It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Research Creation Showcase 2023. I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are holding the Showcase and pay my respects to the Gundungurra and Darug elders past, present and emerging. I would also like to extend my thanks to the Blue Mountains City Council for supporting and extending the partnership with Western Sydney University by offering the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Gallery for our Showcase.

This is the eighth iteration of our Showcase and the first to be held in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. With a number of our staff and students living in the Mountains, this is an especially significant location and one that figures emphatically in our theme: People Place Planet. The Executive Officer of the BMCC, Dr Rosemary Dillon has stated that, “The Council’s overall objective is to build a sustainable and successful future for the Blue Mountains and for us to be recognised nationally and internationally as a model for sustainable living.” We see our Showcase as contributing to this goal and celebrating the makers, storytellers and creatives in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, WSU.

Our program begins appropriately with a Welcome to Country by Gundungurra man and Gully Traditional Owner (GTO), Uncle David King aka Dingo Darbo. Uncle David will also lead a Caring for Country workshop for visiting Blue Mountains-based High School students. Our keynote address is presented by Mayor of the Blue Mountains, Mark Greenhill. Mayor Greenhill was first elected as a Councillor in 1999 and has been Mayor since 2013, making him the longest serving Mayor of the City of the Blue Mountains. The Showcase will then be officially opened with works in the gallery on show as well as projections and digital works on display screens. We will have two sessions of Caring for Country workshops and there will also be two sessions of “Lightning Talks” — one in the morning and one after lunch in which WSU staff and Postgraduate students present exemplars of their creative practice and research. A panel of Blue Mountains Creatives will take place commencing at 3:30 PM engaging with the key questions facing artists, storytellers and makers in the Mountains. Thanks to Ann Niddrie for agreeing to chair the panel and to panellists Katrina Sandbach, Veechi Stuart, Rilka Oakley and Kelsey King for agreeing to share their views. The Showcase will be capped with closing remarks from Federal MP for Macquarie and Special Envoy for the Arts Susan Templeman. We are grateful to have Susan - a highly valued MP for the Mountains – with us on the day. If there is any guide to the purpose and rationale for this showcase it is that the idea of place in art is where identity, myth and ecological concerns coalesce. Indigenous artists are always attuned to the earth, to Country and with their contemporaries are asking about the kinds of impact art can have, now made so urgent by human-engendered climate change. Can art influence our inertia and ignorance of imminent catastrophes? For art that often appears scattered and peripatetic, we offer a grounded sense of place, here in the Blue Mountains where we present work that is forthright and based on lived experience. If art is about choices, then please enjoy our exhibition and presentations to know more about the connections between art and place, and in this way to discover something of the connections between art and life.

I would like to especially thank the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, WSU for its support, Rosemary Dillon, Executive Officer of the Blue Mountains City Council, Rilka Oakley and Katrina Noorbergen of the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre for their time and commitment to our project and my co-organisers of the Showcase Dr Leo Robba, Ms Lina Gong and Jack Coggins for their effort and skill towards the mounting of this event.

Thanks to all.

Hart Cohen