A Brief Project History

Initiation Phase

Carbon_Dating was proposed in 2019 as an experimental artwork designed to seed ‘consensual’ partnerships between plants and humans, based upon their shared need to breathe each other’s ‘exhaled’ air. Carbon Dating was envisaged as a network of grass plantings that would be cared for by individuals  and mediated by technologically infused artworks and performative processes. Together these would encourage the development of a community-of-care building process that could bring people and plants together into new relationships. Ultimately the aim was to examine and shift our relationships to Australia’s native grasses, and the grasslands that support them.

The first grant application for the project stated:

In this time of environmental stress, we call upon adventurous humans & vivacious plants to ‘conspire’ together – to breathe radically new kinds of relationships into life, gently & discretely encouraged by WIFI-enabled ‘Conspirators’.

We were successful in late 2019 in winning an Australia Council Experimental and Emerging Arts grant. The initial one-year phase of the project (2019-20) engaged with both plant biologists and breath scientists through a ‘creative incubator’ process that cross-fertilised Ecological Science, Human Physiology Science, Environmental Philosophy & Media Arts. The collective aim was together uncover the scientific & poetic connections between the ‘lungs of the earth’ & our own breath physiology: in ways that might best activate participants’ minds, bodies & emotions & promote their reflection, care & ‘reverence’.

At that time, I became particularly interested in native grasses through the ongoing mentorship of Professor Jenn Firn, who is, amongst other things, a grasslands regeneration expert. I also re-engaged with staff and researchers at Samford Ecological Research facility, as part of my aim of specifically looking to understand how they measured the life-giving Carbon Dioxide/CO2 ‘inhalations’ & Oxygen/O2 'exhalations' of native vegetation using ‘eddy covariance’ methods. To understand this process better I also engaged with members from Prof. Grace's ‘Managing for Resilient Landscapes’ field-work team to understand the form, ‘nature’ & nuances of native vegetation's CO2 'inhalations' & O2 'exhalations'.

As part of the initial incubator process I also re-connected with the team from an earlier project I'd run with Human Movement Scientists (called Transaction). This led me to meet with Prof. Kerr & Prof. Stewart (Human Movement/Breath Physiology Science researchers) who have equipment and the know how to measure O2-C02 exchanges of patients walking or running on a treadmill. Given that human & plant 'breathing' are profoundly linked, and given today's era of rapidly rising C02, these conversations clarified for me the need to urgently imagine creative new ways to enhance public understanding & care for this radical co-dependency between the ‘lungs of the earth’ & our own breath physiology.

At that stage I resolved that the project should serve in part to demystify these sciences as well as engage with the concept of what is often called ‘plant blindness’- a name coined over 20 years ago by Wandersee and Schussler (1999, 2001). Wandersee and Schussler noted at that time that despite the fact that plants make up approximately 80% of all biomass on Earth and have critical roles in almost all ecosystems through their provision of shelter, oxygen, and food, many people ignore them or at least devalue their importance with respect to other animals and ourselves. This way of seeing plants as inanimate background material runs deep within Western culture – in other words it can be argued as being ontological and traceable through Western philosophy back to Aristotelian Times (see also Plants as Persons: A philosophical Botany, 2011 by Matthew Hall)).

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My interest in grasses was further increased in their extreme invisibility for many, beyond lawn or pasture - and also the way I began to understand that native species had become absent from much of the landscape in Australia due to introduced and highly invasive pasture grasses.  At that time I wrote -

Many of us have cursory relationships with grasses; and yet those flowering members of the vegetal world are ultimately vital for all life on earth – being a supercritical part of a system that powers animal feeding, provides the wheat and oats we eat daily and produces a great proportion of the air we breathe. Recent research has also shown that plants express equivalences of memory, sentience, and learning. But plants like grasses can also be much more than objects for human use - and talking them up on the basis that they may be ‘more like us’ won’t necessarily lead to us respecting them on their own terms. Is there a different way to think of plants like grasses therefore, as something much more than mere objects for our use, pleasure, or gain? Could they possibly even be thought of as having their own ‘self-hood’, or capacity to act or intervene on their own terms? Such concepts are common within numerous traditional societies.  Carbon_Dating therefore sets out to ask, through an experimental process, how might we be able to build a new form of respect and care for the ‘more than human’, world of native grasses.

