Change Media Highlights 2021 - 2002
Statements of Support
for Jen’s 2022 Ros Bower Award nomination
Kon Karapanagiotidis OAM, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
“The ASRC had the pleasure of working with Jen in 2013 on two projects, Light in Winter and Media Training. Both projects were a huge success, mainly in centering the voices of people seeking asylum and refugees. Change Media offered invaluable support to our organisation by training our members, in creative media skills, donating equipment and setting up a media production hub at ASRC.
If it wasn't for the critical work of Jen, important voices wouldn't have been heard or felt empowered to speak their truth. 8 years later, we still talk about and reflect on the projects for the power, agency and impact on the lives of refugees''.
Clyde Rigney Jnr – Ngarrindjeri man, collaborator since 2008
“I’ve had the privilege to work with Jen since 2008, acknowledging her commitment to our Elders since the Hindmarsh Island Bridge protests in the 90s. She worked hand in hand with Ngarrindjeri governance bodies and communities to set up media hubs and train across our country. Devising arts and media strategies with our Elders, she worked to our needs to ensure we retain control of our stories and how Ngarrindjeri are presented to the world.
Over the decades she has listened deeply, it is rare and inspiring to have a peer relationship like this. Jen explores how to engage everyone in discussions on our shared responsibility for this country, to come to terms with our past and develop a liveable future together. Reflecting on the impact her work has had on our community, and the unprecedented success we have achieved with her and Change Media, the Ngarrindjeri Nation couldn’t have asked for a better partnership. I wholeheartedly support her nomination for the Ros Bower 2022 Award.”
Paul Tanner – Arabana man, Manager, Aboriginal community dance group Dusty Feet Mob
“I highly recommend Jen for the Ros Bower Award. An essential make-up of her work is the strong support she and her team developed with our communities in Port Augusta. She takes seriously the role of passing creative knowledge and storytelling skills on to the younger generations in inspiring and respectful ways.
Dusty Feet Mob – This Story’s True is a testament to her abilities as a community arts facilitator and a powerful expression of the old and the new: Young people are not just "the leaders of tomorrow", they are leaders of today. Jen has provided opportunities for our young people to learn about themselves and develop digital media and leadership skills for life, while also honouring the legacy of Uncle Archie Roach.”
Alex Kelly - indepdendent artist + filmmaker, 2007 Kirk Robson Award recipient
“I have known Jen for over 20 years, meeting when she was developing refugee documentary Holiday Camp documentary in 2001. As an artist who practices at the intersection of art/ activism/ social justice and change, I feel at once like I have many peers who use these terms, and a small few who live and breathe them in their practice - particularly over time. Jen is one of these artists who walks the talk. Her practice is precisely that - a practice. Engaged in deep reflection, challenging herself and her peers, Jen's work is always at the most important edge of the critical conversations we need to be having about health, safety, race, power and connection. Whether it be through film or theatre, games or installations, Jen pushes every form and pulls apart every preconception she, her collaborators and audiences might have. Her humour and warmth, determination and the powerful quality of art work that she creates are so deeply worthy of celebration and accolades. I am cheering her on for this nomination for recognition from the Australia Council for the Arts.”
Cedric Varcoe, Ngarrindjeri artist and cultural storyteller
“Working with Jen and Carl over the last 5 years has changed my life. They have encouraged me to experiment with new ways to create, to paint, to tell our stories, and now my work has been on ABC and SBS.
Before working on Contested Space, the concrete mask installation with Jen and Carl, I never spoke publicly about losing both my older brothers to death in custody. This work had a huge impact on me as an artist, on my career, my family and my community. I fully support Jen for this award.”
Norm and Sarah Horton – Joint CEOs, Feral Arts
“We are delighted to add our voices to the chorus of CACD practitioners across the country singing the praises of Jen Lyons-Reid in support of her nomination for this year’s Ros Bower award.
We can think of no one more deserving of this prestigious honour. We especially wanted to highlight Jen’s thought leadership and her selfless contributions to the evolution of CACD practice at a national level. Jen, and ‘partner in crime’ Carl Kuddell, have spearheaded a fearless, inciteful and at times brutal analysis of power and privilege at work within the arts sector, and in CACD itself. We have all benefited from Jen’s honesty, bravery and brilliance. When it comes to media analysis and the politics of power there are simply no sharper or more experienced minds.”
Sandra, Jimmy and Lorcan Hopper – Lorcan is an artist, performer and director living with Down Syndrome
“It is not often that you meet a creative such as Jen Lyons-Reid. Jen’s exceptional ability for lateral thinking opens a portal to expression through many mediums empowering anyone who has the good fortune to work with her.
