Robert Kronk On Building Community Relationships Through Inclusive Performance Arts
Robert Kronk is the Creative Director and CEO of Flipside Circus and is a co-founder and director of debase (winner Gold Matilda Award 2018). He was director of programming and director of operations at Metro Arts until 2008.
He has worked extensively as a dramaturg, writer, director, and producer for companies including; La Boite, Brisbane Festival, Queensland Theatre, HotHouse Theatre, and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
He is an award winning writer whose credits include: All Other Places (2000), Lovejunk (2001), Snagged (published by Playlab 2009), Ithaca Road (nominated for an AWGIE Award and published by Playlab 2009), Fly-In Fly-Out (2012) (shortlisted for the 2012 Rodney Seaborn Award and published by Playlab 2014), We That Are Left (nominated for an AWGIE Award 2016), and The Longest Minute with Nadine McDonald-Dowd commissioned by Queensland Theatre and JUTE (winner 2018 Matilda Award for best mainstage production) and We Live Here (winner 2018 Matilda Award for best circus/physical theatre).
In collaboration with Bridget Boyle and Liz Skitch he has written The Loud Room (2002-04), Big Things (2007), and Popping Lead Balloons (2009). He coordinated The Tunnel – a Brisbane-based satirical writing team, and was head writer on The Tunnel’s Uncle Tony’s Oats (co-produced with Queensland Theatre 2010), and Campbell’s Winter Soup (2011).
His directing credits include the remount/tour of Chasing the Lollyman for debase, and Statum and Dogs in the Schoolyard for Flipside Circus.
He studied drama at Queensland University of Technology graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. He has taught at Queensland University of Technology, the University of Southern Queensland and Central Queensland University, and run workshops and master-classes for students, teachers and artists around Australia.
Robert discusses how art creates powerful ties within communities and why listening is a valuable tool in the entrepreneurs toolkit.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Tom Allen] - Please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion in supporting arts organisations intent on creating broader community impacts?
[Robert Kronk] - I think all arts organisations are [or at least should be] intent on creating a community impact. In my personal practice, writing and directing has always been about trying to affect change in society. I love theatre and performance, it's a great way to do this because we get to share stories and it brings people together. I love the idea of creating those environments where you bring a community together to talk about a community story.
We get to create communities and support those communities, so I suppose it's literally an opportunity to commune, to come together and imagine a better future.
In my whole career I've worked for not-for-profit organisations. This was not coincidental; it was because they have that goal of actually working to create change rather than working to create a profit. That is the thing I'm better at.
As CEO of Flipside Circus, can you please tell us more about the organisation's purpose and its ongoing plans to create an impact as a youth arts organisation?
Flipside Circus's purpose and the reason we exist is to empower communities through circus. We do that in lots of different ways and they fall under categories. The first is the training program that we run. We run a circus school, we have at the moment about 220 students aged from 18 months to 70 years old who come and train with us. Obviously, most of the people are predominantly in that younger demographic of 18 months to 25 years. [We teach] everything from trapeze to hula hoops to juggling. That circus program almost runs [like a] sports club in a lot of ways. On top of that circus school, we go out and do lots of work in communities right around Brisbane. We work a lot with schools throughout the Southeast and just wherever we possibly can bring circus training into those communities. Our artistic program is about creating performances by, for and with children and young people.
It's about empowering them to be cultural creators, to help them develop the skills to make their voices heard and create opportunities where young people can actually create work for themselves.
Young audiences can see young artists on stage doing extraordinary things, telling their own stories and be empowered by that. We run quite extensive social circus programs which are basically about making sure what we do is accessible by [as many] young people as possible regardless of their circumstances. We have historically done lots of work with children of all abilities. We run a regular program which explores possibilities and brings an occupational therapist, circus trainer, young children and their families of all abilities together. That's a fantastic program. We're currently working out how to make that program more adaptive, particularly in response to COVID-19. The other thing we do a lot of is residencies and tutoring programs in regional and remote communities. Really the more isolated and smaller the community, the better for us. We've got a team who are on their way home from Eromanga this morning. Eromanga is two or three hours west of Charleville. They were working for the last couple of days with the school in Eromanga, which has got seven students across seven grades. Before that, they were up working in small communities around and between Mount Isa and Charters Towers, working in Richmond and other towns of that size.
Those programs are really about creating a space for young people to come in and work with our trainers to do things they didn't think they could do.