During this initial phase of the project, I also began to work with environmental and sustainability philosopher and researcher Tania Leimbach to tease out these ideas and formulate the project ahead. Tanoa encouraged me to immerse in theories & philosophies of human breath and plant science, further framing & focusing the project around these two connected ‘breath’ patterns and clarifying our shared interests. Tania became the project’s writer and provocateur - later leading to a series of commissioned articles (2022-23).

In 2020 (the year of COVID, floods and bushfires) I began developing the first ideas for the artwork. At that stage the notion of ‘dating’ baked into the project title (Carbon Dating) was suggestive of the desire to date another carbon-based life form, but implicitly one beyond the human. The use of that word was informed by a prior project of mine, Are We The One? which used a custom Phone App to pair consensual strangers on 'dates', encouraging them to demonstrate ‘care’ for each other despite never actually meeting.  This led me to imagine ways in which human 'daters' might be encouraged to spend moments of quality time with their chosen vegetal 'partner' over a significant duration. To enhance that process I had proposed a companion device at the outset - originally described as a personal ‘Conspirator’:- a bespoke, wearable & WIFI- enabled device, that would include an incubating chamber for their chosen native plant to grow in - connected to an intimate mouthpiece allowing exchanges of human C02 & plant O2 'breath'. During these exchanges the shared breath would also transformed into delicate vibrations felt around different parts of the participant's lips via the mouthpiece - further sensitising them to their evolving exchanges of breath. By facilitating delicate exchanges of air, the device would also capture and present this information in a related phone APP, contrasted with the respiration data of similar, mature vegetation types streamed from SERF’s eddy covariance monitors. Furthermore, the participants would be able to record their experiences in the App alongside received plant data streams, to build a 'variegated' profile of their evolving (or maybe withering relationships). Additional responsive texts & imagery delivered via the App would also prompt daters to consider philosophical & political dimensions of their experimental unions. Interested observers could, with permission, also access those experiences online.

Whilst many of these features were ultimately achieved the limitations of skills in hardware and software engineering and the dramatic increase in concern with airborne particles and breath hygiene around that time of COVID ultimately rendered some of these outcomes impractical.

Initial designs were scoped out through sketches but remained in limbo at that first stage. Other early activities included the development of photo essays, further deep investigation into grasses and grasslands, the development of a physical library of grasses and grasslands knowledge and the beginning of an electronic library of resources. I also took a deep dive into web design techniques suitable to capture the project, established ‘Internet of Things’ protocols that would allow data to be remotely recorded in the field, and also investigated methods of recording remote time-lapses of growing grasses. This phase also included investigations into microscopy and macro photography of grass elements, and the development of a series of drawings and a manifesto for the project. As we moved in 2020 and the lock downs ensured, I also began to sketch out a structure for a series of interconnected nodes, consistent with prior projects such as Intimate Transactions, that might allow people to collaborate without physical proximity.

Statewide focus initiated in 2020 (through Arts Qld funding)

Introduction

It became clear during 2020 that the scope and scale of the project would need to be increased if I was to realise a network of collaborating sites. This led to the development of an Arts Queensland QASP grant - something which coincidentally required the project to became more focused within the Qld regions. At that time of grant preparation, I invited artists donna davis and Caitlin Franzmann to join the project. They each engaged with the ideas proposed, whilst significantly extending them - particularly around the function and form of the ‘Conspirator’ and the community engaged processes that would be needed to engage a community of practice across several sites.

The project was still described at that time as an experimental hybrid artwork to seed ‘consensual’ partnerships between plants and humans, based upon their shared need to breathe each other’s ‘exhaled’ air, with their technology-mediated ‘dates’ also experienced by online audiences. The grant noted that we would now particularly engage Queensland audiences - including a suite of participant/‘daters’ who would be drawn from across the state, ensuring diverse participation across demographics and regions. This we intended would be supported by the local knowledge of regional herbariums, botanical gardens, and bush care regeneration groups.  The project would therefore facilitate one-one-one ‘blind dates’ between Queenslanders from different demographics and regions, and their local Queensland native plants.

