New art and artisan trail showcases Snowy Monaro region's creativity

Mention the Snowy Monaro region and chances are outdoor adventures, the Snowy Mountains, brumbies or the Snowy Hydro electric scheme come to mind. South East Arts wants to change that. It hopes that soon thoughts of sculpture trails and hand-crafted ceramics will also pop up. It has developed the Snowy Monaro Art and Artisan Trail to shine a light on the creative thread running through the region.

For South East Arts executive director Andrew Gray, it is all about promoting cultural tourism in the region. He tasked cultural development officer Gaby Tagliapietra with bringing that vision to life.

“Cultural tourism was the essence behind starting the trail and to get artists and artisans thinking about how they could tap into the creative market,” Ms Tagliapietra said. “We recognise that there hasn’t been a focus on this but there are a lot of creative people living here.”

The trail aims to support those artists and artisans by providing a new audience for them and making locals and visitors more aware of this lesser-known feature of the region.

The initial focus was around Jindabyne after the La Nina event caused Lake Jindabyne to rise to unprecedented levels. That led to the cancellation of the long-running Lake Light Sculpture event at Easter.

South East Arts wanted to fill that gap because the annual event is so important to the area.

“We put together a list of all the art in the Jindabyne area. That was the first iteration but we always knew we wanted to do a region-wide thing,” Ms Tagliapietra said. “After Easter we started working on it and delivered it in early July.”

A big part of the trail is public art that is accessible 24/7, such as the region’s many sculpture trails. These include trails at Lake Crackenback Resort, Bombala’s River Walk and Wildbrumby Distillery where artist Brad Spalding has put together a beautiful collection on the property. Cooma has several sculpture trails.

Other public art includes murals and mosaics, many of which are in Jindabyne.

The trail also features six artisans with a public offering, while the work of artists without a studio open to the public may be viewed at the Monaro Art Group Gallery and Raglan Gallery in Cooma, Jindabyne Art Gallery and Borderline Gallery in Delegate.

Beyond the Snowy Monaro region, people can use the Creative South website to build their own trail of creatives in south-eastern NSW. Creative South is a joint project of Southern Tablelands Arts, South East Arts and South Coast Arts. It is funded through Create NSW’s Restart initiative to help build cultural tourism.

It covers a huge area: Wollondilly, Upper Lachlan, Hilltops, Wingecarribee (Southern Highlands), Goulburn Mulwaree, Yass Valley, Queanbeyan Palerang, Shellharbour, Kiama and Shoalhaven, Eurobodalla, Bega Valley and Snowy Monaro.

“When I came into the role, I was tasked with updating the website, particularly for the Snowy Monaro region, which we felt had been under-represented for quite some time,” Ms Tagliapietra said. “It had never been mapped and documented as we have done in the last four to six months.”

On the website, locals and visitors can find anything creative, from workshops, festivals and events to galleries and unique retail experiences with locally made wares.

Ms Tagliapietra said it was a comprehensive guide to finding everything in the region. Every entry comes up on the interactive map and people can create their own trail and send it to their phone.

”It is a really useful tool for people who want to find all our creativity in this region,” Ms Tagliapietra said.

Early feedback about the Snowy Monaro Art and Artisan Trail has been positive.

“People have said it is so good to see this in our region, not just creative people but our visitor information centres,” Ms Tagliapietra said. “They feel this is going to be a very good offering for them.”

The booklet is available at visitor centres and libraries, as well as cafes and shops.