Her years and expertise in filmmaking and storytelling, delivered with openness and warmth, made it possible for a fellow creative and emerging director/film maker, our son in this case, Lorcan James Hopper, to realise his dream of bringing to the screen his version of a Soap Opera. Jen immediately set to work within minutes of meeting Lorcan who has Down Syndrome, and putting his ideas to a cartoon storyboard, listening and sketching as he responded to her creative provocations. The result is the award-winning short film The Loop, featured in the Adelaide Film Festival and film festivals worldwide.
We feel honored to support the nomination of Jen Lyons-Reid for the Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development. Jen works selflessly across the community giving voice and raising awareness with wisdom and expertise, and delivers, enriching the lives of many.”
Gaelle Mellis - Artistic Director, Tutti Arts, Disability Screen Strategy Executive, SA Film Corporation, 2020 National Arts + Disability Award recipient
“She is a director, filmmaker, web + game designer, cartoonist, visual artist, feminist, educator and extraordinary CACD leader, and I have of course been a long-time admirer of Jen Lyons-Reid. Her exploration of multi-disciplinary ways of addressing social justice and human rights issues is truly inspirational.
I had the opportunity to work more closely with Jen in 2018-2019 when she collaborated with artists living with disabilities on the co-creative documentary The Loop. Jen ‘got’ disability unlike many other non-disabled artists I have worked with previously. She has the most impressive ability to truly empower others around her. The influence she has had on the individuals and organisations she has worked with along with her passion for social justice is unmatched. She is a role model and truth be told I want to be her! I am truly a fan girl! - I can think of no other artist more deserving of the Ros Bower Award.”
Kelli McCluskey, chief executive artist, pvi collective
“It’s a real privilege to nominate Jen Lyons-Reid for the 2022 Ros Bower Award. Jen is a leading creative change maker for social justice and equity. Within her practice, Jen experiments across multiple art forms to create collaborative provocations within communities. Each work is a reminder that other worlds are possible.
I believe Jen’s extensive work within marginalized communities has contributed significantly to the reframing of community art and socially engaged experimental practice in this country, to the benefit of both. Throughout her career, Jen’s outstanding work on critical literacy in CACD has offered new tools to enable excluded communities to show up and participate fully. In my mind, it is her generosity, playfulness and compassion that transforms the complex rigor of her work and makes it stand out and stick around beyond any presented outcome. We need more of this substance and more women like Jen. More creative disruption, more active listening, more collective decision making and more solidarity.”
Edwin Kemp Attrill – Creative Director, Replay Creative, 2018 Kirk Robson Award recipient
“Jen is a brilliant thinker, empathetic human and an asset to Australia’s CACD sector. I had the pleasure of working with Jen and Carl on ‘What Privilege?’ with ActNow Theatre. Their body of work incorporating social practice, game theory, community engagement and film (and much more), is an impressive testament to Jen’s multidisciplinary skill set.
In particular, Jen has an extraordinary combination of intelligence, courage and compassion. She approaches her work with intellectual rigour and a willingness to engage with truly radical ideas, while being rooted in the welfare of people around her and the development of self-determination of communities. This complimentary approach deserves to be celebrated and encouraged in the CACD sector. She is truly deserving of this award.”
Wallace McKitrick - Senior Policy + Program Officer, Indigenous Culture Branch, Ministry for the Arts, Australian Government 2004-14; Senior Policy Adviser, ATSIC; recipient of 1987 Ros Bower Award (then named Peter Hicks)
“Representing a federal funding agency concerned with cultural initiatives of Indigenous communities, I had regular contact with Jen in her various project roles with Tallstoreez Productionz and Change Media during the decade to 2015. I also had to assess the success of projects according to participants, community leaders and my agency’s criteria. Since then Jen and I have continued to discuss innovative community cultural development work she has been pursuing. I offer the following brief observations, though I’d happily enlarge on them if asked.
Jen is a powerhouse of imagination, enthusiasm and dedication to principle, which she weds with well-researched and often ingenious practical methodologies. All her developmental work has been outstanding in terms of artistry, originality, strategic vision, technical skills and collaborative relationships. She has a profound understanding of educational and community development philosophy in community-based cross-cultural work. Indeed she is an innovator in this regard. Her understanding generates techniques which are inherently democratic and flexible, and which swiftly build the confidence and initiative of participants. Projects are anchored in a joint vision – for example, with appropriate Elders and project participants. The focus is always on eliciting participants’ own knowledge and skills as a means to their artistic growth and maturity. Moreover, as a philosopher of community development Jen has made a unique and well-documented contribution to Australian critique, theory and practice.