It was our intention that each human participant would therefore commit to developing a three month ‘relationship of care’ with local native grasses that we imagined could be contained inside the life-supporting sculptural/digital ‘conspirator’ art form. Those participants would provide their plants with light, water, and nutrients, whilst also gently exhaling carbon dioxide over them once a day – in return receiving a tiny ‘breath’ of the grasses’ exhaled oxygen. We also imagined that they should be able to somehow ‘communicate’ with their plants using phone-based messaging, images, and sounds. As these intimate, extraordinary ‘dates’ evolved, an online audience could witness their progress via social media feeds. The outcomes of all ‘dates’ would then be collated into a permanent online archive and exhibited with the plant/‘conspirators’ in high impact gallery contexts. Carbon_Dating therefore intended to make extensive use of digital content creation strategies and online delivery to local, national, and global audiences, whilst ensuring interactions between people remain ‘physically distant’ - a direction well suited to future ongoing physical distancing requirements of the COVID crisis which was raging during that time.

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Early Plans and Steps: The ‘Conspirator’

In mid June 2020 we won the Arts Queensland funding with lead artists Keith Armstrong, Donna Davis and Caitllin Franzmann. Donna Davis brought renewed energy and a sophisticated plant-focused practice to the project – and she took over the design of the project’s hybrid plant/sculpture/computational artwork - still at that time called the Conspirator. Throughout the project Donna drew on her extensive experience in working with/incorporating plants within her art-science installations. The chosen ‘daters’ would, we decided, each receive one of these personal Conspirator art objects, containing a locally endemic bouquet of Queensland grasses - specified by collaborating grassland restoration ecologist Professor Jenn Firn and local botanical experts. These Conspirators would also contain a transparent sealed ‘breathing-chamber’ connected to a mouthpiece, electronic sensors to monitor the plant’s ‘vital signs’ in real time, on-board electronics, and Wi-Fi connectivity.  We noted that the high point, and life-affirming moment of each day for each participant would be when they and their treasured plant exchange ‘breath’. The participant would firstly inhale Oxygen (02) that the plant has ‘exhaled’ over the day via the mouthpiece, and then breathe out Carbon Dioxide (C02) to the plant, who would ‘breathe’ it in. These delicate inter-species exchanges of breath would be further enhanced by subtle, responsive vibrations in the mouthpiece felt by the participants around different parts of their lips.

During that time, we also began to experiment with growing ‘Resurrection grasses’ Tripogon Loliiformis for the Conspirator - as recommended by Jenn Firn. Jenn gathered some of these grasses from what was at that time drought-stricken paddocks in Western Queensland for us - and rejuvenated through the addition of water.

Donna began to design a series of iterations of the Conspirator to house that grass. The initial brief was that the Conspirator would be cared for at home by local participant, it would connect all sites in the network together via electronic networks, share imagery of sites to each other, and it would be ‘breath activated ’in ways that could make the user more conscious of their own breath and the exchange of C02 and O2 between humans and plants. We also imagined that our team would send prompts to each Conspirator via its electronic components to encourage visits to associated local grass plantings and grasslands.

Donna worked through several designs, using combinations of wood, glassware, solid containers, and spare parts drawn from scientific and domestic objects, whilst I designed a sensing system that would allow the grasses within the chamber to be monitored over time and allow that data to be shared with other sites via the Internet. However, during that time, it became increasingly clear that confining the Resurrection Grass within a device (where it could receive human breath) would not be ideal - as we soon discovered that the amount of growing medium available, lack of partner plants and other environmental conditions such as enhanced humidity within the sealed growing container would not be conducive to the health of grasses, especially as they are typically sun dependent. We were both also aware that we wanted the project to open people’s eyes up to the grasses around them, rather than only focus them towards one particular preserved plant within their domestic sphere.

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Through this practice led process the concept of the Conspirator was slowly refocused over several versions to become an object/assemblage that might instead direct and inspire people towards engendering care for their local grasses and grasslands (through novel combinations of sculptural object, scientific implements (e.g., magnifying glass, dishes etc.), actual grass seed, audio and streamed vision of other sites and text prompts displayed upon mobile phone screens).

Early Plans and Steps: Grass Growing

At this time we were looking for ways in which we might be best able to encourage community participation and action around each artwork, the grasses and more broadly the local site. This resonated with my original plan for the project that had always envisaged a mixture of campaign and artwork - resulting somehow in actual grassland restoration outcomes. This led to a decision to include a local small scale grass garden/planting outdoors nearby to each participant’s location - as a small but meaningful gesture towards the reintroduction of native grasses. This ultimately became a grass mound design that Donna proposed and designed in 2022 - and was subsequently introduced at every site around Qld during 2022/23.

