As an integral member of Bendigo TAFE's writing programs, Dr Irvine has seen a shift in arts education during his more than two decades in the field.

"The digital revolution transformed teaching and learning in the adult education spaces almost beyond recognition since the mid 1990s.

"Those same changes impacted course content in numerous Arts programs, such as the move from print publishing to digital publishing," Dr Irvine said.

The digital revolution wasn't all bad news for creatives, with the emergence of new skillsets.

"New communications vocations were being birthed at that time that required both traditional arts education skills and new skills linked to the new technologies," Dr Irvine said.

Despite a strong appetite for the creative arts, humanities and social sciences, there are some major areas that central Victoria's two adult education providers, Bendigo TAFE and La Trobe University, lack.

"In the 1990s, one could study philosophy at both our major adult education institutes," Dr Irvine said.

Today, there are no face-to-face philosophy courses offered by either institution.

"Our region offers very few opportunities for learning foreign languages to advanced levels.

"An Indonesian major is offered at La Trobe, but all other major languages of the world cannot be studied face-to-face by adults in our region," Dr Irvine said.

The drive to improve the arts education offering in central Victoria has to be community driven, according to Dr Irvine.

"If we do not articulate a community-driven, holistic vision for arts education in our region, we risk becoming a cultural backwater, a hollowed out place.

"Bleeding, increasingly, our most creative and innovative adults and young people to Melbourne and elsewhere," Dr Irvine said.

A career in the creative industries was not something he foresaw when he was studying at Auckland University.

Born in Manchester, Dr Irvine and his family moved first to Sydney and then Adelaide, before settling in Auckland when he was 14 years old.

"At Auckland University I was on track to become an economist and accountant.

"I did two years of that, but realised it wasn't for me," he said.

That realisation came while Dr Irvine was trying to make it as an international cricketer.

Representing the New Zealand Black Caps in all of their junior teams from under 14 through to under 23, he played with and against the likes of Steve and Mark Waugh, Ian Healy, Craig McDermott and the late Martin Crowe.

A fast bowler who aspired to be the next Dennis Lillee or Richard Hadley, Dr Irvine's cricketing career ground to a sudden halt.

"I went to England in 1984 to play in the seconds for county side Worcestershire, with Graeme Hick and Kapil Dev some of the players in the first team.

"I went back to New Zealand at the end of the season and found out I had peritonitis.

That injury gave him an opportunity to take stock.

"When I was at uni, I was constantly wandering over to the arts department to watch lectures on poetry and playwrights.

"I quickly found out that I was in the wrong place.

"Both cricket and economics soon disappeared from my life and arts came to the fore," he said.

Dr Irvine doesn't regret turning his back on cricket.

"It became a locked personality and all that I would have been known for."

That sentiment is something depicted in a poem Dr Irvine wrote, The Ghost Narratives, which he dedicated to his generation of cricketers and in particular Martin Crowe, who passed away in 2016 from lymphoma.

The inspiration for the poem came from Mr Crowe's admission before his death that he'd worn a mask for much of his life and being a cricketer was a mask.

Dr Irvine suspected this to be the case for himself and his contemporaries decades prior, leading the now 55-year-old to change tact, not wanting to be forever known as just a cricketer.

"It wasn't right for me to be that," Dr Irvine said.

More recently, he has combined his creative skills in a transmedia project, Songs of the Interstitium.

The project will feature four novels, professionally produced songs, poems, nonfiction pieces and presentations.

Dr Irvine's energy for the arts in this region is unbridled, as is his desire to see adult arts education flourish.

"We want to keep our creative youth in the region and attract more cultural tourists and national level creatives to Bendigo," he said.