Bound Together: Inside Ballarat Craft + Design Week

Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, a podcast for makers in business presented to you by Angela
Dalton and Renee Baker.
Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, Season 3, Episode 8. My name is Angela Dalton and of course
joining me as always is the lovely Renee Baker. How are you, Renee? Good. How are you? I’m tired.
I’m going to be honest. I’m tired, but I’m good. I’m good. I’ve had a busy few weeks. Yeah,
we’re back.
patient and understanding with us as we took another little postponement in our schedule initially
the schedule would have been that this episode would have been recorded before i even started the
Ballarat craft and design week activities because we had a sick week everything blew off so
apologies but thank you for being patient and understanding it is just us we probably do need to
find it different start for the episode of you being extremely busy because I feel like for eight
episodes that’s been your your opener for the week but rightly so because we’ve touched on it and
if you’ve been listening along to every episode of this season and in fact all seasons you’ll be
aware that this year Angela has been involved heavily in the inaugural Ballarat Craft and Design
Week which has just wrapped up and so we thought that this episode is much like we had our bonus
episodes for craft lab last year we thought that this episode could work as just a little bit of an
episode where we talk about ballarat craft and design week because it has been so all-consuming
for you in particular over the past six months and i know that we have listeners who are if not
involved in the process themselves have been also interested and curious and just participating
from an audience perspective so if you’re not interested in that here’s your warning that that’s
what our episode is about
I’d love to get started just for those of you who aren’t across it or if this is your first
episode, if Angela you could just give us a little overview because I mentioned Craft Lab,
mentioned a few things. How does this all connect? What is Ballarat Craft and Design Week and what
is your involvement in it? My involvement in it has been since 2024.
I started as the support curator working with Amelia James and Craft Lab was very much.
the event that Creative City team at the City of Ballarat created to reinforce and promote Ballarat
as a UNESCO Creative City of Craft and Folk Art, which it was designated as in 2019.
This is about maintaining and supporting the sector who participate in that particular practice.
craft and folk art craft lab was originally a sector development program first and foremost
professionally developed the creative community further in their practice when it comes to their
goals in the art sector or commercially it’s been a really enjoyable thing to be part of I’ve been
involved in curating the internal exhibition at the two final craft labs as it turns out and in my
final year there I was the project manager and the curator for the entire event so I was
essentially responsible for the 18 practitioners in the alcoves curating and setting up the entire
central exhibition which is over 40 artists curating and managing the event for the great takeaway
and so on and that was the final craft lab in 2025. Creative City team headed by Tara Poole have
decided to shift the program into something different. This year,
Tara decided that that was going to be Ballarat Craft and Design Week. Concept was changed to be
more heavily invested in the professional development program side, therefore working with a
smaller group of people and having them collaborate on a project. in pairs or groups,
create something new. It was very much about encouraging these collaborators,
some of whom had never met each other, into how to work on this project together. And my role in
that was the management of that professional development program and the delivery. I have hosted
the cohort. the selected cohort this year I’ve done some training and workshops and mentoring and
created a lot of resources to support them through the process in some cases meeting one another to
installing the work and participating in the event which you know the finale event of that whole
professional development program has been presented as an exhibition called Bound.
I’m actually just flicking through, as you’ve been speaking, I’ve just been flicking through photos
of that exhibition as my backdrop. And I actually feel like we should pop a little gallery of these
images on our website to go with that because you’ve taken some really beautiful photos. Yeah, tell
us about the exhibition because I think, you know, I would love to go back if we do have time and
chat a little bit more about the professional development and maybe explore some of the more common
themes and questions that popped up with your practitioners. Tell us about the exhibition and how
that looked and worked. because I feel like I know the mining exchange as a space and I’ve seen it
for Craft Lab and I know that it also operates for markets. And I also saw photographs of the
exhibition that Morag Myerscough installed in Space Sunnyside. We also covered on the podcast if you
wanted to go back for another bonus episode, which was very colourful and bright, but just one
artist’s work. So I’d be really curious to know how collaborators and artists utilise the space,
how it all works. kind of came together if you can absolutely the cohort that was selected we had
four pairs of people and one trio so that was a total of 11 people ultimately that would be
therefore creating five installations of work there was goals that we wanted them to hit want them
to create a sense of awe in that space the mining exchange as you’ve pointed out is a pretty
special venue and it can have a cathedral vibe to it or it can feel like a hall or it can feel like
a museum it’s a very distinctive space this year thankfully in many ways i didn’t have to be the
person installing the work or installing the infrastructure behind the event itself.
