Canberra Region Tourism Leaders Forum Thursday 1 june 2023

Kieren Perkins OAM, CEO Australian Sports Commission

• Good morning everybody, it's a bit hard to believe it's been one year since I was last here!
• I would also like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people and elders past and present, as well as the amazing contribution of the traditional owners make to our region.
• The mandate of of the Australian Sports Commission is to support community sports through to elite levels
• We now recognise and support 95 sports
• Athletes live and train at our facility and make use of our programs. The demand for our site is increasing and the cost of living has an impact on our facilities.
• All of our sports are government and member funded - the athletes that represent us in the Olympic games are part of this.
• This year alone we expect to have over 5000 elite athletes involved in 172 camps from 31 different sports utilising specialist facilities.
• We provide 24/7 medical care, food and support and all the elements of living on site allow them to focus on their sport.

We have the Commonwealth Games coming up and from our perspective, the AIS is a global site and an appropriate place to hold it.

• During the pandemic we had to ensure our staff and athletes are safe. We closed down some of the public access during that time - but we have evolved to 'life-after'
• It has been great to see our increased uptake in school programs
• For example, we had visitors last night arrive at 6pm - not sure what the teachers thought that was going to give the kids but they can at least run around and make as much noise as they like!
• We are proud to show our newly modernised program, including new swimming pools.

We want to show kids sport is for all, it's inclusive and safe, and we hope to inspire the next generation to be involved in sport.

• We used to have 110,000 people each year visit before the pandemic
• We are enthusiastic about the increasing uptake post covid and hoping to offer more to the community
• A significant program of work is keeping our site relevant. Our recovery centre is known as the best in the world. We have technology and engineering creating products for high performance athletes on bespoke machinery, and so much more.
• We also drive the strategic work for the sports industry through our 2032 Sports Plus Strategy

• On Monday we will host a workshop on our campus to discuss the nation’s first codesigned National Sport Participation Strategy
• We want to promote good physical, mental and emotional health - how important sport is for us all
• Swimming Australia, partnered with us to host the 2024 Junior Pan Pacific Swimming Championships at the AIS.

• We found a indigenous artist and former Olympian to create a bespoke artwork for the ASC. They have taken an approach considering the environmental impact of the site, and the athletes and visitors, to create the piece.

We want to make this artwork and what it stands for a core part of who we are.

• Every day and act we want to acknowledge and learn from 65,000+ years of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture
• Regarding the Canberra Stadium, we continue to engage the Canberra government.
• We speak to all the institutions around our site, and acknowledge what the community needs, however a new stadium site is the decision of the government but we're enjoying being involved in those conversations.
• An extraordinary amount of sport infrastructure has been promised - not sure who is going to build it all - but we are working to advise and ensure facilities are accessible, 2024 (fingers crossed) we will all get to enjoy that new stadium.
• Thank you very much, I hope you can all appreciate the role we have and take seriously - to draw in Australians and inspire them to be our future sporting champions.

Bree Pickering, Director National Portrait Gallery

• Thanks so much, good morning. It's great to be here on Ngunnawal country
• I love being on an art and sport panel, it's nice to see them not as competitors!

What I love about the National Portrait Gallery is we're art plus literally everything. Because we're about people, and culture is people and I see the Portrait Gallery as an opportunity to bring art into everyday life.

• Portraiture is approachable, it's the gateway into art.
• I've been here for 6 weeks so everyone in this room would know more about Canberra and tourism than I do. But what you don't know more about, is me.

I started my career in a commercial art gallery in Carriageworks in Sydney, where my job was to sell art and I worked on a lot of major international projects that brought international artists to Australia, but I also promoted the work of Australian artists in international opportunities.

• From that opportunity. I went over to Washington DC under Ambassador Kim Beasley and I was the cultural program manager. It was a really incredible opportunity to think about what cultural diplomacy and soft diplomacy can do for us.
• From the embassy, I went to Philadelphia and ran an experimental art space.
• From there I worked in a gallery in Albury, it was an insight into how a niche art gallery operates and serves a community.

I learnt how art can really lead a town and set the tone.

• So we explored how to make the town unique, leaned into contemporary art, and they continue to build an incredible collection.
• I'm wondering what is unique about the Portrait Gallery. I thought about Canberra: it's beautiful, has great food and it's weird but interesting enough and perplexing enough to be quite unique.
• I think it's a really great starting point that people feel obliged to interact with us - tourists, schools and Canberrans. When people feel obliged to engage with you, that's a really great starting point.
• We're tying out organic collaboration and taking it up a notch.
• Organic collaboration just means leaning into what we're already doing and bringing networks together that draw on our existing strengths.

We want to contribute to Canberra's yearly event rhythm and the gaps that people are identifying around the nightlife and nighttime events.

• We are operational 364 days of the year, all weather, anyone can always come and access what's on offer.
• Interestingly, COVID showed that art galleries are inherently socially distanced, and being open during that time created this collective experience and we learnt a lot about how people value us.

I joined the gallery in it's 25th year, right when funding was announced, so I feel like a good luck charm.

• But the gallery's origin story begins in the early 1990s as a way to illustrate what a National Portrait Gallery could be in Australia and a touring exhibition entitled uncommon Australians towards an Australian Portrait Gallery was launched.

25 years on we maintain a national focus, and that was the focus on which we were founded.

• We just need to remember to be bold, ambitious and courageous and not get caught up in the day to day.

We want to be a remembered space. Our collection tells the stories of the most distinctive people in Australian history.

• We have three core and distinct programming spaces. We've got on site and gorgeous building. We have online we're actually the majority of our engagement occurs. And then we also have on tour across the country.
• Each year we welcome around 500,000 visitors on site and around about 2 million online.
• This year we'll see 20,000 school visitors.

To mark our 25th anniversary we commissioned 25 artists to produce new works that speak to their idea of portraiture.

• There a lots of school groups booking visits, by thinking slightly outside of what we 'always do' have been able to increase the numbers.
• We recently signed up to the Canberra Excursions Portal. It's taken our average weekly bookings from five to 14 and the students booked per week increased from 166 to 470.
• We ran a school photography program and learnt it took three visits for teenagers to feel comfortable in the gallery. interesting to see how teenagers feel when they interact with our space.

It's so important that they to feel comfortable in our space because we know that students and young people are our audiences of tomorrow.

• And importantly from my point of view, our donors of tomorrow as well.
• Portrait23: Identity is a major exhibition of new work from multi-award-winning contemporary Australian artists and collectives working across every state and territory. It's available to see until Sunday 18 June 2023. Please come and see it! Book free tickets here.
• Approach with our digital audiences, rather than see them as just an add on think about them as a core audience
• Ralph Heimans, who painted Queen Elizabeth II for her Diamond Jubilee, be featured later this year. The show will demonstrate how artists can get into rooms with powerful people.