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Newcomer to glass is no stranger to Canberra

Canberra Glassworks CEO Elizabeth Rogers… “I don’t see that it’s necessary to be an arts practitioner to run an organisation.” Photo: Anthony Hand

ELIZABETH Rogers joined Canberra Glassworks as its new CEO on October 18 after 15 years at the helm of Regional Arts NSW, but she’s no stranger to Canberra.

Indeed, as I found when I caught up with her by phone to, well, Canberra; this is where she’s been, living in a house she built in Wright. This will be the third time she’s lived in Canberra.

A country girl who grew up on a property near Quirindi, Rogers went to school in Armidale before her family moved to Sydney when she was in high school and feels Canberra also has always had a landscape resonant with the same qualities as that of the Liverpool Plains. 

“Of course, Sydney is a great place,” she says. “It costs a lot of money to live there and people don’t get around enough.”

As a young wife and mother, she brought her children up in Duffy when you could still go blackberrying, later returning for seven or eight years to run Canberra Arts Marketing before moving to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and finally to Regional Arts NSW, which, incidentally, doesn’t include Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.

She’s happy to be back here, where three of her four children still live and says: “I just think it’s a liveable city and you’re not battling with noise and traffic – and it’s always had an undervalued arts community.”

Apart from the proximity to national institutions such as the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, she appreciates the town’s diversity, its education system and the accessibility of the arts to the broader community.

“Most kids in Canberra have gone through music studies and it’s an educated audience.” 

Rogers is quick to assert that she is new to the world of glass, having in the past worked as a publicist and dogsbody in a small theatre company, as a festival director and most recently as the head of a peak arts organisation.

“Glass is something to which I’m very much looking forward,” she says, 

“Of course, there’s always going to be trepidation with a new CEO, but I don’t see that it’s necessary to be an arts practitioner to run an organisation… what you do need is to understand the art practice, whether with a glassmaker or a chamber orchestra or small theatre group, it’s the role of the CEO to enable the artists to achieve their goals.” 

And with the newly-proclaimed UN International Year of Glass coming up in 2022, there should be plenty of scope for that.

But there’s more than that to keep her busy.

“I think the new Kingston Arts Precinct is very exciting,” she says. 

“When I left Canberra, the Glassworks was in its embryonic years and the concept of an arts space on the Kingston Foreshore was just talked of… now we can bring all the diversity in the groups together to create a visual arts hub for Canberra.”

It’s not been an easy move to leave Regional Arts NSW as Rogers did on October 8.

“Fifteen years is a long time with an organisation and it’s really developed from the old model of the Arts Council, so that regional arts organisations have become far more professional and skilled up,” she says.

“At first, it was a group of talented individuals and gifted amateurs, but now with a stable, well-funded cultural infrastructure, with strong and very diverse organisational leadership, it meets the needs of the different regions.”

Rogers believes working for Regional Arts NSW, which operates from its roots up, is a good background for running an arts organisation where the emphasis should be on enhancing the visibility of artists.

She’s pleased to leave a unique network of regionally based independent organisations in a solid funding position even after recent covid challenges. 

And what next?

 “I’ve been away for 17 years, but I’m back now and I’m not moving again,” she says.

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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