What is the Creative Exchange?
Creative Exchange is a long running professional development and networking event program available to anyone working in the creative industries who wants access to the most up-to-date information across the sector.
These free or low cost, monthly events host national and international experts from across the arts, culture, screen and design sectors and cover a wide range of topics. We look forward to welcoming you at our next event.
Upcoming event: Fashion's New Reality
During the lockdowns of 2021, a group of seven independent Victorian fashion designers collaborated with a leading studio to explore opportunities across digital platforms.
At the same time, on the other side of the globe, a team of highly skilled fashion tech entrepreneurs commenced the development of Semblance World, the world’s first luxury ‘shopping’ space in the Metaverse.
Join us for this special Melbourne International Games Week edition of the Creative Exchange, co-presented by ACMI, as we share experiences and insights from fashion’s new frontier and explore the new Metaverse shopping space.
Join Fashion's New Reality online, 2pm-3.30pm, Friday 8 October
Stay tuned for events coming up during 2021. Sign up to the Creative Exchange newsletter.
View our new Artist Essential Toolkit series
Catch up viewing
Monetising Digital Events: Recovery Roadmap Webinars
Streaming new projects and archival performances for arts-hungry audiences online became the norm as the world adjusted to the COVID pandemic. Many such events were free as creatives explored opportunities to engage digital audiences.
Over the last 18months, digital audience engagement has matured, from an avenue to share work and retain audience interest, to become a critical option for income generation.
Monetising Digital Events is part of the Recovery Roadmap Webinars series, co-presented by Creative Victoria and ArtsHub. The session focuses on the challenges of staging events online, negotiating price points, and how to persuade audiences to pay for digital events they have previously accessed for free.
The session features Kate Cuthbert (Program & Partnerships Manager at Writers Victoria) and Jeremy Rice (Head of Education at Melbourne Theatre Company and a member of the MTC Digital Theatre project team) who share their digital audience expertise and experience.
Understanding audiences in a pandemic
Just how are audiences responding to the pandemic and how might we best plan cultural events in a changing environment?
In this Recovery Roadmap Webinar, Patternmakers’ Tandi Palmer Williams unpicks the July 2021 results of the Audience Outlook Monitor research into how audiences of international, national and Victorian cultural organisations are responding to the COVID 19 pandemic. The research trends give an understanding of audiences’ concerns, needs and expectations, and insights such as strong empathy for artists affected.
The Audience Outlook Monitor research can be accessed here.
The conversation is hosted by ArtsHub’s George Dunford.
What should be on the agenda for a National Arts, Culture and Creativity Plan, and how can Victorians contribute to it?
Join Kate Fielding, A New Approach’s CEO, as she explores how we can build a cogent and connected policy for arts and culture across the whole nation and how Victorians can get involved.
Drawing inspiration from the Federal Government’s Sport 2030 plan, A New Approach has argued that we need to put the arts at the centre of our cultural conversation and link up different levels of government with a national approach.
A New Approach (ANA) has contributed to a distinct shift in the conversation and knowledge about arts and culture in Australia. Under Kate’s leadership, a unique alliance of people across the country in governance, advisory and staffing have created a foundation to contribute collaboratively in shaping the future of creative industries.
Stepping out again: COVID safe outdoor events
In the first of our 2021 webinars we explored the challenges and successes of staging COVID-safe events outdoors with Sarah Neal, Executive Producer & Co-CEO of Malthouse Theatre and Glyn Roberts, Castlemaine State Festival’s Artistic Director.
The pandemic has seen a boom in outdoor events- even among companies and events that rarely if ever were seen in the great outdoors. Malthouse Theatre’s outdoor stage has hosted a wide variety of performance, live music and comedy since the start of 2021 and this year’s Castlemaine State Festival held most of its events outdoors at the Western Reserve and Castlemaine Botanical Gardens.
Recovery Roadmap Webinars
Presented by Arts Hub and Creative Victoria
Running over four weeks in September and presented via Zoom, the Recovery Roadmap Webinars focused on some of the most urgent topics facing organisations and creatives in this challenging time.
Webinar 1: What will post-pandemic audiences look like?
As we emerge from the pandemic, audiences will return to theatres, galleries will re-open but will we still want to experience art in the same way? Tandi Palmer Williams presents the Patternmakers WolfBrown research, looking at continuing digital offerings, restoring confidence to audiences and finding learnings from the pandemic.
Webinar 2: Reaching new audiences in a time of crisis
Could COVID give you an opportunity to find new supporters for your arts organisation? While cities lockdown, regional arts organisations have taken the opportunity to try a different approach and find new audiences by taking their work online. We look at the Yarra Valley Writers Festival who took their very first festival online and the Latrobe Regional Gallery which re-invented their space for digital delivery.
Webinar 3: Communication in COVID and beyond
With so many COVID communications, how do you stay relevant to your audience when they can’t actively participate? Looking at keeping in touch with your audience, keeping them engaged and staying relevant to their changing needs.
Webinar 4: Mental health advisory
Mental health has been the hidden risk during lockdown. Arts Wellbeing Collective's Kirsty Ritchie talks about some of the ways arts organisations can look after the mental health of their staff as they face challenges like working from home, balancing new priorities and fostering resilience.
More resources
While you're here, take a look at the resources we have from the Creative State Summit where people working across the creative industries come to learn from leading thinkers and practitioners from across the cultural landscape.
Featured video - Audience Atlas Launch with Andrew McIntyre
Audience Atlas launch with Andrew McIntyre from Creative Victoria
View the Audience Atlas Victoria 2019 report