People, Pets and Art: A Model of Creative and Cultural Enterprise for Connecting Communities

We reflect on the aims and outcomes of a research project titled The Pet Project, a model of creative and cultural enterprise that initiates, establishes, and maintains a community of practice across regional Tasmania through hands-on visual art workshops. The Pet Project advances targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education and was established in response to specific challenges to Tasmanian communities, experienced throughout Covid-19, as the means to bring disconnected, isolated, and disparate members of the community together using art-based methods and pet companionship as universal and binding themes. The project builds sustainability mechanisms into different communities through social and cultural imperatives; through training, learning and skill development opportunities; through creative safe spaces where diversity, lived experience and knowledge is celebrated; as well as through the integration of a diverse network of industry partners and stakeholders. We suggest that creative endeavours - through applied outcomes and ongoing support - have a vitally important role to play in building, or repairing, and maintaining relationships within communities to foster resilience, inclusivity, access, equity, and health.