Important Notice:
Focus Fest 2008 Online
Seeing is believing Unfortunately the annual Focus Fest Teachers' Conference will not take place in 2008 due to the replacement of the Gallery's escalators and refurbishment of the Domain Theatre, preventing access to Lower Level 2 (Contemporary Art floor) and Lower Level 3 (Yiribana Gallery) from November 2008.However in its place an exciting new initiative is being piloted: Focus Fest 2008 Online, which will present up to 8 interview vodcasts with practising artists and other art-world professionals under this year's theme “Seeing is believing”. In a first for the Gallery, these interviews will be conducted by Senior Visual Arts High School students and teachers selected from the Gallery's Critical Friends Teacher Advisory Group. The aim is to present alternative investigations of the artw-orld through a range of unique and challenging perspective of teenagers - guided by their studies, with the support of their teachers. The initiative also aims to develop their skills in interview techniques, research, critical thinking and media production as well offer them a deeper, more immersive, first hand experience in the visual arts. Focus Fest 2008 Online offers a dynamic resource accessible to students and teachers across NSW and beyond. This pilot - if successful - will contribute to a wider, more comprehensive teenager/youth-focused program currently being developed by the Gallery. It is envisaged that these initiative will give the Gallery's other, diverse audiences insights into the artists interviewed, but also the people who interviewed them. A full program will be published in September 2008, with Focus Fest 2008 Online: Seeing is believing going live in the first week of December 2008. Focus Fest will be back on 4 and 5 December 2009, refreshed with a bold new theme and program, which will be enhanced further by the Focus Fest Online initiative. | 