By that time Donna and I had also both engaged in extended processes of grass growing from seed - which were donated by a company specialising in commercial sized crops of native grasses - nativeseeds.com.au. The choice of grasses we decided should depend upon plant bioregion suitability and recommendations from our consultant Jenn Firn. Each chosen site on Indigenous land would be situated within a different environmental ‘bioregion’ (e.g., Brigalow Belt/Barunggam Country/Miles). Each site would then be assigned local iconic native grass species (E.g., Curly Mitchell Grass/ Koa+Guwa Country/Winton which lies in the Mitchell Grasslands bioregion). Ultimately  we chose 6 at that stage to focus upon 6  key species (Barbed Wire (Cymbopogon Refratcus), Qld Blue (Dichanthium sericeum), Kangaroo (Themeda triandra), Black spear (Heteropogon contortus), Scented Top (Capillipedium spicigerum ) and Curly Windmill (Enteropogon acicularis)). Curly Windmill was later dropped due to cultivation difficulties.

The slow and often unpredictable process of growing allowed us to get to know and learn about the grass species we were working with - and that we were intending to send to each participant. These growing processes also allowed us to understand that the project was going to take longer than we had initially planned - due to the need to accord with annual grass growing cycles. For example, we had found C4 grasses (warm species plants) required from 3-4 months up to 12+ months to mature into re-plantable seedlings, and that they also would not grow at all or poorly if the conditions (temperature/water/humidity etc.) were not right for them. However, some of these grasses were relatively quick to grow (e.g., Barbed Wire or Scented Top at around 4 months for a strong plant, whereas other lingered for months barely growing - for example Black Spear which I found took a year to reach a size ready for planting in Brisbane (although much less so in North Qld)).

During that time Donna and I often photographed the grasses, particularly against black backgrounds, to create imagery that would be seductive and attractive to anyone wishing to countenance a ‘date’ with our chosen six grasses.

At the outset of this active development stage, I had formulated the idea of a root-like web-network of sites - with a central hub harbouring all the 6 grass species being grown at Samford Ecological Research facility (SERF). (See image) I subsequently worked with SERF’s site manager Marcus to construct and plant out a patch which housed all six grasses - based upon the idea that this site would be monitored by time lapse imagery and environmental data - with those outcomes being shared to all other sites.

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Early Plans and Steps: Community Participation + First Nations Orientation and Development
It had always been a strong intention that our process would seek out and develop according to the advice of local Indigenous consultants, but at first we struggled to realise that aim. However, In October 2021 we held a seminal consultation session with Freja Carmichael, a Ngugi woman, weaver and curator belonging to the Quandamooka People of Moreton Bay with the intention of both gathering some feedback on our project progress and also to receiving counsel on how to orientate our work in ways consistent with First Nations principles of Care for Country.  Freja challenged us strongly to think more closely about the community dimensions of the work and each site, suggesting that we might wish to work more actively to build community both locally and at each location in which we were working, or intended to work. She encouraged us to actively reach out to key First Nations people both locally and around Qld - to ensure that the networks of communications between what we were by then calling our ‘grassland carers’ would be strengthened. Her instinct was to defocus the somewhat scientistic approaches that we had pursued to that date, to instead consider the land we were working with to be sentient, and the grasses to be very much part of that whole living ecology. This connected our thinking back to principles of cultural burning whose purpose actively included encouraging the growth and renewal of grasses as central part of a healthy landscape.

A summary the principles we developed at that time were to

●      move away from the process of observation of grasses to being with grasses

●      consider grasses as part of communities - rather than discrete species

●      build from the local out to the network

●      let the process emerge from existing knowledge - the proper way to care for Country already exists

●      Increasingly develop a process of sharing of knowledge that privileges/embeds Indigenous wisdom

●      Freja’s advice, we also rethink the name of the Conspirator - ultimately it became the Interweaver.

●      Ask, how can I be a good visitor on someone else’s country?

This meeting really helped move on our thinking and led us to reconfigure the network of sites as an evolving, supportive ‘community of care for native grasses and grasslands’. We also resolved that each site should be led by or guided by Indigenous carers or consultants so the process could become more aligned with First Nations knowings.

It also became clear that a role in the project should be created for someone to coordinate that community process. Around that time Caitlin Franzmann stepped back due to other work commitments, but encouraged us, as did Freja Carmichael, to reach out to Gold Coast based socially engaged practitioner Daniele Constance, as our potential socially engaged artist – which she ultimately took on. Around that time, building on Freja’s advice, we also renamed the Conspirator the ‘Interweaver’.