There's all of these sport and recreation outcomes around health, fitness and teamwork. But the thing I get particularly excited about is the capacity for those programs to help young people tell their own stories and to give them a voice in their communities. It's about trying to create connections between us and the communities, but then also help to grow connections within the communities. People who might live close together, but don't necessarily have a lot to do with each other. If we can help put those people in the same room, that's a really good day for us. Finally, the last thing we do is we support circus arts and circus artists in Queensland. We're lucky Queensland is an extraordinary powerhouse of circus arts, and there are amazingly talented groups of artists who tour the world.
The benefit for us is that we get access to these extraordinary trainers who can come and work with communities. It's really fantastic when you have a professional company rehearsing a show that's going to tour.
Not so much internationally at the moment, but under normal circumstances they would be. These performers are running a show and then packing up as they’ve got a whole group of young people coming in to learn circus that afternoon! Then they see what the professionals are doing. The professionals are getting rejuvenated by our young participants, and our young participants get to role model and look at the amazing things they are doing.
You mentioned COVID-19 earlier, and arts organisations have been particularly hit hard during this time. Where are key opportunities moving into the future for arts organisations and how might social enterprise models help sustain them?
I think COVID has demonstrated the need for what we do, and particularly for Flipside, the need to bring people together and the need to imagine a better and different world. As you say, it has been hard for everyone, particularly artists and arts organisations. We've been really lucky that we've been able to keep touring in one form or another for most of the last 18 months. I suppose the silver lining of COVID is that realisation that things don't have to be the way that they are or the way they've always been.
I think what artists and social enterprises can bring to that mix is we tend to be agile, nimble, adaptable and have skills that are really necessary when something like COVID happens.
The skills that people who help create and support communities have also come very much to the fore. Those people who are running programs for vulnerable people, people at risk, or those who are just doing things not just because of their profit motive, what drives them is what I think we need going forward in the rebuilding period.
Through your experience as a director in a range of organisations, what have you observed to be the fundamental qualities of more successful leaders you've worked with?
I find that question really tricky, because I've been inspired by a number of different people who have incredibly different styles.
I suppose the thing they all had in common is they all listened and enabled other people. They had an interesting combination of being able to lead from the front and from behind.
The ability to get stuck in and roll their sleeves up, but also give people the power to go off and see the job through. [Good leaders] also just are always looking to improve things, and again, I think this is when social enterprises are uniquely resilient when something like COVID comes along, because we're always thinking outside the box. We're always looking at how we can make a project sustainable, but we're not just looking at how we can make money. We're looking at sustainability and community impact, and for us it's about also developing young artists and helping them professionalise. That constant process of looking to improve and not getting set in your ways, I think that's the last aspect.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across that are creating positive social change?
I recently went and saw one of our partner companies indelabilityarts who ran a show which was also on at the Brisbane Festival called Wilbur the Optical Whale. That company I've admired for some time, and we at Flipside supported that show when a couple of our artists worked within the crew on it. What I love about that show and that company is that it’s an all-abilities company. They built that show, which is a really personal story by one of artists about her experience of growing up and being seen as different. They built a show for children and young audiences that told that story in a really beautiful, powerful way.
They built accessibility into the DNA of the show. It's built for small audiences, everything from the sound design to the set was built with children on the autism spectrum in mind.
The tiny details in the show, like filling the room with soft toys and putting little curtain alcoves where people can withdraw if they want to are amazing. It was a beautiful show and it premiered at the Adelaide Fringe Festival last year. They opened, did incredibly well, got amazing reviews and of course everything shut down in Australia about four minutes later! It would have been so easy for that project to fade away, but that team kept chipping away at it and they've done a regional Queensland tour this year! They were in the Brisbane Festival. The show is going to RPAC in a couple of weeks, and I think it's got a pretty busy touring schedule next year. I think that for a project that embodies what it's trying to do and how it's done it, that's a really inspiring piece.
It sounds like a wonderful and hugely inclusive example Robert. What books, resources, blogs and podcasts you would recommend to our listeners?
That's a terrifying question! Look at the moment, I think anything that makes you happy. I've got a giant back catalogue of Gardening Australia magazines, and that's what I'm getting into at the moment. I'm all about unhooking my brain when it comes to reading and podcasts! That's probably not hugely helpful, but I have a seven-year-old and we've got a very small garden bed that's alive and a very large garden bed that's dead! We are hopefully [and slowly] trying to change the ratio of that.