That was the job of the exhibition lead, who is Justin Weyers of Picture Thinking.
He was kind of like an additional collaborator to each of the groups in that he was aiding and
facilitating their… installations to come to fruition from creating it and building it or
designing it to putting it together in the space so each of the cohorts were then developing their
concepts creatively with one another and building them all in this very brief period of time the
way that it was put together this year instead of there being 18 people in the alcoves
demonstrating it was very much set up like an exhibition space so you were guided through a series
of spaces in a semi kind of labyrinth feel i suppose a bit of a zigzag through the space into each
of those collaborators exhibits which had its own infrastructure requirements media etc from
electricity to you know ceramics to all of the the sorts of things involved in each of those
exhibitions all of them very much the results that each of the personalities brought to them and
that was one of the points I think that I brought up early and and something that Tara and I agreed
on early on in the piece was the point of the collaboration was to make sure we could see flavours
of each artist’s voice in the outcomes so that it wasn’t that someone was doing this and then this
person was just adding that or someone was creating x and you know i’m just going to adorn it with
y you know we wanted there to be the creation that kind of blended in some way it didn’t have to be
literal but we did want there to be a sense of in each thing that came out of it or each product
that came out of it there needed to be a sense of every single voice was somehow coming through and
yeah they definitely succeeded i’m continuously amazed at the things that artists can do under
pressure yeah all the while doubting themselves every single moment yeah isn’t that a trick yeah
and yet here i am on the other side unfortunately i didn’t get there i did think i might have been
able to this year but didn’t quite manage that unfortunately but i have been like i said looking
through photographs and yeah you would feel like these artists and collaborators have been working
together their whole creative practice like it’s just so rich and the depth of the work is quite
fascinating the thing that I guess I would like to know a little bit more about as well while we’re
talking about the exhibition is the theme bound and the title of the show as well is that because
everyone needed to have like a textile element or was it about fabric or weaving or is that just a
loose thread that they had to work with how did that kind of link through because i know each year
there has been themes with craft lab and that’s been something that i’ve always found really
interesting how that’s interpreted yeah this exhibition was themed and in fact craft and design
week itself was themed bound yeah and it was very much about all of the meanings that the word can
have from woven textiles through to collaboration and the bind that happens during that process and
bound to place being Ballarat there was a lot of different interpretations that were reflected in
the choice of the word bound as the theme as i understand it because of course that was the choice
of Tara who is the creative director and producer of the entire event through the city of Ballarat
creative city team so there was an emphasis on textile yeah because we We hadn’t seen a lot of
textile included in previous years and we wanted to highlight textiles and we both had a bit of a
hankering for it. Yeah, it is a hard one to highlight. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do and
we both knew that already. You know, displaying textiles and clothing and all of those things is
inherently difficult. It’s already a challenge when it comes to exhibitions.
spotlighting the craft behind textile creation or clothing obviously we’ve all been to a lot of
exhibitions where you walk around and there’s just mannequin after mannequin and we’re used to that
and that’s okay but you think about what else has been going on in the space at the time because
otherwise it’s well it’s like a shop precisely like a department store it reeks of yeah old style
david jones visual merchandising that is not what we had definitely not what happened in the space
No, it all came together. We had a preview evening on the 1st of May,
which was sold out. We opened the doors and just started watching everyone’s jaws drop,
which is kind of the thing that I always look forward to, I think the most. The awe. The awe,
exactly. The moment that people can get the full impact of the unbelievable amount of hard work
that the artists have put into this whole process. made that happen and put it in this space for
them to enjoy. The mayor came, we had Aunty Joy Oldaker did a Welcome to Country, which was very
moving. The exhibition itself has ended up in these five mini installations of,
as I said, awe-inspiring work. Yeah, and I don’t think I was expecting that scale of installation.