I have used a number of superlatives in this testimonial. They are warranted. During my 15 years’ acquaintance with her, I have been deeply impressed by Jen’s big picture thinking, her commitment to artistic standards and community benefits, her people-focused methodology, her adaptability, energy and ethics. Without hesitation, I support Jen’s nomination for the 2022 Ros Bower Award.”
Melinda Rankin, Artistic Director, Fabrik Arts Lobethal
“Jen has an incredibly broad creative practice, based in extensive theoretical research, practical skills and a visceral sense of social justice. As a gallery director I have experienced Jen’s practice as an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on years developing techniques and expertise in documentary making, sculpture, construction, cartooning and poetry. Woven throughout these skills is an intensely collaborative mindset that has seen her connect with a broad range of community members.
Exhibitions presented with Jen’s involvement during my time at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery and at Fabrik Arts + Heritage had clearly evolved from long-term and meaningful collaborative and consultative relationships with First Nations artists and leaders. The results were powerful and complex projects, incorporating innovative and engaging displays and interventions that gave voice to unheard, uncomfortable and compelling narratives. I highly recommend Jen for this award.”
Helen Kelly – visual artist, ex-director, Dookie Festival
“Outstanding features of Jen Lyons Reid’s work and way of being in the world are her playfulness, her deep sensitivity to injustice, and her rigour to question and cut-through unconstructive modes of operating. Her impressive combined body of work illustrates her energetic style and her intensely respectful collaborative practice. Jen’s ability to shine a light on cultural misappropriation, especially of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ work and stories, has deeply impacted my own work as an artist.
I see Jen at the forefront of shifting perceptions of discrimination in Australia’s arts and cultural landscape. This award would go some way to acknowledging her unflinching effort in working rigorously to support best practice in the arts in Australia. I believe Jen to be a more than deserving recipient of such a prestigious award.”
Leah Grace, Arts & Culture, Alexandrina Council
“This Breath is Not Mine to Keep is one of the exhibitions that helps Goolwa’s Signal Point Gallery keep a reputation for engaging artistic programming. Visitors enjoyed interactions with the variety of media. The army of Terracotta Worriers were of particular interest. The poets who had responded to the last Change Media exhibitions were particularly pleased to see their work incorporated.”
Veronica Pardo, former CEO, Arts Access Victoria
“What Privilege? stems from a process of deep consideration of the needs of and benefits to the partner organisations and their communities. Arts Access Victoria has identified a need to further develop its capacity to build solidarity and co-operation within the arts sector, in order to facilitate a more inclusive and egalitarian artistic community.
Working with Change Media, we saw opportunities to invest in the development of tailored universal access resources that can affect change in the communities in which we work. In reciprocity, we offered Change Media our expertise in universal access, so that together we can develop resources that have the potential to impact on the greatest number of participants. During testing the What Privilege cards and resulting group dynamic games, in-house as project assessment and with Arts, Health and Disability sector CEOs, we already saw amazing engagement and strong interest in intersectional engagement through the arts.”
David Sudmalis, Director, Arts Tasmania, Acting Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
“I have known and admired the work of JEN LYONS-REID for over 15 years across Tallstoreez Productionz and Change Media, both small outfits with big, deep national impact. I have seen the uncompromising work of Jen change lives – uncompromising in that it does not baulk from asking and unpacking the real issues: you know, those entrenched ones that are so much a fabric of the dominant culture that they are rendered almost invisible by their ignorant acceptance. This means the conversations are difficult and confronting, but they bravely deliver lasting change and impact to communities. Jen has not only the courage to not only prosecute a vision of genuine cultural egalitarianism and self-determination, but to realise it in communities where frictions about identity and opportunity are never far from the surface. This is immense and impressive.
And it also takes its toll. Jen is one of that rare few who give and give - then give some more - even when there is nothing left in the tank. By bringing all of her physical, intellectual, creative and emotional resources to communities through her work (and then some), Jen embodies the passionate commitment of Ros Bower herself in championing artists and communities to explore new ways of seeing themselves through the arts, through a process of enriching cultural democracy. I cannot imagine individuals more deserving of recognition than Jen. Typically, her work obscures her own ego (appropriate given the frameworks and contexts within which she operates) and her public recognition is now overdue. What would so many communities be like without the work of Jen? I am an external observer, a funder, a voyeur to her work. Perhaps asking the Ngarrindjeri nation, asylum seekers, and the milieu of the disposed and dispossessed would give further insight into her impact, but from a white, ‘with-means’ arts bureaucrat’s perspective, CACD practice in Australia owes quite a debt to Jen and I recommend her without reservation to you.”
