ABOUT SAVVY ARTS
Operating since August 2009, Savvy Arts was initially co-founded by Eve Stafford and Carrie Bies to undertake a wide range of community and cultural development projects across regional Queensland. These include 3 -5 year Cultural Plans for many local governments in north, central and western Queensland. Also, Festival and Events Plans, Public Art Policies and catalogues of existing works, and a range of training topics for RADF committees, non-government organisations and communities.
ABOUT DIRECTOR Eve Stafford OAM
Eve Stafford is best known as founding chair and then Executive Officer of Arts Nexus as a development and service organisation for all the artforms across all of Far North Queensland between 1995-2008, including editing/producing 65 quarterly editions of Arts Nexus magazine.
Eve brings extensive experience in all aspects of grass-roots community cultural development and capacity-building especially across rural and remote Queensland, as well as high-level policy, planning and advocacy.
Her work has seen her appointed to Arts Queensland, the Australia Council for the Arts, and Playing Australia national touring grant assessment and policy panels – and other Ministerial, community, industry and policy advisory, review and assessment panels and boards at regional, state and federal levels.
AWARDS
Her awards include a 2 year Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship to investigate models of rural and remote service delivery (1998); the Queensland Certificate of Achievement for Arts and Cultural Services (2004); an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to the community, regional arts and cultural development (2007), and a Johnno Award for her outstanding contribution to the writing community of Queensland (2019).
BACKGROUND IN CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Originally a founding partner in a successful design and screen-printing business in the regional tourism industry, she pursued both arts and tourism photo-journalism in newspapers and magazines to promote both sectors, while working as a theatre producer, festival and events director, performing arts tour organiser, and media publicist for a range of arts and cultural tourism companies for over three decades.
CONSULTANT
As a recognised community and cultural leader, Eve co-founded Savvy Arts in 2009 as a consultancy to provide advisory support to local govts. and non- government agencies throughout regional Queensland, in particular developing cultural policies and 3-5 year cultural plans, all based on extensive community and stakeholder consultation. (i.e. Longreach, Barcaldine, Isaac, Mackay, Western Downs, Tablelands, Cook Shire, Cassowary Coast, etc.)
Other services delivered to regional Queensland were workshops on fundraising and grants, training and mentoring in all aspects of board governance and committee management, particularly for non-profits; project design and delivery; developing strategic, business and cultural plans; festivals and event strategies; public art and precinct plans and publications, and innovative information hubs to connect communities, all based on integrating social, cultural, environmental and economic pillars of sustainability to support vibrant and cohesive communities.
A published writer and poet, Eve has led writing workshops, edited /published several magazines and books and developed websites. Eve has particular experience in organisational governance, having been founder and / or on the boards of many community-based organisations. (e.g. the Queensland Writers Centre).
FOCUS TOWARDS WRITERS / WRITING
After commissioning an economic study of creative industries in Far North Queensland, Eve led three intervention projects to address the least developed artform sub-sectors identified – crafts, festivals, and writing.
- Craft Connect: a craft sector development intervention ran over two years, culminating in an FNQ showcase of FNQ crafters works in Singapore.
- Festlinx: a five year engagement with 85 festivals in FNQ to build their skills in good governance and operational capacity.
- Tropical Expresso: a series of monthly readings and workshops featuring FNQ authors was a deliberate intervention to build a sub-sector of connected local writers. This nurtured the Tropical Writers Inc. group into being, who went on to develop the biennial Cairns Tropical Writers Festival (CTWF) in 2008.
Cairns Tropical Writers Festival invited Eve back in 2015 as Program Director to grow the 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2021 festival programs while also convening the year-round program of events. (Sadly the 2020 and 2021 festivals were postponed due to Covid.)
COLLABORATORS AND PARTNERS ARE KEY
Keen to develop key partnerships during this time Eve became the QLD Writer’s Centre regional rep for Cairns and the FNQ region, including the Torres Straits.
As a strategic move to grow CTWF internationally over the next 10 years, Eve also became Secretary of the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators.
Eve often works in collaboration with esteemed Savvy Arts Associates to ensure the best expertise is available for each challenge.