Obviously, you and I have had conversations about it, given your own. involvement i guess i don’t
know what i was expecting but it certainly impressed me from afar so i can only imagine how it must
feel to be immersed in that work when you’re in the space i was trying to decide if i had a
favorite because i know you’re probably not allowed to have favourites i actually don’t though as
well i know it’s hard to pick yeah they’re all so good all of them are exceptionally good and i
kind of so fond of All of them, and I know how hard all of them have worked. You know, the stories
behind some of them, for example, Tiffany and Jane, who have created a work called Cucoloris,
which is a word that describes the light that a shadow creates in movement,
like it’s a moving shadow. Their work is inspired by their friendship,
essentially. They often go for moonwalks together, not as in the breakdance style.
They walk. under moonlight they live in a more rural part of regional Victoria and close by to one
another and they can often just sort of say hey up for a walk through the bush sort of thing
together they have a very close friendship where they discuss you know life and everything that
that happens to them as as women and artists and they have been working together for a long time
Jayne used to be a photographer who took photos of tiffany’s artworks tiffany is i would say
accomplished artist who works predominantly in charcoals and in a variety of media as well Jayne
who’s a photographer is now a weaver usually salary style weaving and they’ve created this work
that has 24 meters of weaving in it and is backdrop by tiffany’s drawings and you feel like you’re
in the forest in the moonlight and it is just so well done it’s got a moving light in it so that
you do have that sense of breeze and and moonlight coming through the space they’ve also designed a
really large kind of lamp so part of the challenge if they felt they could meet it was to try and
potentially design something that they could make commercially if the collaboration wanted to go to
the next level wow This pair of amazing women have also created this beautiful large lamp that also
kind of rotates and moves beautifully. So, yeah, that’s one. Is that the one that has the,
you’ve got a close-up photograph of, it almost looks like denim with black. I don’t know if that’s
what it is. Well, she did definitely use denim through the weave. So that’s where you’ll see some
of that. She’s upcycled a lot of jeans. that there’s also a red thread through everything which is
part of a deeper story the red thread which is a beautiful and very personal story to both of them
it’s just one of those collaborations where because it’s been born of friendship it has a huge
heart to it Yeah, it’s very magical, that one. Yeah, that sounds amazing. I would love to go into
that level of detail for everyone. I think for the sake of our podcast, we might move on to a
little bit of conversation around the professional development element. There was a series of
workshops and mentoring sessions that you had with the practitioners. And obviously, while I can’t
go into anything that was confidential through those sessions, one thing I was wondering was,
given you were working with 11 people in those five groups on such a unique large project did you
notice there was any questions that were being asked or themes that were coming up through that
training and mentorship that was reoccurring I guess is what I’m asking like a frequently asked
questions I suppose if you are about to undertake a big project or if there’s something similar
that you’re working on this information might be helpful as well yeah I think in terms of common
questions in the group because they’re also different. They practice in different media to start
with in many cases. The creative collaboration questions that came up a lot about how to blend each
other’s practices together and how that might look, who might do what,
as it were, and how that will manifest. We worked on themes.
