Cultural Development Consulting

IN THIS SERIES OF INTERVIEWS, Alasdair Foster talks with cultural practitioners who take an alternative approach to creativity – their own or that of others. These individuals hail from various cultures and continents; they have diverse aspirations and idiosyncratic means for achieving them. There is no consistency, no single path. Nor should there be.

Some look critically upon the world around them – be it the institutional world of art or the wider world of human affairs. Others seek to build connections where previously there was alienation; offering a means of expression to the marginalised and the dispossessed. And some simply try to feel their way to a sense of personal truth that can be communicated outwards in the centrifugal language of the eye. Each, in their different way, suggests how a questioning mind, human connection and creativity can work synergistically to achieve results significantly more valuable than those measured by the market or celebrity. 
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Thierry Geoffroy

For the past 25 years Thierry Geoffroy has created a series of conceptual formulas to initiate events and temporary installations. These projects involve many participants – often several hundred – to address the social psychology of issues such as conflict, collaboration, hypocrisy and commercialisation. More…

“By making and consuming art, have we become better human beings?”

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Scott Redford

Scott Redford has a fascination for pop culture and a love of his home town of Surfer’s Paradise on the southern Queensland Coast of Australia. Harnessing a diverse array of media his work turns its back on the cosy coteries of the art world to address the international from the vantage of the local. More…

“Art is something made in private and validated in public”

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Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura lives in Delhi and makes photographs. But he does not want to think of himself as a photographer… or an artist. He fears that to do so would set him on an art-world career path that would make it harder to strive for honest imagery. He keeps himself broke for the same reason. More…

“I’d like my work … to be bigger than me”

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Ian Milliss

The phrase ‘ahead of his time’ can be a cliché, but applied to Ian Milliss it is a precisely accurate description. Spanning almost five decades, his practice engages directly with issues of social, cultural and personal sustainability: the fundamental issue of survival. So why, for so long, has he been ‘the invisible artist’? More…

“An artist is someone who creates adaptive cultural change”

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Tomoko Hayashi

She has been called a ‘Love Doctor’, but Tomoko Hayashi calls herself a multi-disciplinary artist/designer. She harnesses new and traditional technologies to connect distant lovers in subtle and truly romantic ways. In this interview she talks about her role as a creative practitioner working at the interface of art, science, design and technology. More… 

“What is the nature of real human connection in this fast-moving society?”

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Proboscis: Giles Lane and Alice Angus

Proboscis employs the imaginative insights of art practice to address real-life social issues, not through commentary and hand-wringing, but in the development of practical tools for change. The emphasis is on empowerment through participation; of working together to overcome barriers in thinking that, at first, seem insurmountable. More… 

“Cultures of listening are crucial to cultural experience”

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