One tip for extending your creative practice

This Saturday the Tamworth Regional Art Collective's latest public art project will be officially launched. It is a project that I have been lucky enough to be a part of for so many reasons:

- Because it is a thrill to create,

- Because it is a thrill to create a permanent piece of art for my community,

- Because it is a thrill to create something that represents how I feel about this place, how I read its past and its future,

- But most of all because it is a thrill to create with this particular group of artists.

The members of the Tamworth Regional Art Collective have bought a special joy to my life. We work together, we create together, we inspire other, we challenge each other's skills, perspectives and creative process, we make each other better artists and most importantly, we have a lot of fun.

A few weeks ago on our installation day (after an emergency trip to Bunnings for more adhesive) I walked from the carpark of Bicentennial Park in Tamworth across to the site where the Art Collective were working and before I could even see the girls, I could hear them. Laughing. Loudly. And as a smile spread across my face, I thought "this is what it is all about".

Just six months in from taking a crazy leap from the public service into being a creator I was lucky enough to meet these amazing women and what a wonderful act of fate that was. To date we have taken each other along on many creative journeys, including the ones we go alone and the ones we do together and we are plotting many more to come, dreaming big dreams together.

Because together we are bolder and brighter and when we create together we feel a bit invincible. It is amazing and I really couldn't ask for more.

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If you are in Tamworth, come along to our opening and I'll introduce you - 11am, this Saturday 10th December, starting just behind the Hopscotch Cafe in Bicentennial Park. See you there!

Photo credits: Jodie Herden, Peter Hardin (Northern Daily Leader), and the nice man walking through the park at just the right time