That was something I strongly encouraged to do early, work on themes and goals and really high
-level project stuff because in my experience. making those decisions early on allows you to you
know have shortcuts later on when time is more of a pressure so that you’ve got these themes to
rely on to help you make the decisions quickly whether that’s color whether that’s a word you know
whatever that might be that was i think a common thing in the early stages and i think the common
things were very much related to the phases of the project as opposed to necessarily commonalities
in practice or commonalities in challenges the questions reflected the stages of the project that
we were at often the questions also came as a result of one of the workshops that we would host we
also had a day where some practitioners had chosen to pitch either the product or an exhibition or
what they’re doing for Ballarat craft and design week to panel of people who will provide feedback
in craft Victoria so so i did help them with that side of things as well what i hope they get out
of the program is a clearer understanding of their voice particularly when it comes to
juxtaposition or or you know comparison to someone else i mean they all will have learned whether i
was there or not how to work in a collaboration i just hope that i provided them with the right
sort of information resources to do that successfully it doesn’t stop things being difficult just
because someone told you they were going to be you know yeah so what i’m finding i’m getting a lot
of questions about now at this stage is what’s next so how do i approach other galleries or
organisations if you know potentially about buying this installation because it would look great in
a foyer for example or how do i sell this work to another gallery or can i take this on tour down
to what do you think the right price might be to either hire this out to someone or if i’m going to
sell this item if i’m going to get this produced what would that look like what sort of things will
i need to put in place to ensure i can do that you know how much work is involved all of those
sorts of things yeah through to asking things about whether or not it’s appropriate to invite
gallerists to you know the exhibition obviously i’m very encouraging you know i’m shameless self
-promotion is what i believe is the right thing to do if you really want to get get out there it’s
not necessarily everyone’s natural position though well i would expect that advice to be no less
than that because I was nodding my head thinking I’m so glad to hear that that’s what’s being asked
because I think what can happen particularly in something that is so big and significant like an
event like this is that and I’m certainly not saying that anyone in the in the exhibition has done
this but there is an element of like oh well like It’s just going to therefore naturally happen
next. You know, the next thing is just going to come and it’s just going to happen organically. One
thing that I think is so important to do is to actually recognise these things as opportunities to
tell a story about yourself and to use that to further promote yourself. So the idea of people,
say, for example, pitching it to a hotel like a… luxury hotel that might want a really elaborate
installation in their foyer how do you go about that you know well someone off the street’s not
going to be able to do that but somebody who has just been in you know a really big event can use
that as a portfolio piece and so i think to be thinking that way is a really wise thing to do so
i’m glad to hear it oh yeah they absolutely are they’re all incredibly talented at what they do and
well i hope what they’re understanding is that this is uh way for them to show what they’re capable
of in an opportunity it has scale where that’s not always available to people some of these things
are massive the under the stars exhibit which is Jordy Bos, Kerith Holmes and Jessica Larm that’s
the trio their work is inspired by the variety of immigrants that were involved in the eureka
stockade very much through a Nordic lens since all three of them have ancestry in Scandinavia and
Northern Europe. So theirs is a much more crisp and sombre but beautiful,
elegant installation. And it has great meaning for a lot of people because of the connection to
Eureka, particularly obviously in Ballarat. it’s spectacular and so simple that could move around
like you could you could have that as a little mini exhibition in a variety of places because even
though it’s large it’s light you know they can pack it down that was actually one that did come to
mind that’s funny you say that i mean it’s a huge congratulations to all of the practitioners
involved in this event I imagine this must be feeling all sorts of things you know particularly as
it comes to a clothes there’s probably some mixed emotions and fantastic to have been able to
collaborate that did remind me I did have one more question about that having witnessed this as
like a front row seat and seeing them from the very beginning to like you say some people hadn’t
even met who now which I imagine everyone’s incredibly bonded would you say or can you identify and
you can say one or you can say more, one benefit of working in a collaboration? It’s a great
question and it’s kind of one of the reasons behind choosing collaborations in the first place was
that We don’t exist in a vacuum and whilst in many cases,
especially in Ballarat, we’re sole practitioners. We like to be at home in our own bubble,
I guess, of creativity, whether that’s sitting at a wheel or whether that’s sitting in a sewing
machine or sitting in an easel. They’re very solo activities in general.
Is that why everyone’s so happy?
That’s why we’re the 16th happiest city in the world. The thing that I think we saw when people
were put very much out of their comfort zone is an evolution that occurs because there’s a catalyst
that creates friction and a problem to be solved between two creative people.
