Domenico Salvatore Mico OAM, December 8,1946-September 12, 2023.

THE funeral for Domenic Mico, the man who taught Canberrans the art of celebration, will be at St  Christopher’s Cathedral, Manuka, 10am on Friday, September  22.

A giant of the Canberra arts scene, Mr Mico died in hospital on Tuesday evening surrounded by family after suffering a haemorrhagic stroke. He was 76.

Few people have influenced Canberra’s cultural life as Mico has.

Named by “The Canberra Times” in 2001 as one of 75 people who had shaped the national capital, he was later honoured for his transformational work with an Italian knighthood (Cavalieri Order of Merit) in 2005 and a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2018.

Mico was the very first recipient in 1982 of the Australia Council’s Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and travelled to his native Italy to explore the roots of the celebratory instinct that he believed lay at the heart of all art.

Born in Reggio Calabria in 1946, he migrated to Australia with his parents in the mid-1950s.

As a young man, he trained at the old Canberra School of Art and taught there before turning to the performing and community arts in the early 1970s.

During his long career, he founded the Canberra Day celebrations which became the Canberra Festival, Blue Folk Community Arts Association at Strathnairn, Tuggeranong Arts Centre, TAU Community Theatre, the Backstage Performing Arts Café and notably, the National Multicultural Festival.

He established a community arts colony at Strathnairn and wrote 28 plays, including more serious original works like “The Other Side of the Moon” and “Sirocco and the Angel,” which dealt with the migrant experience in Australia.

He championed the cause of urban regional communities, sat on many community committees, nurtured young artists, directed more than 50 plays, stood unsuccessfully for political office and contributed significantly to the Italian community in Canberra.

In the latter part of his career while owner of Smith’s Alternative in Civic, Mico took up his art practice again and threw himself into painting landscapes and the solar system with the same passionate commitment he had given to all his endeavours, exhibiting his work at Form Studio and Gallery in Queanbeyan, M16 Artspace in Griffith, and Kyeema Gallery in Hall.

A towering personality in the Canberra art scene and a true believer in the arts with a near-childlike delight in performances, he staged pirate plays and operas around Lake Burley Griffin and founded countless public arts events.

He was especially proud of having  caused an unprecedented “arts traffic jam” when he presented Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” at Bruce Stadium.

Mico’s unquenchable drive and talent for creating a “fun” aspect to art – belly-dancers to embellish a  performance of Omar Khayyam’s poetry at Albert Hall, for instance – earnt him both fans and detractors, but when he turned 60, at a party at St John’s Hall, Reid, I saw a huge crowd of well-wishers pack in to express their appreciation of a life well-lived.

On August 24 this year he was awarded inaugural Multicultural  Community Lifetime Achievement Award.

He is survived by his wife Vicki, his children Rocco, Kama, Sophie and Nicholas, siblings Anna, Johanna, Rina and Tony and his large extended family.