Until recently, stories of domestic and family violence rarely made the Australian news.
But this supposedly background social issue has hardly been out of the headlines recently thanks to a series of family violence-related tragedies and standout investigative reporting on this previously off-limits subject rarely mentioned in public discussion.
Importantly, this recent attention has not only increased public awareness of the issues in Australia, but has also helped shift the dial at a political level – with a host of Federal Government parliamentarians speaking out about family violence as a matter of national concern.
And while some in the sector have recently appealed for art to be a ‘safe haven’ from societal challenges and political subjects, for others, it remains an important vehicle through which some of our most difficult collective realities can be shared for the purpose of deeper contemplation and thoughtful discussion.
In this context, youth theatre company ATYP (Australian Theatre for Young People) has just inked its third major cross-sector partnership with a community service organisation to make a new work that explores the deep-rooted challenges around family violence – especially as they affect young people in Australia today.
Supporting positive dialogue around difficult stories
The regional NSW town of Armidale is, like many parts of Australia, a peaceful place on the surface, with an array of more complex (and often unspoken) social issues bubbling underneath.
For Women’s Shelter Armidale CEO Penny Lamaro, Armidale’s distinctive landscapes – with its vast open paddocks and ‘drop away’ waterfall spaces in parts – are fitting metaphors for the community’s complex social dynamics.
“I sometimes think about our community in connection with our landscape,” she tells ArtsHub.
“You have these parts that look totally fine on the surface, but then there are these other, more hidden and secret parts there as well.”
For Lamaro, pursuing a creative partnership with ATYP exploring young people’s experiences of family violence is an important way her organisation can help shed light on the hidden layers of these issues.
“When I think about what art and theatre can do like nothing else [it] is express ideas and tell stories in ways that words alone cannot,” she says.
“And what I’m interested in seeing this project achieve is more intergenerational dialogue around these [family violence] issues, so we can start to look at what’s leading some people in our community to see violence as an option.”
Lamaro says there have been 25% year-on-year increases in the number of people presenting to her Women’s Shelter in Armidale, and to others like it across the country, since 2022.
“We have definitely seen demand for our services increase over the past two years,” she says.
“And while we have recently received an increase in government funding, those increases don’t really feel like increases because the demand for our services has gone up so much.”
Navigating cross-sector projects with creative integrity
As Lamaro says, art can indeed contribute to social change by raising difficult subjects and telling stories that may otherwise go unseen and unheard.
However, from an artistic point of view, there can also be challenges in creative projects designed with social impact aims in mind.
But having completed two major cross-sector partnerships with similar community service organisations already – one with the NSW Office of the Advocate for Children and Young People and the other with youth services peak body Youth Action, ATYP’s Artistic Director Fraser Corfield is well aware of these risks.
Read: Lessons in cross art form collaboration for audience growth
“Luckily, on both the cross-sector partnerships we have done so far – firstly with Follow Me Home in 2019, about youth homelessness, and Saplings [2024], which was co-produced by Sydney Festival – the playwrights were able to capture the speech rhythms and interactions of characters with astonishing truth and familiarity. The scenes were real and compelling. That allowed audiences to reflect on these issues for themselves, rather than us presenting them with sides of these stories they already know about,” he says.
“For example, we are well aware that violence involving young people is truly horrific, so we don’t need to show that onstage… What we are more interested in doing is learning more about some of the things that may be happening in young people’s lives that they are keeping hidden from the outside world, and that are either a result of, or are connected to, situations where family violence is happening.”
To develop ATYP’s latest work – which is as yet unnamed – its artists will spend extended time in residence at the Women’s Shelter and in the Armidale community, where they will develop a script for a new full-length theatre piece.
“We will travel to Armidale very soon for workshops with support staff at the Women’s Shelter and start developing the script while maintaining our connections with the Armidale community over the next 12 months, and then hopefully we will premiere the work late next year,” Corfield says.
“So, while in many ways we are at the start of the process, it feels like a fitting extension of our previous two cross-sector partnerships, which have both resulted in works we are immensely proud of and which have already reached wide audiences,” he concludes.
