Art From The Heart

Art from the Heart (AFTH) was formed in 2016 by Sally Moroney. It began with funding from WorkLink, a community support facility in Innisfail, which was helping people who had social difficulties or were preparing to re-enter the workforce. WorkLink funded the tuition fees, materials and venue hire, and encouraged participation from other Mission Arts participants. The name Art from the Heart was chosen as the course did not provide formal ‘art therapy’, but offered a friendly, social and therapeutic atmosphere while encouraging participants to explore their creativity through acrylic painting. Even after the WorkLink funding ceased, the group continued to meet, with Sally continuing on as the group’s primary mentor.

The group has held exhibitions at Mission Arts and, as individual artists have grown in confidence, they have entered their own works in other exhibitions.

Art from the Heart meets every Tuesday morning and remains one of the most consistent and regularly attended interest groups.

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Cassowary Coast Yarners

Mission Beach Knitting Group was the original name of this group which was established in 2012 by Cate Richmond. The group was formed to connect women after Cyclone Yasi and to provide opportunities for socialising and sharing of skills. No funds were needed to start the group, as Cate’s initial involvement was supported by the Australian Red Cross. Later, Meryl Harding inspired the group to knit and work in various textile techniques and gained a Cyclone Recovery grant.

The group became known as the Cassowary Coast Yarners in 2016. The Yarners, as it is affectionately known, is well recognised for its installations and exhibitions at Mission Arts.

In addition to individual and collaborative projects, participants make teddy bears, stress balls and washers for local hospitals and nursing homes, and raise money for the local ambulance and other charitable causes.

The Yarners meet twice monthly on Monday mornings.

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Glass on Fire

The acquisition of a glass kiln in 2007 allowed interested artists to pursue and refine their glass-making skills across a range of areas. This kiln was obtained through the Reef Hotel Casino Community Benefit Fund for use at the Mission Beach Artists premises before later being moved to Mission Arts, where it shared space in the Pottery Studio for a time before being moved to its current location in Pod 4.

Meredith Moreau was the driving force behind the Glass on Fire glass workshops. Deanna Conti, one of the original members of the Mission Beach Artists and Craftworkers Association, made the shift from textiles to glass and mosaic. She is still making her vibrant fused glasswork which is displayed at Mission Arts. Sally Chamberlin and Anne Zamora embraced the medium and Meryl Harding, Sally Moroney and many others have a history of including beach glass in their art. Tony Higgins and Meryl Harding also include lampwork and glass jewellery as part of their artwork and practice.

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Mission Arts Movies

Commencing in 2009, under the name Mission Beach Film Festival Inc. (MBFF), members of the Mission Beach community operated a very successful series of annual film festivals, with the world’s first film festival solely focused on a sustainability theme.

The inaugural festival ran over three nights from 9-12 November 2009 and featured a then first-release showing of The Age of Stupid, the first big-screen dramatisation of climate change. A highlight for the September 2010 festival was the Hon Malcolm Turnbull, who at the time was a member of the House of Representatives for Wentworth, New South Wales, at the VIP event held at The Elandra Resort. The annual Photographic Awards Exhibition at Mission Arts was also born from this Festival.

In 2011, the World of Women’s Cinema (WOW) Film Festival was the first event held at the brand-new Mission Beach Community Arts Centre, screening on Friday, 9 September and Saturday, 10 September. In 2012, the Mission Beach Film Festival (MBFF Inc) was again held at MARCS Park, in the original November timeslot, between 2 and 4 November 2012.

By 2013, as so often happens with community initiatives, it had become difficult to sustain momentum and maintain support from a dwindling band of keen volunteers. Consequently, in April 2013, MBFF Inc. was formally wound up and subsequently reborn within Mission Arts as the Mission Beach Film Club (MBFC), also known locally as Cinema Paradiso. For several years the MBFC showed monthly arthouse films at the Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation (C4) meeting room, until COVID interrupted the sessions. Post COVID, through the second half of 2020, MBFC sessions moved to Mission Arts ‘Cage’ area, using new equipment that Mission Arts purchased for these and other purposes.

Early in 2021, the volunteers who had been running MBFC within Mission Arts decided to set up a second (separate) film club. Mission Arts assisted with significant financial and other support, including the transfer of the DVD library, club membership list and the Cinema Paradiso name and logo to the new group. Consequently, the Mission Arts Film group continues under its new name Mission Arts Movies (MAM).

Mission Arts Movies continued the film festival theme with the Queensland Touring Film Festival in June 2021, within its monthly program of varied movies. Another highlight that continued the original MBFF sustainability theme was the screening of Infractions in October 2022, a film about the impact of hydraulic fracturing (commonly known as ‘fracking’) in the Northern Territory.

MAM now shows recent films and has drawn on the funding carried forward from the MBFF. However, in 2024, new charges were implemented to assist in the costs of purchasing and paying public viewing license fees.

