From Pilot Project to Statewide Tour: Reflections in Regaining Composure After Community-Based Workshop Fail

<p>In response to the negative social and cultural effects of COVID-19, in 2020 we established The Pet Project (TPP). Situated in Tasmania, an isolated island state south of the Australian mainland, TPP’s original objective was to bring people together through visual art practices that leveraged human-animal relationships as an emotionally binding theme. Designed as workshops to facilitate the teaching of visual art techniques to those with little or no connection to the university sector, and to address a need for increasing social interaction, three years on TPP has significantly changed. It has now been deployed state-wide as a creative, cultural, and pedagogical enterprise that includes a diverse range of project partners, stakeholders, organisations, artists, educators, and community participants. Yet since its inception, TPP has not been without risks, hurdles, nor momentous challenges. In this paper we reflect on how the project’s frameworks, protocols and delivery strategies were overhauled in reaction to a single workshop conducted in a small regional township on the east coast of Tasmania. Although our model was validated by a highly successful pilot program, this experience derailed what we thought was a sound methodology and the confronting conditions and outcomes of the workshop forced us to question our professional capacities when working with communities. As a result, and through tenacious refinement, our model has become more resilient, adaptive, and flexible. It now includes expanded approaches for engaging with communities, strategies for navigating local politics, and mechanisms that initiate increased meaningful learning opportunities into regional and remote locations. </p>