HowlRound: At a time when the United States is turning inward, seeing diversity and immigration—traditionally America’s strengths—as dangers, and threatening to eliminate government funding for the arts and humanities, Australia, with the groundbreaking Asia Triennial of the Performing Arts (AsiaTOPA) Festival is doing just the opposite.
Conceived and curated by Stephen Armstrong and Kate Ben-Tovim of the Arts Centre Melbourne, and supported by a coalition of private philanthropy and government—federal and local—funding, AsiaTOPA aimed to reach out to Australia’s Asian neighbors, and to reach in to its own migrant communities.
2 comments:
AsiaTOPA is an incredible concept of what a performing arts festival should be. Schneider opens with a remark on the distressing reality of exclusivity in the US. The lack of diversity and limited of government funding creates an environment that is not conducive to bringing together artists from around the world to show their work and collaborate. The support of private philanthropists and governments in Australia to fund this is an incredible showing of the power that people can have when they work together to create something special. I enjoyed how a major focus of this festival was to include indigenous artists and local immigrants. I also appreciated the goals to address major issues such as climate change, as well as to build connections between businesses and diplomatic entities through the arts.
It is so incredibly necessary to display all forms of diversity and culture in the arts today, and this proves to be the exact goal of AsiaTOPA. I think it's not only critical to uplift diversity in the current political climate that attempts to erase differences, but to celebrate it as well-- something AsiaTOPA seems to do extremely successfully. I love that the ideas of risk-taking and uniqueness are the core aspects of this arts festival. It addresses some particularly crucial/unheard topics such as global warming, immigration, diplomacy, and even engages indigenous artists. Their engagement with diversity and inclusion of Asian culture has also proven to be successful, as they cite that the number of Indian students in Australia is on a steady rise.
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