Advocacy Workshop series

Arts West hosted a series of three free online advocacy workshops designed to support artists and arts organisations understand how best to advocate for your practice, for Melbourne’s west, and for arts and culture more broadly. Together we unpacked what advocacy is and created an Arts West advocacy plan.

The Arts West Advocacy Workshop Series was presented by Esther Anatolitis, one of Australia’s leading advocates for the arts. With a background in the media, architecture, and organisational leadership across all artforms, she has presented advocacy workshops for artists, leaders, organisations, boards, and industry groups. For well over a decade, Esther’s work in facilitating cross-industry advocacy has contributed to significant policy and funding outcomes at all levels of government.  

WORKSHOP 1: STEP INTO THE NEWSROOM
Wednesday 15 September

Let’s take a good look around us. What dominated the news and social media this week? If we’d had a campaign out, what would we be competing with to capture people’s attention? What current issues would we need to accommodate, displace or co-opt? This first of our three workshops starts to build our critical vocabularies. We’ll start with an introduction on Arts West and its evolution into an advocacy network, before diving right into the big issues. 

WORKSHOP 2: WHAT IS ADVOCACY?
Wednesday 22 September

What does effective advocacy for the arts look like? What’s needed, what’s missing, and what’s our role? The second of our three workshops starts to identify some useful tools. We’ll look at the media, political and public dimensions of advocacy, and how success depends on a highly engaged collegiality that builds communities of active voices.  

WORKSHOP 3: LET’S MAKE SOME PLANS
Wednesday 29 September

What’s our next step? Our third and final workshop in this series spends two hours creating an advocacy plan for Arts West. We’ll bring the outcomes of our first two sessions together, applying our critical vocabularies and advocacy tools to develop a plan that sees us through to the next election – and well beyond.

For enquiries, please contact us at artswest@footscrayarts.com.