Some news about next year’s Canberra International Music Festival leads HELEN MUSA’s “Arts in the City” column this week. 

ARTISTIC director of the Canberra International Music Festival, Belgium-born Roland Peelman, has emailed from of all places, Flanders Fields, to announce the return of the festival in 2022 under the theme “Pole To Pole”. It refers, he says, not only to the extremes of our planet, “but also the many pathways that hold us together, the ancient song lines that cross the Australian continent and the new connections that provide life and new creativity.” 

THE National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association Dance College has moved this year’s auditions online to protect applicants, families and communities, with plans to provide all four of its curriculum courses in 2022. Applications close November 1, but NAISDA’s audition team is available for a toll-free yarn 8.30am-5pm, weekdays on 1800 117116 or by email at auditions@naisda.com.au 

A WALK along the tracks and pathways around Bingie on the south coast during the covid restrictions and the sense of “gratitude that this small patch was not burnt, gratitude that I am still motivated to walk and work outdoors” is among the pleasures captured by painter Stuart Whitelaw in his exhibition at Gallery Bodalla, online at gallerybodalla.com.au

IRISH-Australian poet, Lizz Murphy, who fine-tuned her poetry skills while commuting by bus between Binalong and Canberra, has released her ninth poetry book, “The Wear of My Face” through Spinifex Press. Murphy writes about everyday life, nature, landscape, suburbia, skies, social issues, world conflict. Her writing can be accessed at lizzmurphypoet.blogspot.com 

IRANIAN-born Adelaide artist Hossein Valamanesh is well-known in Canberra for an exhibition in 2003 at the Drill Hall Gallery, for a residency in the ANU’s sculpture workshop and for his theatre designs. Now Valamanesh’s first exhibition in Europe, “This Will Also Pass”, is running until February at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris. 

THE Australian Wind Symphony is working on a series of albums, the first of which will be “Captivating – Live”, featuring newly-mastered and some previously unreleased recordings. The album release is a while away, but there’s a single of an audience favourite, Paul Hart’s “Cartoon”,  accessible here.

THE annual Capital Arts Patrons’ Organisation auction, scheduled for October 30, has been postponed to March. However, the annual CAPO grants round goes on, with 20 grants amounting to about $32,000 on offer. Applications to capital.artspatrons@gmail.com by midnight, October 18. Application details at capo.org.au