Community stories: 20 November 2024
While it covers around 210 km, the locality of Porongurup in the Great Southern region of Western Australia has a population of only 370. A short drive east of Mount Barker, the community is nestled in the unique and ancient mountains of the Porongurup Range.
Thanks to a $9,961 Small & Vital Strengthening Rural Communities grant, locals aged 20 to 75 were supported to participate in the creation of an original, community led, intercultural, intra-regional dance performance.
Called The Stars Descend, the final performance was part of a broader project called Distributed 15 – a work about climate action and hope that explored our shared responsibility to care for each other and the natural world through an immersive, ecological creative arts experience.
Auspiced by Denmark Community Resource Centre and facilitated by Annette Carmichael Projects; professional dancers, choreographers and artists ran 20 dance workshops with the participants during 2022 and 2023. Participants collaborated with facilitators throughout the creative process, and the importance of connection to the unique ecological sites in the region, climate action and hope were interwoven into the workshops and the culminating performance to a packed audience from surrounding communities.
The Porongurup dancers were joined by residents from Albany, Denmark and Mt Barker in their performance of The Stars Descend, creating connection through dance and art.
The project made a huge contribution to the vitality, social inclusion, wellbeing and community cohesion of Porongurup. One participant said there was an increased feeling of connection through the program and an intense pride in their achievement.
“This project gave me so much connection with people, place and myself. The joy that I felt contributing for the greater good was food for my soul. The way it incorporated the locals into a story that’s bigger than us all. We moved on the land, for the land.”
Watch the project in action here.
