Touring Part I

COFA and the Biennale have had a long standing relationship - a component of this includes the delivery of free guided tours for the general public. Having studies the Masters course - Education and Public Programs, 8 students, myself included, were selected to partake in the guided touring program for the 17th Biennale of Sydney. This project included several seminars in which Dougal and Nisa provided us with essential information about artists and their work on cockatoo island. From this we gained alot of necessary information and insight into the artists practice, thoughts and the manifestations of these ideas through art. essentially, we are sent once (or twice) a week to cockatoo island to provide guided tours for the general public. I have been working mainly on weekdays, and have had tour group numbers as large as 30 and as small as 1 (which happened to be my first ever tour). Even though i have had two years of experience in providing guided tours for groups, i managed to feel incredibly nervous on my first couple of tour days. Thankfully, however, the trickier audiences didn't come until i was well into the swing of things. In a sense, guiding for the general public, as opposed to school groups, is vastly different. In order to try and maintain the attention of the audience, its important to provide interesting facts and be approachable and engaging. Whereas with educational groups, alot of the tour material i provided was related inherently to a syllabus or curriculum. Pitching to the general public is hard, where some people have extensive knowledge in the field of contemporary art, and some who have not ever attended a biennale. Usually, its best to provide the information behind the biennale - what a biennale is, and the theme of the 17th Biennale of sydney. As it stands, most of my tour groups have remained with me for the entire tour, with very few people dropping off. I try to keep the tours informative, but short enough to ensure that the audience does not get too fatigued navigating the rather large venue.