The benefit of therefore being in that collaboration or any collaboration. And a lot of the
learnings I shared with them was 10 years of being in one with you. True. That you can make each
other better. You can actually create something that’s bigger than the sum of your parts when you
do this thing well. If it’s given the right energy, the right level of open mindedness,
curiosity, lack of ego, a grasp of reality and being confident and comfortable.
being honest with one another you can not only learn a lot you can also make something that’s
better than either of you could do alone ultimately from my perspective that’s what I believe
collaborations have to offer anyone who’s creative or even just in business I just think there’s as
much as I do like doing work alone as well I think that there is also a lot to be learned but
sometimes there’s just this better output and I think Sometimes we do benefit from just having
someone else going through this with us, let alone producing something together. It just requires a
stretching of your self growth and the discomfort that comes with that,
but also the enjoyment that comes with that. Wow. That is very. true and very cool to hear i did
want to take the opportunity as a segue to give a little bit of a side note shout out to the infuse
art prize which is currently taking applications and closes on the 14th of june 2026 and that is an
art prize an exhibition that’s taking place at ross creek gallery later in the year in whole month
of august also centres around collaboration artists submit an application that is their
collaboration. It’s small work, so it’s very, very different in that the works can’t be any bigger
than 70 by 70 centimetres, either 3D or 2D forms, and they can be any medium.
And I just thought if this conversation inspired you to spark up a collaboration,
I know there’s probably only a couple of weeks now to maybe get a concept together. If that’s
something that you feel like you want to be involved in, check out the criteria on the Ross Creek
Gallery website. That is a gallery that’s based… out of Ballarat in Smyth’s Creek and that’s run
and managed by the incredible ceramicist Ruby Pilvin and her mum who’s also a ceramicist Janine.
Check out Infuse Art Prize and even if you’re not going to collaborate pop it in the diary for
August because I feel like that will also be a fantastic exhibition to check out for exactly those
reasons that you’ve said. You know I think when people work together as well it’s just you do get
pushed and pulled and I do feel like there’s a certain magic and spark that can happen. yes to
sound cliche but it’s true if you want more information for that we’ll pop a link in the show notes
as well but it’s rosscreekgallery.com.au and there’s a link to the infuse art prize i do also
before we move on to the next segment want to shout out to all of the other practitioners to
spencer harrison nick doran adams and their incredible glass lights to minna graham and bernadette
aitken and their unbelievable volume of collaborative nature-based products that they’ve created
together and of course Dearne and jude who have reinterpreted the three-piece suit with all off
cuts materials that already existed and produce this amazing textile outcome of course also big
shout out to the exit retail space managed by ballarat clay collective they have done an incredible
job curating and managing the shop for everyone who is involved and of course also to the team tara
jesse and justin thanks to all of you
This week I finished watching season two of Daredevil Born Again.
How did you find the time? Late nights. Yeah, late nights, but also this one was dropped once a
week. Oh, yeah. So I couldn’t. sit and just indulge in it have been drip fed this whole season i
actually at the beginning decided i was like no i’m just gonna wait i’ll wait and i’ll watch all of
it after craft week i’ll save it because it is i have to say one of my favourite shows at the moment
in terms of recent productions and recent releases it’s the i don’t want to say reboot it’s the
continuation but a little bit later of the daredevil series originally created on netflix because
it’s a marvel it was ages ago so it was i think think nearly 10 years ago if not 10 years ago i
haven’t done any fact checking there was originally three seasons of daredevil that were produced
by netflix after that disney bought marvel and shortly after all of the previously produced netflix
series were transferred to disney i mean the fans have always loved daredevil yeah in that marvel
universe and it’s part of the i guess it was the first one that Netflix did that was part of the
introduction of Marvel comics in the adult side of things because there are more serious comics in
Marvel, more like graphic novels, I guess. I’m not sure what makes one or the other. Yeah, I’ve
never known either. My introduction to Daredevil was much earlier in my life when Ben Affleck and
Jennifer Garner made that movie. That was before, I guess, the current phase of Marvel
regeneration. Anyway, Daredevil was the first of those more adult Marvel shows, Jessica Jones and
Luke Cage. and The Punisher and this is that universe of Marvel where it’s brutal and they’re
swearing and it’s not something that you would want your kids to watch.
