Culture is the fundamental building block and the basis for every successful society. Culture is not an optional add-on; the arts are not merely creative illustration to the seriousness of life. Flourishing societies have done without science or economics, but none have done without art. Art and culture keep communities alive.

Why do the arts matter most? The arts - writing, painting, music, sculpture, dance, drama, craft, film, and story – not only reflect the type of world we live in, they also direct how we perceive and relate to our environment. Art constructs and celebrates the world.

In contrast, science and political economy dissect the world, reducing it to its component parts, and in this depressing process, we rationalise the environment into a passive resource waiting to be consumed. Art offers us a way to be informed, but not oppressed, by this science of doom.

Art admits complexity, emotion, and narrative so as to reanimate the places we inhabit. We again live within the environment, embedded in our locale. We are no longer separate consumers but immersed participants.

And we live in this irreducible complexity by crafting our lives in the local. By celebrating that which surrounds us, by valuing our neighbours, and by listening to all comers and to all stories; by developing all our local resources, we build better relationships and places.

We live in a more-than-human world. We live with animal, plant, stone, river, and mythology. Each has stories to tell. Our western approach has been to reduce these stories to their component parts, leaving little but dust in our collective wake.

Art allows us to imagine the thick, humid, stories of this biodiversity. We play the host to our ecoregion. The bunyip booms out a warning against wrongdoers, those that misuse the environment will be consumed.

With my partner, Ross Annels, we decided to not only live more simply and lightly upon this earth, but to do so with joy and creativity. We set up the Cooroora Institute to bring together art and environment, to celebrate our local culture and nature.

We hold performances on our outdoor stage and run artist-in-residencies and workshops for and by locals. The Cooroora Institute coordinates and documents environmental art celebrations, community festivals, and art events, including components of Floating Land, as well as facilitating new projects. By celebrating local culture, local experts and local heroes, we reduce the footprint of the cultural cringe and create cultural self-sustainability.

Writers, poets, and storytellers weave up country along with musicians, dancers and environmental sculptors, based upon long indigenous traditions of using art to keep a whole community’s culture strong.

Our work and our lives are intertwined; our family and our food gardens are as much a part of our lives as is our crafting of story and furniture. We celebrate this place and its local people, plant, animal, land. And we hope to model a better story that inspires and illuminates, by using the arts and crafts to celebrate this wonderful world.

This then is our goal: to live lightly and joyously upon this earth. And to do that, we need the arts to build strong local culture.

A short speech by Dr Tamsin Kerr at the launch of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council's creative communities discussion paper, 11 Feb 2010.