Writings, News
Jo Higgins
Routledge publication: Youth Programs in Art ...
Routledge publication: Youth Programs in Art Museums - An International Perspective
Writings
Jo Higgins
Art Guide Australia: Field Notes. A Grassroots ...
Art Guide Australia: Field Notes. A Grassroots Approach to Public Art
Events, Review, News
Jo Higgins
Berlin trip: Connected Audiences Conference and ...
Berlin trip: Connected Audiences Conference and some Art, Art, Art....
Writings, News
Jo Higgins
Art Guide Australia: Home Truths - feature story
Art Guide Australia: Home Truths - feature story
News, Writings
Jo Higgins
Artlink magazine's 'Hyphen' issue published
Artlink magazine's 'Hyphen' issue published

youth engagement

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Routledge publication: Youth Programs in Art Museums - An International Perspective

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The long tail of my 2018 Churchill Fellowship continues to unfurl in both learnings and opportunities.

18 months ago I was approached by the editors of a then-forthcoming Routledge publication gathering international perspectives on youth programs in art museums. They were looking for an Australian contributor and the always generous Betsy Gibbons at ICA Boston, who I had the immense privilege to meet and learn from during my Fellowship, sent them in my direction. And now, it's out in the world.

My contribution, "Where to From Here? Reflections on Future-Proofing People, Programs, and Museums" picks up on many of the same threads I had started to pull in my essay "The Museum as a Cowboy Place" for Artlink magazine’s Hyphen issue last Summer, expertly edited by Ava Lacoon, Claire Osborn-Li and Hen Vaughan.

It reiterates the learnings and provocations I (hope I) offered at the Connected Audiences Conference in Berlin in May with the brilliant Yael Filipovic. It's a reflection on the last nearly 10 years of work, research, care and collaboration - as well as some of the programs I've had the privilege to steer, including the gone-but-not-forgotten MCA GENEXT at MCA Australia and the also-now-gone-but-also-not-forgotten National Young Writers Program at the National Gallery of Australia.

It's probably a more hopeful essay than I actually feel right now but looking at the book's contents page - noting so many experts and champions (including quite a few others I also got to meet back in 2019, thanks to my Churchill) - I feel really proud of this body of work and grateful to have had the opportunity to make the case (again) for the importance of youth arts programming in and for museums, as well as for young people, now and into the future.

Also, I love that the photo I snapped in a hurry during an especially chaotic GENEXT 'fridge poetry x music lyric mashup' workshop inspired by the art of Jenny Watson back in 2018, that I included as my essay's illustration, inspired the title of co-editor Susan McCullough's introduction.

What we had together was indeed gorgeous.

OTHER POSTS

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Connected Audiences Conference - Culture & Young People: What could possibly go wrong?

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I’m heading to Berlin next month to co-present a paper and deliver a workshop with my former MCA Australia colleague Yaël Filipovic at the biennial Connected Audiences Conference.

Convened by the Institute for Cultural Research Participation in Berlin and the American Institute for Learning Innovation, in 2025 the conference has the brilliantly apt provocation: “Culture and Young People: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Factors, Challenges and Opportunities of Cultural Participation for Youth”

Yaël and I will be sharing our experiences with youth-led programming in Australia; the importance of institutional support; and how we have taken our learnings forward in our respective careers.

I’m really excited for the opportunities to connect with and learn from peers internationally, to test and develop my own skills and ideas in relation to institutional practice and working with young people.

I’m very grateful to have received funding from Creative Australia to undertake this professional development opportunity and excited to share my learnings on my return.

UPDATE (30 May 2025): My participation at the conference has received additional support, with a Professional Development Grant from the NSW Government through Create NSW. This funding kind of funding is so invaluable for independent creatives and I’m incredibly grateful to have the support to undertake this work, to build networks and share learnings with international colleagues.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

 

This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

OTHER POSTS

Panel talk: Australian Museums & Galleries Association National Conference

On Tuesday I chaired a panel talk at the annual Australian Museums and Galleries Association national conference, which is being held in Newcastle, on Worimi Country, this year.

The panel talk was a reflection on last year’s pilot Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program, which I developed and ran for the National Gallery of Australia.

I was so grateful to be joined by curator and academic Nur Shkembi, one of the mentors on the program, mentee and emerging curator and arts writer Jade Irvine and the Gallery’s Tim Fairfax Digital Learning Manager, Julia Mendel.

Over the course of an hour we talked about what the project entailed – the inherent risks and rewards in piloting a program designed to support and elevate critical young voices, what it set out to achieve, the challenges, and what participating in it has left us all reflecting on.

You can watch the panel talk here.

OTHER POSTS

Published outcomes - National Gallery of Australia: Digital Young Writers Mentorship

I’m looking forward to sharing some reflections and learnings from this project in the coming months. But in the meantime - some publication highlights from the program’s mentees:

ASSEMBLY: An annotation

Hen Vaughan responds to the themes of translation and collectivity in Angelica Mesiti’s three-channel video installation, ASSEMBLY.

Is social media affecting how we engage with art?

Aisyah Aaqil Sumito interviews artist Dan Bourke about the impact of Web 2.0 on our cognitive reading of art, pointing to children learning in a new exhibition.

This interview was published by ArtsHub, the publishing partner of the Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program.

Contemporary Resonances of Art in the Age of AIDS

Aisyah Aaqil Sumito reflects on the contemporary resonances of the trailblazing 1994 exhibition, ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS.’

A Modern Approach to Exhibiting Costume

Michelle Guo explores the challenges that curators encounter when exhibiting costume, and the unique way that they have gone about acquiring Justene Williams’ costumes for ‘Victory Over the Sun’.

Kara Walker’s Monument

Jade Irvine reflects on African American artist Kara Walker’s use of scale - from intimate to monumental - and her consideration of the histories that are memorialised and those that remain obscured.

REVIEW: Deborah Prior - On The Third Day

Hen Vaughan review's Deborah Prior’s powerful new textile exhibition at JamFactory Seppeltsfield, On The Third Day, for the Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program’s publishing partner, ArtsHub.

REVIEW: HOME | LAND

Jade Irvine reviews the group exhibition, HOME | LAND, at Hobart’s Contemporary Art Tasmania for ArtsHub, the publishing partner of the Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program.

OTHER POSTS

The Condensery - Somerset Regional Art Gallery: new youth engagement project - 'Things I Want To Say'

I’m really excited to be working alongside curator Rachel Arndt to help develop and deliver a pilot youth engagement project for The Condensery - Somerset Regional Art Gallery, in Toogoolawah, Queensland.

Over the next year I’ll be supporting Rachel and several artists to run workshops for local young people, inspired by the ideas and artists involved in the May 2023 exhibition, Things I Want to Say, curated by Rachel and Imogen Dixon-Smith.

'Things I want to say' will bring together six emerging artists from across the country whose practices negotiate identity in contemporary Australia. Focusing on artists with a connection to Queensland, the exhibition will encourage conversation around navigating one’s sense of self within the pressures of broader society.

The first of these workshops was yesterday and we had such a fantastic group of local young people, who worked alongside artist Sid McMahon and myself to start teasing out some of these conversations and experiences for themselves.

I’m looking forward to everything that’s to come.

OTHER POSTS

I live and work on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people and acknowledge their unbroken connection to this Country. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders, past and present, because this always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.