Micro Grants Recipient | Belle Budden

Micro Grants Recipient | Belle Budden

Belle Budden is a practising multi-disciplinary artist and arts administrator working with diverse forms including visual arts, cultural arts, film production and dance. Belle is a Wakka Wakka woman, living and working in Bundjalung Country. Her work focusses on engaging Aboriginal communities to access processes in the arts, community and government to increase autonomy and positive outcomes for Aboriginal people. Belle works with visual arts mediums including paint, printmaking including eco printing, ceramics, multimedia and dance. Belle is passionate about dance as a form of cultural expression, an essential element of culture, both traditional and contemporary cultures around the world. Belle is a teacher, choreographer and dancer of traditional and contemporary Aboriginal dance.

Belle’s work expresses and maintains her cultural identity and reflects issues of contemporary Aboriginal culture and politics. She is passionate towards supporting and developing Aboriginal leadership and has managed arts and cultural projects for community, government and industry. Belle is currently working as a project manager for Desert Pea Media and as a director of the Bunyarra Culture Collective.

The Micro Grants funding opportunity will assist Belle in the creation of a publication reflecting themes of connectivity through social isolation in mediums of visual arts, dance, weaving and printmaking. The publication a multimedia zine for print and online social media platforms will have links to videos, articles, photos and web references from Belle’s existing body of work.

The project enables Belle to utilise her zine experience as a process to curate and catalogue, distil and evaluate body of work for refocus. The fusion of graphic design and photography of existing work with the development of new pieces will reflect ‘Art for Empowerment’ themes of social connectivity through diversity.

This project will be an exploration and reflection of how art supports the maintenance of Aboriginal culture and cultural identity. Belle has spent many years driving cultural group work and this project deepens her own cultural arts practice through self-reflection, exploring the layers of her cultural disciplines.

This project activity will draw upon years of collaborative cultural and community work through a collective model and focus on the importance of this ‘circular work’ framework.

Belle will explore themes of social and environmental connectivity, wellness and self-care, and how we care for each other as a community which reflects her current practice and role in community.

“By distilling and refocussing my work I can critique and inform my future process and focus. Utilising the zine to curate my work, I aim to develop ‘Kierrabelle’ cultural creative identity and branding‘’. 

Image: Belle Budden ‘Dance of Water and Wind’ (2018) Acrylic on Canvas