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APAX 2024: Sessions on Demand

 

Over 450 delegates including many new faces came together in Naarm/Melbourne and Geelong from 19-23 August for APAX 2024: a week of connection, provocation, reflection and future thinking. The combination of bold provocations and collegial connections united attendees in a way that can only happen when you’re in the same space, building understanding and support for one another’s contexts.

Scroll down to watch key sessions from the conference program, including:

  • Opening Address: Daniel Riley
  • See The Whole
  • Plenary – Peter Tullin
  • Breakout – The Compelling Employment Offer, Advisory Board for the Arts
  • Breakout – What I Wish I Knew Before We Started
  • The Age of the Audience
  • APAX Closing, including Jo Dyer’s Thinker-In-Residence closing remarks

Daniel Riley, Wiradjuri man from Western NSW and Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre (ADT), will deliver the APAX 2024 Conference Opening Address.

Following his extraordinary contribution to the Transformative Leadership panel at the recent Perth ISPA Congress, Daniel’s keynote will focus on the future of arts leadership based on his roles at Australian Dance Theatre and as co-convenor of the recent Blak Futures gathering.

This recording also includes a Welcome to Country and an introduction to Jo Dyer, our APAX 2024 Thinker-In-Residence.

A systems-thinking approach for complex performing arts organisations.

Think of your organisation or community as a living, breathing “system”. It’s complex, multifaceted and dynamic. Within your system, you are faced with a range of different and challenging problems.

How can you best understand the complexity of your context, operate within uncertainty and make the best decisions to solve your problems, while also taking care of the health of your people and entire system? It can be a lot to hold and lead.

Shona Erskine and Katt Osborne have undertaken a pilot project in WA to apply a well-documented and data-driven social-ecological systems thinking framework to assist leaders answer this question. Called a ‘Resilience Assessment’, the framework is designed to help you address complex problems and address the health of your system.

Shona Erskine and Katt Osborne are AFOCAL – a new consultancy that has been funded to undertake this initial research project by Creative Australia and WA’s Department of Local Government, Sport and Creative Industries.

Immersive cultural experiences have exploded onto the scene. A new wave of creative entrepreneurs, technological innovation and changes in consumer behaviours are combining to supercharge the growth of immersive entertainment, spawning a whole new industry.

Creative Entrepreneurs are also trying a myriad of combinations of different immersive ingredients to create an ever more varied menu of options for an ever growing number of experience seekers.

In this session, Peter Tullin (REMIX) takes us through how immersive experiences are reshaping the arts and cultural landscape and sets the scene for the final day of APAX…

What does the Australian performing arts workforce value from their employers? What compels them to work for your organisation… and what compels them to stay?

In 2024, the Advisory Board for the Arts and PAC Australia have partnered to roll out The Compelling Employment Offer study in Australia. In a dedicated session at APAX, the results were revealed; this breakout session dives even deeper into the data and what these findings can teach us.

We’ll review:

  • Where do we actually need to start investing in staff retention? It may not be where we think.
  • Do managers perceptions of what matters to their staff match what staff actually prioritise and value?
  • How do  those priorities and values change across departments/job roles, age, type of organisation and location?

And much more invaluable information for leaders looking to build strong teams and address workforce shortages.

Our speakers have been there, done that, when it comes to working on the inside of venue developments and new builds.

More than feasibility studies and masterplans, in this session they’ll discuss how they navigated the relationships and commitments between architect, theatre consultant and government. Crucial collegial intelligence for anyone embarking on this process, or interested in what it these projects look like on the inside.

Speakers include: Bec Cole (Footscray Community Arts), Rachel Healy, Shayne Price (Creative Whitehorse) and Craig Gamble (Setting Line Theatre Consulting).

We’re tackling big shifts in audiences and programming. In an environment of rising costs to produce and present, and rapidly reducing discretionary spending, how do we balance great art and generating ticket revenue. They may not be mutually exclusive, but is our programming keeping up with where our audiences are at?

And in an environment where government funding no longer provides the same level of immunity to financial risk, how do we build greater commercial value in programming to help subsidise the rest?

Speakers include: Fiona Allan (Opera Australia), Angela Flynn (ILBIJERRI Theatre Company), Peter Tullin (REMIX) and Georgia Hendy (Darwin Entertainment Centre).

APAX 2024 closing remarks, including an address by APAX Thinker-in-Residence Jo Dyer.