Why does our region need a new, bigger art gallery and why, when completed, it needs to regularly host controversial exhibits? Disruption. Who doesn’t know a new art gallery is to be built in Rockhampton and not have an opinion on the costs? Imagine the talk when it hosts the first controversial exhibition. A conversation about Rockhampton that doesn’t involve bulls, floods, heat or crime but art, that quickly penetrates the local market with high impact.
How many businesses would love to have that kind of conversation, disruption, happening about their product or services. For Rockhampton a conversation about it that has art as the primary topic makes people think differently of the city, the region, it disrupts their conceptions; when next time they are asked about Rockhampton a new art gallery is included in the conversation. Whether they approve of its costs or the exhibitions it hosts, it’s still a positive for the region. Similar to what the lagoon has done for Yeppoon. More people became aware of it, more people frequent it.
What else can be done to disrupt the Rockhampton conversation? To conversations about the diversity, innovativeness and opportunity the region offers. Hosting events like GovHack (Sept 6-8) is ideal content, however, limited space in main local media makes it difficult for enough people know GovHack exists let alone anything about it (Google GovHack Rockhampton for details). Would a weekly podcast featuring local stories of diversity, innovativeness and opportunity get a sufficient audience size to disrupt the usual Rockhampton conversation? Is there enough interest in this to have a conversation about it?
If we want more people inside and outside our region to be aware of the opportunities here and interested in moving here to pursue them, plus our local youth seeing their future is here and not elsewhere, we need to continually disrupt the current conversations and penetrate this and outside markets with impactful content that make people think differently about our region. A new art gallery does this.