The night managers: Churchill fellows want to put us on the map
Two talented Churchill Fellowship recipients have big ambitions – to change the Queensland arts landscape for the better.
If Rebecca McIntosh – better known as Bec Mac – gets her way, Brisbane’s nightlife will one day rival that of the world’s great cities.
The Brisbane-based creative leader, journalist and arts advocate will soon visit New York, London, Amsterdam and Paris as part of a recently awarded Churchill Fellowship.
“Each city has a different approach,” Bec Mac explains. “New York is hospitality-based, London is female-led and about the arts and culture. Amsterdam is about mitigation and harm minimisation around drugs and alcohol, which I think is a big thing.”
The learnings from Paris will focus on the recent Olympic and Paralympic Games and inform the Cultural Olympiad Queensland will stage as part of our 2032 celebrations.
The concept of a “night mayor” is established in some parts of the world, but Bec Mac would like to offer a correction.
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“I like to call her the Mayoress of the Night. Already there is a night-time commissioner role that has been legislated in Queensland, which is great, but it’s very focused on the night-time economy in (Fortitude) Valley and based around, from my perception, bars and bands and booze,” Mac says.
“I think it’s got to be a bigger role and centred on female experiences – how we access cities, how we work, live and play in cities… and marginalised communities. We live in a very man-made environment.”
Mac studied at the Queensland College of Art in the ’80s before moving into performance art and circus. Realising she had a knack for interviewing others, she created a long-running series known as LOVE TV for which, dressed as Aphrodite, she would ask people about their love stories. Mac has also curated POPSART, an impressive archive of more than 600 interviews with Australian artists and creatives.
Every year Churchill Fellows are selected from across the country to explore a singular research topic of their choosing. Recipients are given a substantial stipend for international travel and research and to provide a detailed report on completion of their project.
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Joining Bec Mac at the recent Churchill Fellows orientation event in Canberra was her friend and colleague Leah Shelton, a performance artist and confessed “psycho siren”. Threading their diverse projects is a desire to establish global best practice and create positive change in Australia.
“Everyone has these niche areas, whether it be sustainable vinyl record pressing – which is another Queensland fellow (Neil Wilson) – or making nightlife safer, which is what Bec Mac’s doing,” Shelton says. “There are so many areas of interrogation. Every single person wants to come back and make society better.”
Named in honour of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, more than 4500 Churchill Fellowships have been granted since Churchill’s death in 1965.
A graduate of the QUT dance program, Shelton is well known to Brisbane audiences for her regular collaborations with local company Polytoxic, as well as a series of subversive and engaging one-woman shows. Her latest creation is Batshit – an exploration of female madness. It earned multiple awards at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and encouraged audience members to reflect on their behaviour.
“I had several conversations with men who said, ‘It really made me think about using the word hysterical or crazy or telling women to calm down’ … that is a very tangible shifting in awareness that they haven’t had before.”
With a focus on the intersection of activism and art, Shelton’s study tour will include the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College in upstate New York, where she will attend lectures by renowned choreographer and dancer Adrienne Truscott. Shelton will also connect with arts leaders at New York’s Under the Radar Festival and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver.
Of the 15 Queensland Churchill Fellowships awarded this year, five have an arts focus. For Bec Mac, this reflects the unique power of the creative industries to bring people together.
“Arts and culture bring light,” Mac says. “It’s not about the numbers, it’s about how do we work together as a community? How do we combine to tell our stories? How do we reactivate and revitalise places where people don’t feel comfortable? How do we bring in other communities?”
You can find the project reports of Churchill Fellows here: churchilltrust.com.au/projects-and-fellows