It’s not Spider-Man. It’s not Spider-Man. It’s not DC anyway. No, Spider-Man is Marvel.
It is. And several years after it’s finished on Netflix and been… bought by disney disney have
now rebooted it as daredevil born again and it is the second season of that sort of regeneration
executive produced by the two stars who have been in it from season one season one netflix original
netflix season one yeah so they’re kind of yes it is the same people starring in it yeah and it is
very much the same world same universe everything sort of continues on except that yeah it’s being
executive produced by the two key stars of it as well which is very common now and i think a wise
thing to do i mean why wouldn’t you invest in your own career like how with harry potter the movies
where they kept changing directors and then so the sets would look completely different no it’s
like very much continued on yeah because the comics or the series themselves evolve yeah anyway
yeah because it’s a continuing story i guess there’s a there’s a thread of what actually occurs
their arc you feel like their story arc continues but i think there’s a lot of additional license
involved but it is believably a continuation of that that same world yeah charlie cox is the star
of the show he is matt murdoch aka daredevil you cannot ask for a better actor to be in that role
you actually can’t imagine anyone else being that character which is one of the ultimate
compliments that you can receive as an actor vincent d’onofrio likewise as kingpin or wilson fiske
who in this last season is the mayor of new york there’s a great deal of parallel in the fascist
storyline that kind of underpins this particular season. There’s a lot of things going on
politically, but ultimately it’s just such an epic, well-produced, cinematic,
well-acted series with amazing stunts as well. And you know me,
I always love it. looking at some stunt choreography this is a series that takes that very very
seriously and yeah vincent d’onofrio as kingpin is honestly one of the scariest villains you’ve
ever encountered but it’s a it’s it’s a really good show it also stars deborah ann wall who you
would know as jessica the baby vampire of bills in true blood
Wow. Yeah, she’s, I guess, the lead female role. She’s just got this same kind of presence,
I guess, she had as Jessica, which was that fierce femininity, delicate vulnerability,
but also this unbelievable strength, attributes, I think, that she brings to this character.
Yeah, she’s incredible. It’s a great series. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch Daredevil, but maybe I
will. But I will say, as a side note, I have been kind of liking the weekly drops. I think we gave
it a bit of shit last. a few weeks ago i feel like we did talk about weekly drops yeah we did and
if we didn’t we talked in person in private off air um but i’ve been watching um and i’m not gonna
go into too much i will save it for when i finish but i’ve been watching margot’s got money
troubles which is on apple tv and it’s based off a book that i read i didn’t realize it was
dropping weekly because when i started it i think there was about three episodes there so i sort of
you know maybe watched two in a row and then next time realized it had run out and so now i’m into
the you know i’m on the weekly drop but i’m actually kind of liking it because it’s giving me um
anchor in my week of something to look forward to like oh it’s you know coming to wednesday again i
get to watch another episode although now gruen’s come back so now my wednesdays are too busy
it’s true and you know i actually grew up with that feeling i know that’s what i thought until i
was in my 30s yeah well mine was still probably not to my 20s that i didn’t didn’t really buy the
whole series if you wanted to watch it yeah netflix wasn’t a long time after that so yeah anyway it
was i’m actually i’ve come around bring it back bring back drops yeah i think you’re right i think
there is something to be said for having one piece of dark chocolate instead of a whole block of
you know milky way thank you for joining us this week As we mentioned, this is the season finale
for season three. Thank you so much for listening. It means a lot to us and we really appreciate
the fact that you are still here and still listening to not only this episode, but this podcast and
this season. And I don’t know when the next season is either. No, we don’t, but there will be one.
We definitely will be one. And yeah, we’ll try and get back as quick as we can.
But we’ve absolutely loved it. I know I have. Well, thank you for joining us. We’ll be back soon.
Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Make Good Things Happen. If you enjoyed this episode,
why not write a review or share it with a friend? For show notes and more, head to mgth.com.au.
This has been a D’Alton Baker production.

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