Cementa Grant
Image provided by Alex Wisser and published with permission.

About Cementa

Cementa Inc is a not-for-profit regional arts organisation based in cement town, Kandos NSW. Their core activity is based around developing work for and mounting a biennial contemporary arts festival called Cementa. The festival takes place over 4 days and exhibits the work of over 40 contemporary artists in venues across the post industrial town of Kandos, including sound art, performance, video, installation, and new media art forms. The festival averages an attendance of around 2000 people and celebrates the state of contemporary art in Australia and the town (and region) that hosts it.

Between festivals Cementa Inc.run a robust annual program of artist residencies, workshops, special events and projects both in Kandos and across regional NSW. These activities form part of a larger strategy that the organisation has developed to meet their mission goal of cultivating contemporary art practice in Regional NSW. Cementa also place an emphasis on engaging the community and producing art that addresses regional community concerns.

http://cementa.com.au/

SMSA grant helps Cementa’s workshops hit the road!

Saturday, 22 September 2018

Though our Grants & Awards program, Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts provides support to educational and cultural organisations who meet our criteria.

In 2018, SMSA Board awarded a grant of $10,000 to Cementa Inc, a not-for-profit regional arts organisation based in Kandos, NSW, to enable several creative arts workshops to be held with school students in regional communities.

The first workshop was held in June, with Cementa Co-Director Alex Wisser and artist Michael Petchkovsky loading themselves and piles of second-hand, obsolete analogue computer and AV equipment into a ute and travelling to schools in Wellington and Dubbo.

Primary and High School students explored the older tech, recording and modifying the effects achieved on the analogue devices to create audio and visual soundscapes.

The workshops were met with great enthusiasm from the students and teachers, with Alex commenting that they could barely “keep up with the questions and ideas that [the primary school children] constantly threw at us”.

Find our more about the Cementa Workshop Roadshow here.

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SMSA’s GRANTS PROGRAM