Louise Dunn – Executive Director, ACE Open, ex-Nexus Arts
“I am nominating Jen Lyons-Reid, because her decades of experimental CACD work respectfully delivers spectacular art and innovative practice. She truly is a national leader in provocative CACD and critical literacy.
There is no doubt in my mind that Jen is worthy of recognition by her peers. Jen has focussed her artistic practice on devising radical CACD models. She has supported hundreds of emerging artists from diverse backgrounds to explore careers in the arts. Jen’s projects build on decades of multi-lateral trust building, and a lived cultural exchange that enables communities to redress injustice and support self-determination.”
Priyanka Pema, Buthanese community member, Australian Refugee Association
“When I was going through the stressful Visa process as a young refugee, I had severe depression, I got the opportunity to work with Jen and her team on creating films and theatre performances. Her enthusiasm, care and support was beautiful. The media hub that she set up at ARA became our meeting place. I strongly support her nomination.”
Blythe Chandler, Executive Director, Nexus Arts
“Jen Lyons-Reid is an outstanding candidate for the Australia Council Ros Bower Award. Jen’s contribution to the Australian arts ecology spans 30 years of consistent practice. Working alongside her partner, Carl Kuddell, Jen’s work has served to expose and explore some of the most critical socio-cultural topics of this period, and in doing so has not only furthered national dialogue, but has contributed to making genuine change, brought about through art.
I have been fortunate to know Jen since 2002. Most recently, I was involved in supporting her to deliver the multi-site, multi-modal exhibition _this breath is not mine to keep at Nexus Arts Gallery in 2020. While onsite visitation was significantly impact by a South Australian lockdown, this work reached an online audience of nearly 1000, making it one of the most successful exhibitions hosted on our COVID-inspired virtual gallery.”
Beth Neate – Head of Production and Development, SA Film Corporation, former ABC Producer
“I am writing in full support of Jen Lyons-Reid’s nomination for the Ros Bower Award, as a deserving, innovative and generous community arts and cultural development pioneer. For more than thirty years, Ms Lyons-Reid has been at the vanguard of critical interrogations of storytelling and community development. As an artistic director, artist, filmmaker, creator and collaborator, Ms Lyons-Reid has advocated for the empowerment and elevation of marginalised voices as intrinsic to authentic storytelling; long before such issues were central to Australian arts and cultural discourse. Her project, Directing the Hero Within, created through her company Change Media in 2004, was the first in Australia to use media production as a community engagement tool.
Through Ms Lyons-Reid’s role as a presenter and Australia Council Fellow, Change Media’s philosophies and methodologies have provoked critical evaluation of community media production and directly impacted successive participatory media models right across Australia. Through a diversity of forms and approaches, Ms Lyons-Reid’s multidisciplinary arts practice has given agency to hundreds of communities to tell their own stories on their own terms, and has provided direct mentoring, upskilling and career pathways for new storytellers to launch their own artistic careers and endeavours. Eternally modest and one to stay behind the scenes, Ms Lyons-Reid’s brilliance lays in her prodigious capacity to elicit the singular potential inherent in every person and every story.”
Ben Brooker - theatre maker, ActNow Theatre
“Having worked internationally in the Community Arts and Cultural Development field for more than thirty years, Jen Lyons-Reid has established herself as an outstanding CACD practitioner in Australia. In her role as Artistic Director of Change Media, a leading community- and interdisciplinary-focused arts organisation, Jen has created an outstanding body of playful and provocative projects addressing issues of privilege and systemic inequality.
While an Associate Artist with ActNow Theatre, South Australia’s preeminent CACD arts organisation, I was fortunate to participate and collaborate in a talk and workshops based on Change Media’s card game What Privilege? Challenging, entertaining, and eye-opening, the experience convinced me of Jen’s unique and powerful approach to CACD practice as a tool for unsettling assumptions about power and building solidarity across diverse groups. This approach was not just evident in the game’s development and presentation, but also in the collaborative processes established in our joint ways of working.
I have no hesitation in recommending Jen as a worthy recipient of the 2022 Australia Council Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development.”
Peta Johnston, Arts & Culture, City of Victor Harbor
“The presentation of '_this breath is not mine to keep' by Change Media offered the local Victor Harbor community and Coral Street Art Space audiences a unique experience and perspective. The works presented invited audiences to reflect on their own belief systems, prejudices and place in our ever changing world. The inclusion of poetry in this program was a highlight for our local poets and added a diversity to our programming that was needed. The serendipitous timing of this exhibition, in light of COVID-19 and the recent fires, meant the conversations the works inspired amongst our volunteers and visitors were particularly relevant.”