WHO: Anne Reeves
ROLE: National Parks Australia
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 3.20 x 2.10m

Anne got straight to the point: “research has a purpose – so what is the purpose of this?” Hopefully she received an answer through the course of the meeting. She was very interested in messages and ways to convey them through traditional versus innovative forms such as social media. Anne said the field of communication was changing and there was an increasing need for creative  methods of communicating environmental issues to an urbanised society.  She liked the idea that artists mine science for poetry.

Her idea of the best bang for your buck was a groundswell grass roots approach.  She was concerned that if you sit at pokies everyday you obviously have a radically  different approach to a bush walker, and that there is a conscious need to relate to different sectors of the community. Together they talked of using social modes – Where is the meaningful exchange in Youtube? There is the risk of superficiality.  Jason and Lara talked about artists enjoying working site-specifically and with particular communities, for example Liz Dunn who is making a work researching birders between VIC and QLD.

Anne thought artists might transcend the heaviness that so many drastically urgent issues convey – to burden people with guilt was not healthy.

She spoke of the perception in Indigenous cultures that all life is part of a cycle and agreed that communal sharing with office workers, bushwalkers, nature and conservationist societies was an important step towards lessening the disconnection between urban dwellers and the natural environment.