassroots, wherever communities are.

We will promoting creative uses of popular and contemporary technologies along with tried and true ways of working. So we'll be creatively blogging, podcasting, you-tubing, and more.

And we will be asking everyone in Darwin to join us as members, to help direct Brown's Mart into the future, and to help make Darwin a place where art is everywhere and where art never stops.

After nearly eighteen months of reinvention activities, including clarifying the distinction between core grassroots arts development on the one hand and managing Brown's Mart Reserve on other, the Board decided it was time to mark the accomplishments of reinvention by changing the name of the Association. In April 2008, the Annual General Meeting resolved to change the name of the Association to Darwin Community Arts Inc.

Grassroots Arts Development

DCA will foster grassroots arts development vigorously; this lies at the core of our reinvention. Our Business Plan 2006-2008 (available from our web site) states that “stakeholders who felt clear about [our] role, including staff, the Board and the Trustees, define it as being about ‘grass roots’ arts development.”

The notion and practice of grassroots arts development, however, continues to be debated within DCA. This debate will be ongoing, in the same way that the debates on notions of “community,” “community arts,” and “community cultural development” continue. DCA welcomes contributions to the debate, particularly suggestions on how grassroots arts development can be realised in the Darwin region.