GENEVIEVE LACEY ON COLLABORATION, CONVERSATION & LEADERSHIP

More than ever, our world needs radical, compassionate dreaming. 

Lucid Dreaming is a series of hosted conversations that invites listeners into the presence of artists with the power to remake our lives. Across the year, we hear from writer-land rights activist Alexis Wright, choreographer-director Lucy Guerin, writer-musician Paul Kildea, singer-songwriter Jessie Lloyd, novelist-researcher Zoe Morrison, theatre director Matt Lutton. 

Bravery, embracing and leading change.

In September the guests are pianist-educator Aura Go, visual artist-curator Brook Andrew and singer-songwriter-visual artist Bertie Blackman. They’re brave: they embrace and lead change. They’re also warm, funny, great story tellers, disarmingly human, for all their many achievements. 

Aura’s just home from years living in Finland; she’s contemplating how best to use her beautiful artistry here in Australia, wanting to make music accessible to as wide a community as possible.

Brook’s just been announced as the Artistic Director for the Biennale of Sydney, the first time in its 45-year history it will be curated by an indigenous artist, and the perfect role for Brook’s formidable brain, his generous heart, and his powerful commentary on indigenous representation in our country. 

Bertie’s making a life that straddles multiple worlds, creating both music and visual art, driven by her remarkable imagination and ability to distil sound, story, images in deeply personal, moving ways. We’ll hear Aura and Bertie make some music, we’ll hear them all talk about things they hold dear.

Creating new stories for our world.

Lucid Dreaming creates a space where remarkable people speak about issues that shape them. I grew up in a family where listening was hugely valued. We were taught to listen not only to what was being said and who was speaking, but also to be attentive to silence. We were encouraged to notice whose voices were missing, and what wasn’t being spoken.

These conversations give us the chance to hear thoughts and voices we might not otherwise encounter. We’re invited to hear people revealing quiet ideas. Our guests have the kinds of gifts that can imagine and create new stories for our world, different ways of thinking about what it is to be human, and how we might live together. 

I was thinking about these words last week, looking out onto Yuin country, on the south coast of NSW, one of the most beautiful parts of Australia that I know. Bushfires were blazing 40 kilometres down the road, skies smoky, land tinder dry, birds, people, animals alert and watchful. What place, I wondered, for the arts, in this burning world? 

Leading with our art.

In our burning world, we are learning that leadership takes many forms and faces. That it is, in fact, our work, not someone else’s. That we can lead with our art, with our lives, in our choices of colleagues and projects, our choices of how we speak, when, to whom, in our championing of others’ voices. 

This series celebrates people who are leaders. Leaders because they have shaped their lives around their principles and their passions. Leaders because a life devoted to the arts is a necessary act of resistance, it is a way of paying attention to what is really happening, a way of voicing humanity in its wondrous diversity. 

Genevieve Lacey, Aura Go, Brook Andrew and Bertie Blackman come together for Lucid Dreaming in the Salon on Thursday 20 September.

Discover more about Genevieve Lacey's Artist-in-Residence program here.