Out of the Blue is an arts intervention strategy aimed at addressing recurring hardship experienced by young people (12-24) in rural and regional communities in northern NSW and the Illawarra, NSW. The project will use the arts to address the resulting disadvantage faced by them, including drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, violence and recidivist behaviour and disconnection from community.

Out of the Blue objectives are to:

• Increase participant skills to deal with personal crisis, bereavement and social isolation;
• Increase participant skills to deal with drug and alcohol misuse and other anti-social behaviours;
• Improve participant access to and awareness of support services;
• Increase skills development for leadership participation;
• Develop new leadership skills;
• Strengthen cultural identity, self efficacy and social inclusion;
• Increase collaboration between support services; and
• Create sustainable arts processes and support to deliver BE processes locally.

The strategies that BE will employ in the Out of the Blue project are:

Arts intervention workshops. BE will engage existing and new participants, via referrals in workshops, with BE artists to articulate their story. Working alongside professional artists in music, digital media, dance, circus, physical theatre and movement, and visual arts, participants will be supported to use these artforms to communicate with their peers and their community. The process of developing art-based skills simultaneously improves the participants’ self-awareness and self-esteem. The requirement to work in collaboration with others helps to build a sense of acceptance and tolerance of others.

Public Outcomes. The presentation of participant’s work back to community through public outcomes celebrates the work and enables the audience to hear a ‘different’ story about the participants and witness a new and different contribution to community. As the project evolves the works created in different communities will be combined into a larger story and presented as regional outcomes, involving participants as the creative team. The regional works produced will then be taken to another skill level and outcome, through mentoring with professional artists, and presented at a national level via festivals or other ‘mainstream’ artistic domains.

Public Awareness. Through workshops, launches, products created and the media, the project will build awareness in community about those who are isolated and disadvantaged. Through this strategy BE aims to build the capacity of the community to be more inclusive and responsive towards those who are disadvantaged.

Collaboration with local support agencies. Through the arts workshops BE will involve support agencies in the BE arts processes, providing an environment for them to build new relationships with participants so that they can provide the intervention needed in a neutral and non threatening environment, including pathways back into education or employment.

Development of leadership skills. BE uses its leadership strategy (funded through the Coca Cola Australia Foundation) to encourage participants with leadership potential to participate in BE Intensives with the BE team, emerging artists and support workers to develop further skills to assist in the delivery of BE projects in local community. These leadership participants work as mentors on Out of the Blue.

Arts intervention Practice. Core to BE's delivery is the training of support workers and local emerging artists in each community who can continue the process past the life of the initial BE intervention. Via supported participation in the project, they develop skills to deliver small projects locally, supported by BE.

Target Group and Locations
Out of the Blue will work directly with 180 participants and through audience development, reach a further 500 people. The project will work in seven NSW communities with high indigenous populations Moree, Tamworth, Nambucca, Bowraville, Lismore, Casino, and Berkeley in the Illawarra. BE has existing relationships in each of these communities.

Overall benefits:
BE is committed to the creation of authentic and excellent art, inspiring new audiences in regional and rural communities. It recognises that if these processes are to be sustainable it cannot be reliant on an individual or a unique process. BE was set up to develop a highly innovative and replicable process that can empower individuals and communities to think and act differently about re engaging its most marginalised citizens. Core to BE’s work is the transfer of arts based skills to local emerging artists, community workers and young people.

For further information about this project, please contact the BE office on 02 6772 0101 or at admin@beyondempathy.org.au