In our programs we work with community partners to foster new and more productive modes of interaction between contemporary artists and communities and to promote a dialogue between regional, metropolitan, and international perspectives.

For the Rural Utopias residency with Jo Darbyshire, we have been fortunate to work with the community of Lake Grace, who are also undertaking a Bushcare project.

The Lake Grace Bushcare project will see 3,700 native seedlings planted around the town during the month of June. The plantings follow a Flora Survey of townsite remnant bush by local botanist Anne Rick which recorded 115 plant species. Included in the survey are eight acacia (wattle) species, eight types of melaleuca (paperbarks, honey-myrtles) and ten eucalypts species.

The survey, the first study of its kind for the townsite, gives an in-depth look at the flora growing around Lake Grace and adds local specimens to the Western Australian Herbarium.

 Two community groups (Lake Grace Community Resource Centre and Lake Grace Land Conservation District Committee) have joined forces with facilitator and artist/writer Michelle Slarke to protect the six bushland sites which cover approximately 18ha. “Many of the species identified in the flora survey are not available at nurseries – they are irreplaceable,” said Ms Slarke. “If not protected through conservation, they will disappear along with the wildlife that lives with them”. 

The project includes an interpretive tree trail, a Significant Tree Register and a local planting guide.

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