Fleur Kilpatrick's recipe for restarting as a community artist

Artist Fleur Kilpatrick, an Associate Artist at Riverland Youth Theatre living on Erawirrung Country, shares a recipe for starting over as a community arts practitioner, developed through three major career restarts. Her practice uses art as a tool for community building, placemaking, and wellbeing, shaped by experiences as a university lecturer, youth theatre director, and playwright. The recipe, focused on working in small towns with big needs, includes ingredients like tea, humility, open communication, a good calendar system, old friends, questions, the right language, and resilience. Steps involve a pantry stocktake of community assets and needs, following through with multiple communication methods, listening for hidden problems, sprinkling in easy wins, moulding responses to community input, and remembering each situation is unique. Kilpatrick is currently undertaking a fellowship with Create SA about starting over in a new community. She notes that losing an arts organisation or employer is a defining feature of Australian arts careers, making such a recipe widely applicable. Five months into her new role in South Australia's Mid North, she is finding small possibilities and familiarity.