A national conference, spanning the Adelaide and Melbourne Arts Festivals, for artists and community activists working at the frontier of social and cultural change.

The program will explore the dilemmas and ethics of contemporary art practice created from artists' deep engagement with communities in diverse social contexts. Passion and politics are the driving forces in a program that will attempt to go beyond the accepted jargon of 'industry models', 'marketing strategies' and 'sponsor needs' to explore a brave new territory where labels such as 'community' versus 'mainstream' are irrelevant.

If you want to explore the hard issues of cultural expression outside the safe haven of traditional arts definitions, this is the conference for you.

We begin with a symposium at the Adelaide Festival in March and reconvene for a three day conference in October at the Melbourne Festival of Arts.