Project Realisations Stages 2021- 22 (Data Gathering at SERF)

In light of all of these developments Donna’s sculptural/technological artwork was now really taking shape - as a strong, desktop sized hybrid form, encompassing glass, grass imagery, grass seed, a magnifying glass, and a wooden base. Given that we moved away from the idea of monitoring the health of individual grasses within a sealed chamber - we began to favour the recording of the outdoor environmental conditions within which the grasses were growing, particularly as the images of those grasses could also be streamed at the same time. Because SERF was our only node with all species present it seemed appropriate to measure weather data at that site - given that  Luke’s audio compositions could then respond to this data and be played back on the same phone devices at all the other sites as the streamed video. Donna therefore designed a phone mount and phones, and speakers on stalks into what was now called the Interweaver, with the timelapse video being viewed through a kaleidoscopic screen for additional powerful effect. Her artwork also included a series of prompt cards developed with Daniele which could be written on and subsequently posted in a slot within the form for later retrieval.

To make this idea a reality I worked over many months to design a custom-built piece of hardware (using Internet of Things (IOT) technology) to allow weather parameters at the SERF site to be recorded (wind speed, direction, humidity, temperature, rainfall) and uploaded to the Cloud. Working with QUT programmers the data from this ‘weather station’ was then shaped into usable ‘packets’ and then stored on a server - allowing sound artist Luke Lickfold’s program to automatically read that data and use its parameters to drive a generative audio engine that he had built for the project. That composition was aurally representative of the changing environmental conditions each day - thereby allowing a unique composition to be created every day. Luke ultimately achieved his compositional outcomes through his own software ingenuity using the software MaxMSP, and the processing and recombination of both melodic tones and a library of sounds that he sourced and refined from the *** ’Australian Acoustic Observatory’ - a network of listening stations located throughout Australia whose open-source data is available to researchers online). As part of that process I also set up a time lapse camera to record the growth of the grasses at the Samford where the weather was being measured - with the idea that every 24 hours it would produce a 5-minute time lapse recording of that day, automatically available online with Luke’s newly generated soundtrack to accompany it. This ultimately also became part of the streamed, time-lapsed imagery that was presented to the Interweaver carers each day - and also recorded on the website. At that stage I also had intentions of visualising that data online through a creative format to allow the environment that the grasses were growing in to be interpreted in a further manner - but ultimately settled on its interpretation through generative sound as the more realisable approach.

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Project Realisations Stages 2021-22 (Building a Network)

By that time we had also begun to work with Andrea Higgins who was charged with developing the local network of carers across Qld - capitalising on the many contacts she already enjoyed with galleries across the state that she had developed through her other role at Museums and Galleries Qld. Our plan was to establish sites by locking in local galleries in different Qld bioregions. Our hope was that each gallery would support our carers and potentially become a future exhibition site. We then asked each site to nominate a local carer and First nations advisor. This led Andrea to ultimately secure sites in Miles (working with Dogwood Crossing AG), Cairns (North Site Contemporary Arts), Toogoolwah/Somerset (The Condensery), Gold Coast (HOTA) and Sunshine Coast (Caloundra RG). In four of the locations (Delissa Walker Ngadijina is a Kuku Yalanji in Cairns, Dungidau man of Jinibara descent Jason Murphy in Somerset and Kabi Kabi woman Bianca Bond on the Sunshine Coast) carer and First Nations roles became merged. In other sites we worked with local elders to advise us (for example Kamilaroi woman Robin Derksen in Miles). By that time we had begun to envisage an exhibition program following up from our process - and given the number of practicing artist we had signed up as carers it seemed pertinent to apply for local funding through the Regional Arts Development Fund so that we could commission each artist to make a work in 2023 in response to their experiences. We were successful with five RADF grants in 2022.

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The final list of carers and sites were as follows:

1. Barunggam Country/Miles: Hilary Coulter (textile artist) and Sharron Colley (organic gardener)
2. Yirrganydji Country/Cairns: Delissa Walker Ngadijina (weaver)
3. Jagera/Yuggera/Ugarapul/Jinibara Country/Somerset/Toogoolwah: Jason Murphy (printmaker) and Pipier Weller (emerging artist)
4. Yuggera/Jinibara/Kabi Kabi/Waka Waka Country/SERF Samford (Keith Armstrong (project director) and Marcus Yates (SERF Site technician)
5. Kabi Kabi Country/Sunshine Coast (Liz Capelin (emerging artist/arts organiser), Mia Hacker (printmaker artist), Bianca Bond (First Nations woman), Kilagi Nielsen (PNG weaver), Melissa Stannard (jeweler/poet/artist))
6. Kombumerri Country/Surfers Paradise: Merinda Davies (artist)

