Battered industry to unite and create anew with Bendigo gathering

The Emporium Creative Hub plans to bring the arts community together for a new conference celebrating new ideas following crippling COVID-19 shutdowns.

The Mitchell Street hub will run the Corflux Bendigo conference on September 9 and 10 and has released early-bird tickets for sale.

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They will lead talks organisers say will fire up people's creativity but will also include thinkers sharing big ideas for a sector that proved extremely vulnerable during the pandemic.

A host of industry leaders will give big ideas for the direction central Victoria's creative sector could go during the rebuild.

Some of that thinking started during the depths of shutdowns but many creative professionals were simply trying to survive after losing work with few means of support, according to Emporium Creative Hub director David Hughes.

"We can now all see there were some structural deficiencies that meant that when something like the pandemic happened creative industries were wiped out," he said.

Among the presenters will be Monash University expert Ben Eltham, who recently co-authored a report on rebooting the sector.

"Decades of underfunding had weakened Australia's arts and entertainment sector long before COVID-19 hit," he and co-author Alison Pennington observed in their Australia Institute report released in 2021.

It was time for creative professionals to start talking about new ways to show governments the value of their work and to gather and inspire each other, Mr Hughes said.

Conference highlights will also include workshops and other sessions that will get people's creative juices flowing, Mr Hughes said.

For more information, to book tickets or to learn more about presenters, visit the conference's website at www.emporiumcreativehub.com.au/conflux

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