A Creative Region Without a Cultural Plan

Opinion Piece By Richard Evans, President Whitsundays Writers Festival

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We have no shortage of brilliant creative people in the Whitsundays. What we’re short on is the framework to support them.

Writing groups meet in spare rooms. Festival groups fundraise year-to-year with no certainty there’ll be a next year. These aren’t fringe concerns – they’re the heartbeat of a social community worth living in.

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It’s time to modernise. Time to take our creative life seriously, for the benefit of everyone.

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What we're asking for isn't complicated.  

We need a clear, accessible arts and culture policy that recognises the full creative ecosystem - from writing, visual arts, filmmaking and performance, to heritage, festivals, museums, libraries, and community arts.

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Yes, funding matters. But so does affordable spaces to create and perform, support for local organisations and their fantastic volunteers, opportunities for artists to develop their craft, pathways for young people, cultural tourism initiatives, public art, and the preservation of our region's stories and heritage.

Most importantly, we need a shared vision that brings these elements together under a single, fair, and transparent framework. Not patchwork grants. Not one-off decisions. Not the luck of the draw. A genuine commitment to arts and culture that is written down, applied consistently, measured against clear outcomes, and reviewed openly with the community it serves.

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Other regional councils have done it and reaped the benefits of what follows. Artists stay, tourists come, and the stories of a place get told properly, not left to fade.

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Here in the Whitsundays, we have extraordinary natural raw material. Writers who capture this landscape like no-one else. Performers who fill every seat they’re given. Visual artists whose work deserves a proper platform — just as the new Community Gallery in Proserpine is beginning to show us what’s possible.

Our cultural community deserve better than crossed fingers and collection tins.

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An accessible arts policy means a first-time author gets the same fair shot as an established local group. A teenager wanting to learn film editing has somewhere to go. The door is open, not just ajar.

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The economic case is real. Local creative precincts and activities lift a community and cultural tourism draw visitors in ways that are hard to put in a spreadsheet, but very easy to feel when they’re gone.

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But the deeper case is simpler. A community that creates together knows itself. It has memory, identity, and the confidence to imagine its own future. Culture provides a social asset for all of us.  

That’s worth a policy. That’s worth a seat at the table.

The creative community is ready for the conversation. We invite community leaders, businesses, philanthropists, stakeholders and government to help shape a shared vision for arts and culture in the Whitsundays.

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Richard can be contacted via hello@whitsundayswriters.com

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