With our network of carers now in place, and the grasses had been growing ready to plant, in late September/early October we began visiting each site to meet the local carers and deliver grasses (that we had grown or that had been grown locally). Initial connections had been made with these carers who had entered into an MOU with us to become a local carer during the Oct-Dec 2022 period. The particular bioregion they lived in determined the grasses that we grew and supplied for that group. Donna, myself, and Daniele (now our  ‘Grassland Community of Care Coordinator’) then visited each site during Sept-Nov 2022 to assist with the installation of the grass garden mound, to deliver the seedlings plant and seeds and to ensure that the planting was successful. During this time we also introduced them to the Interweaver, and Daniele gave each carer a set of numbered cards with prompts on for each day, explaining the intention of the process. We also installed the Interweaver at their place of residence or work (e.g., Sharron Colley had hers on her deck in Miles and Merinda had hers located at HOTA art gallery with a smaller garden also in her studio in Surfers paradise. In Toogoolawah a gallery ready version of the Interweaver was prepared and was available to the general public with the card prompts being reproduced upon a small screen). The Interweaver also included a magnifying glass to observe the grasses, some seeds, and other grass-themed visual elements to inspire and engage.

At each site Donna developed a logistics plan, leading us to coordinate or bring in tube stock, soil, mulch, tools  and a cardboard armature Donna had designed to form up the shape of a mound. Soil was then piled into this mound, and the grasses planted to make a dramatic hump, then protected by mulch. Whilst conditions around that time were quite hot and dry - it ended up being a very wet summer - meaning that by December all mounds at the five sites had actively flourished. A comparison of images from each site made fascinating comparisons - with their different species and local weather conditions. In November that year we also planted a mound at HOTA in preparation for the Yarning circle event Daniele had been organising and that we sponsored in December 2022.  During the active period, with assistance from Andrea Higgins I also establishing an active social media program for the project on Instagram, FaceBook and Twitter which continued into 2023.

Daniele’s lead artist role in the project predominantly involved the establishment and subsequent development of that Community of Care process at each site. Not only did she visit each site initially with the team to help set up, but she also designed a series of prompts that were printed on cards (with visuals designed by Donna) - each of which asked open, leading questions such as: “Where are the edges of where to meet”, “What do the grasses need to survive and thrive? Are there other needs?” and “Which parts of your body make contact with the grass?”. These daily questions prompted the carers to reflect upon their experiences, write responses on the rear of the cards these provocations were printed on, and ultimately post them into the Interweaver for later recovery by the team. A part of her process, particularly through her strong links with HOTA (Home of the Arts, Gold Coast) meant that she was able to blend our project with a forthcoming Yarning Circle that HOTA regularly stage - This event, called Living Ecology, became a focal moment for all the regionally located carers to travel to the Gold Coast to meet each other, in order to exchange experiences and anecdotes around their 3 month caring processes up and till that time. The carbon Dating Carers were also able to experience the wisdom of the 4 speakers - Delissa Walker - our Cairns carer and weaver, Leeton Lee - the SEQld coordinator for Firesticks (a preeminent cultural burn organisation), Mihimai Nakora (A Maori weaver working with the flax plant) and Justine Dillon - a Kombumerri woman and head ranger in charge of the Guanaba Indigenous protected area adjacent to Mt Tambourine. Highlights of the Yarning Circle were made available via the project website - www.carbondating.art  which I actively developed over this period and launched in December 2022.  Delissa Walker also ran a well-attended weaving workshop on the same day.

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Conclusion

The project continued into 2023 with each of the artist carers receiving their funds to make works which were completed in late 2023. A MOU was developed, and Andrea Higgins began to contact galleries for future exhibition opportunities in 2023-25. The Sunshine Coast process also continued into 2023 as they had started later than the other carers. The website was also updated and the analytical writing processes with Tania Leimbach were resolved in early 2023 as the project funding (Australia Council, Arts Queensland and 5 Regional Arts development Funds (RAFs) was finalized and acquitted. Ultimately, we were then successful in winning a major Touring Queensland grant – which would then allow the work to go on tour to 6 venues between 2024 and 2025 (Bundaberg, Redlands, Atherton, Miles, Warwick, Longreach) – an exciting way to round out this long research and development process.

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