Coastal Connections concert
The community well-being initiative documented the community coming to terms with the Covid pandemic.
The Coastal Connections concert at the Arts Centre was the culmination of a community well-being initiative launched last year, as the community came to terms with the Covid pandemic.
Bass Coast Mayor, Cr Brett Tessari launched seven new films that were a result of creative collaborations in the Coastal Connections project.
The films, by videographer Terry Melvin, feature images of the natural world in Bass Coast intertwined by interviews with community members describing their special blue and green places.
The soundtracks for the films were composed by local musicians and during the concert, audience members heard a number of the compositions performed live.
The recent lockdown had organisers holding their breath, but restrictions lifted in time for the event to go ahead. With capacity capped at 50 per cent, it took some quick thinking to ensure the audience could watch the show and still abide by the Covid restrictions.
“The musicians and creative artists who were active participants in the project agreed to watch the concert from backstage to free up room in the auditorium for other community members,” said concert producer Laura Brearley.
“They watched the concert on a large screen brought in especially by the Arts Centre for the occasion.
“It was an act of generosity that has characterised the whole of the Coastal Connections project. The selflessness of the community enabled the concert to go ahead in a way that kept everyone safe.”
For Covid reasons, communal singing was not possible in the auditorium, but the audience actively participated through deaf-signing an Acknowledgment to Country song and Uncle Kutcha Edwards’s Covid-era single called “We Sing”.
“I was very moved to see a voiceless choir coming together in this way. It went beyond words to a sense of shared spirit,” Kutcha said.
Coastal Connections was by a Bass Coast Shire Council Business and Community Resilience Grants Program. The project has been a creative response to the isolation and hardship experienced by the community in the Covid era.
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