Creative campaign airs experiences of perseverance

DESIGNED to outlive crisis messaging, Be Kind – Be Creative is City of Ballarat’s cultural response to life in the lockdown era.

Creative City coordinator, Tara Poole said council recognised residents are understandably frightened, but if they had avenues to artistically respond to life during the pandemic, through storytelling, studio tours, a couch choir, podcasts, visual art, workshops and online video broadcasts, they would benefit.

“We’re going to be looking back on this period in a year’s time, five years, ten years from now… We’ll wonder how we responded, so we need to document it in a healthy way and provide some context as to what people are going through,” she said.

“We want to harness creativity and give people a voice, because sometimes it feels like communication is one sided and we’re being told to do a lot of things.

“There’s an opportunity for the community to vent their frustrations, speak their mind, write a piece of poetry… Whatever it is, we want to capture it.”

Ms Poole said “two-way creativity” is important to ensure council isn’t just pumping out their own content, but Ballarat is truly seen and heard.

An example of this within the campaign is podcast series, A Week in the Life of Ballarat. The Creative City team is bringing together a strong editorial and production team to put high quality, professional episodes together.

The series is designed to be a “release valve.”

“We’ll be giving out weekly challenges and instructions for eight weeks. The challenge might be to take your phone out into the back garden to record sounds, or to tell us what was hard to achieve today which would have been simple before the pandemic,” Ms Poole said.

“The community can respond to the challenges, we’ll cut and edit them down, and they can hear themselves reflected in the content. It’s a controlled environment for people to articulate the frustrations we’re all feeling, collecting their hopes, creativity and emotions.”

To maintain continuity, the podcast will look at how different parts of the city are getting on, and the places that are keeping business as usual. Local cultural communities, that might not always be heard, will also be commissioned to express their experiences.

“This is a chance for people to release their human side. It allows community leaders to deliver a real message without it being hollow,” Ms Poole said.