Creative Gathering – Change
It has been almost 10 years since Currency House published Lindy Hume’s Platform Paper The Restless Giant: Changing Cultural Values in Regional Australia in which she described regional creativity as the “stirrings of a restless giant: a rebellious counter-urban movement ready to make a profound impact on the national culture”. The acclaimed opera, theatre and festival director, joins us to discuss what has changed or evolved for arts and culture in regional Australia since then from her perspective as an artist living and working in regional NSW.
LINDY HUME
Lindy Hume is one of Australia’s leading directors, acknowledged internationally for fresh interpretations of a wide variety of repertoire and progressive artistic leadership of Australian arts organisations and festivals including Perth Festival, Sydney Festival, and more recently Four Winds Festival and Ten Days on the Island. Hume has led a total of twelve Australian international festivals spanning the period 2004-2023, her thoughtfully curated and welcoming programs leaving a substantial legacy of stellar global creations, bold and diverse new Australian works, projects fore-fronting contemporary First Nation cultures, progressive socially engaged practice and deep community connections in regional and urban centres across Australia.
Equally at home in opera, Lindy Hume has served as Artistic Director of four Australian opera companies and regularly creates new theatre and opera productions in Australia, NZ, Europe, US and the UK.
Lindy is well-known for creating popular and audience-friendly productions that are intelligent yet accessible, boldly theatrical and oriented toward feminist / humanist narratives. She has been a decades-long advocate for actively addressing gender bias, racial stereotyping and misogyny in opera, and a mentor for women in arts leadership.
Since 2005 Hume has chosen to live in regional Australia, and now travels between bases in Tathra on the Far South Coast of NSW and Port Sorell in the North of Tasmania. Her experience and deep interest in creative practice outside metropolitan centres inform her Currency House Platform Paper (2017) Restless Giant: Changing Cultural Values in Regional Australia and her recent PhD thesis A Bigger Picture: Toward a Landscape Oriented Creative Practice. Hume is recognised as one of Australia’s leading thinkers and writers on creative life in regional Australia.