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Mission Arts Pottery

Mission Arts secured funding for a Pottery Studio in 2013 through the Gambling Community Benefit Fund (GCBF), and a subsequent GCBF grant funded the kiln, pottery wheels, some cabinetry and assorted equipment. Dave James helped with the design and sourcing of equipment. In late 2014, a dedicated space was erected adjacent to the original building to enable the Mission Beach community to explore the world of ceramics (pottery and sculpture).

In September 2015, Mission Arts Pottery (MAP) commenced regular Saturday Potting Days with Hilary Tredgett and Maree Goon. Maree was successful in obtaining a grant for approximately $16,000 for pottery-related expenses including clay and equipment. She also secured the original commitment from Blenners Transport to ship one ton of clay from Brisbane to Tully depots as a donation to Mission Arts. To this day, Blenners continues their generous donation of free freight for MAP’s annual bulk clay orders. In 2022, Joanne Townsend donated a small kiln which Lou Szekely was instrumental in making operational.

Mission Arts Pottery currently offers supervised open sessions five days a week, allowing beginners and experienced potters the opportunity to explore this tactile art form. It also offers the occasional instructional workshop and its school holiday workshops are very well-received.

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Mission Arts Theatre Ensemble (MATEs)

The Mission Arts Theatre Ensemble (MATEs), originally known as Acting Up, was formed in 2019 by Kerry Borthwick to give people in the Cassowary Coast access to a variety of theatrical experiences. In 2021, Don Sanderson conceptually expanded the group into an ensemble to extend the original vision and provide a clear direction for the group.

Ensemble-style theatre groups have a shared focus that is collaboratively devised and expressed through their operations and productions. In the case of MATEs, the focus is on ‘local’. Without being too restrictive, the ensemble offers the Cassowary Coast community local content created and produced by local people.

The acquisition of the former Girl Guide House, adjacent to Mission Arts, in early 2022 allowed MATEs to repurpose the original farmhouse as a theatre workshop & rehearsal space and small performance venue. As an homage to its origins on the site of a working pineapple farm, it is now referred to affectionately as the Pineapple Cottage Theatre.

MATEs has grown steadily and currently offers weekly rehearsals, fortnightly improv workshops, and monthly script reading sessions with several theatre productions produced annually. Recent productions have included Cinderella in LA, Petite Salon Pièces, Princess Shelley and the Wicked Witch of the Wild Waters, Aladdin, How Bard Can it Get?, and Snow White and the Seven Farmers.

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Mission Mosaic

In 2011, Michelle Larsen conducted several mosaic classes attended by Anne Zamora and Wendy Strutt. Anne made a mosaic sculpture of a dog in concrete and entered it in a Mission Beach Artists exhibition as a self-taught artist.

In 2012, Mission Arts Secretary Sue Shannon acquired grants through the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR), a not-for-profit organisation, to hold mosaic workshops. Consequently, many successful, well-attended workshops were held over the following years.

In 2016, Mission Arts President Lynda Hannah acquired a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant to hold workshops and to train local artists in the planning and production process of Public Art with Cairns mosaic public artist Dominic Johns. As a result, Raya, the blue-spot stingray, the group's collaborative public art sculpture, sits proudly on the foreshore at the north end of North Mission Beach. The group was nominated for an Australia Day Cultural Award (Senior) in 2017 for this public art project.

Anne Zamora and Wendy Strutt facilitated a variety of successful mosaic workshops over many years at both Mission Arts & Cardwell Art Gallery and inspired numerous other mosaic enthusiasts, before “officially retiring” as Mission Mosaic workshop coordinators in 2023.

There is an established mosaic foundation with equipment, materials, and inspiration at Mission Arts, waiting for an enthusiastic group to reactivate it.

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Oiled

Mission Arts Oiled painting group was formed in 2022 by S. Pullman to provide a supportive and creative environment for emerging and established oil painters to gather, share ideas, receive feedback and further refine their oil painting skills. No funding was sought, or required, for the group’s creation.

Each artist paints their own creative interests across various subjects including flora, fauna, landscape, still life and figurative. Oiled painters interpret their subject matter through a fresh contemporary lens but always maintain a strong commitment to the traditions of oil painting. 

Oiled meets monthly on the second Thursday of each month.

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Threads

One of the early exhibitions at Mission Arts, titled Threads, displayed a variety of fibre and textile art. As well as knitting and crochet from the Cassowary Coast Yarners group, some artists excelled in felting, eco-dyeing, silk painting, machine and hand embroidery, basketry, screen and lino printing, textile collage, patchwork, and more.

As there was very little opportunity for this diverse and talented community of textile artists to display their artworks, Threads was formed as both a creative interest group and as a signature exhibition at Mission Arts.

The Threads group meets regularly to plan exhibitions, share ideas and discuss works in progress. They have also held exhibitions at TYTO Regional Gallery in Ingham (2021) and at the Cardwell Library Foyer Gallery (2023).

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