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Downer takes the arts reins at Tuggeranong

New Tuggeranong Arts Centre CEO Caroline Downer… “There won’t be massive changes; it’s more about strengthening things.”

CAROLINE Downer is the new CEO of Tuggeranong Arts Centre, but she’s no stranger to Canberra.

Raised in Canberra, her mother, the late Jill Downer, was the arts dynamo who founded Early Music Enterprises and her oboist sister Jane works in England where she heads up the group Austral Harmony.

Downer has been at the desk in Tuggeranong since June 14, arriving back home after more than 30 years’ experience in the arts, most recently as executive director of Arts North West, which covers an area of more than 100 square kilometres and before that as director of the New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale.

Both jobs, and the fact that she has co-ordinated large regional music festivals and has served on arts committees and as a peer reviewer for the Australia Council, she believes have prepared her well for the new job.

It’s been a long time away. After schooling at Girls Grammar, where her mum taught music, Downer left town at 17 to study music performance and art. She holds honours degrees in music and fine arts and a master of arts honours in museum studies from the University of Melbourne. The arts landscape in the ACT is “vaguely familiar,” she says. She’s managed to find a few old school friends and is already taking a keen interest in what’s happening over at the Glassworks, where former chief of Regional Arts NSW, Elizabeth Rogers, is now CEO.

Armidale was very supportive of the creative community and Arts North West, she says, is the biggest of the arts infrastructure organisations in NSW, serving 12 different local government areas.

One big difference for her will be that Canberra has a much lower indigenous population than the north-west, home to the huge Gamilaraay/Kamilaroi group, but she also knows that the ACT’s First Nations people are very active in the arts.

Another difference is that Tuggeranong Arts Centre has a physical building, whereas Arts North West has a network of venues, with a couple of galleries.

She is well aware that Tuggeranong is no longer in “Nappy Valley” as it was when Tuggeranong Community Arts started, so she’s busy getting to know the community, which she describes as “very lovely”.

She and her husband have recently bought a house at Macarthur, in North Tuggeranong. Their two adult daughters have flown the coop, one of them to study violin and the other to study design.

She admires Tuggeranong Arts Centre’s gallery spaces and now, with funding recently announced by the ACT government, she’ll be overseeing refurbishments to the centre’s theatre – she applauds founding father Domenic Mico’s decision to make it tiny and accessible.

“We definitely don’t want to be in competition with the larger venues,” she says, “I see it as becoming more a black box kind of theatre.”

Tuggeranong Arts Centre was hit hard by covid, but with acting CEO Karena Keys holding the fort before Downer was appointed, their major projects such as Fresh Funk, Messengers and Woden Arts are still going strong. 

With a musical background, Downer is pleased that the Phoenix Collective is now performing regularly at the centre, and she understands that Kim Cunio from the ANU School of Music is keen on partnerships, too.

“I guess the trick is to be able to know how to share resources,” she says, adding that she is benefitting from a strong team.

“There won’t be massive changes; it’s more about strengthening things, getting those big blocks back in place.”

 

 

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Helen Musa

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