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founder and artistic director: alex walker

Alex Walker is an inclusive youth arts practitioner making live art with a cross-section of young people at the point where the spheres of children, arts, culture, and politics intersect. With an outstanding ability to celebrate and curate their artistic contribution, Alex has a profound impact on the young people she works with.  She believes they are natural generators of art, due to the fluidity of their emotions, abundant sense of play, organic experimentation, and inherent need to move. Alex is intrigued and enamoured with the perspective of the young, simultaneously demanding of truth and generous with explanation; always raw.  Working across contexts, she is heavily invested in carving out a place for the voice and position of the young person to have an impact on their environment and community. She insists that young people are armed with cultural agency and demands that their work, framed by excellent contemporary art practice, occupies a pivotal place in the theatre landscape. 

 

In 2016 Alex founded House of Muchness (HOM) which is a centre of artistic practices for the creative wellbeing of young people. At HOM, she has established a culture which breeds safe, creative risk-taking and artistic experimentation. She uses arts processes to arrive at new material which reveals the contemporary condition of young people and their complex relationship with the world. Alex is also the co-director of School With No Walls (SWNW) which operates within education and arts environments to activate the learning experience through the insertion of kinesthetic and sensory strategies. Alex has held key artistic roles at St Martins Youth Arts Centre, Outback Theatre for Young People and Australian Theatre for Young People. In her roles to date, she has prepared young people to perform and participate as part of Melbourne Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival, The Wheeler Centre, Arts Centre Melbourne, NGV, BIFEM, MPavilion, State Library Victoria, Testing Grounds, ArtsHouse, Theatreworks, Dark Mofo, Ten Days on the Island and Castlemaine Festival. She has presented at State, Regional and International Conferences about the capacity of young people within the arts.  

 

Alex has participated in the following training to complement her teaching practice: Trauma training with the Australian Childhood Trauma Group, Auslan Stage 1 training in 2013 and 2014 with Auslan Stage Left, Deaf Awareness Training with Ross Onley-Zerkel, Disability Awareness Training with Arts Access Victoria, and Cultural Sensitivity Training with the Centre for Multicultural Youth. Alex has her Victorian and NSW Working with Children checks and a First Aid Certificate. 

 

alex's approach

Alex’s artistic practice blends the physical, the sensory and the intellectual. 10 years of Montessori education as a young person provided her with formative exposure to an extremely immersive and material based learning system. Alex also has degrees in law and journalism, honing a fierce and investigative approach to learning and discovery. She champions youth led devising and uses innovative generative techniques to produce original performance material. Alex reaches out to diverse cultural traditions to enrich storytelling and encourage global perspectives. As a very physical practitioner, dance, movement and gesture are frequently used tools of exploration and meaning. Alex has an abundant sense of fun and leads with energy, playfulness and positive enthusiasm. 

inspiration

The approach at The House of Muchness has taken shape through inspiration by and experience with a number of overlapping industries and bodies of thought, including: 

 

  • Installation artists

  • Psychologists and neuroscientists

  • Philosophers and academics

  • Painters, sculptors and architects

  • Composers and sound designers

  • Choreographers 

  • Performance artists

  • Educators

  • Environmentalists

  • Activists

  • Writers and Illustrators

  • Digital artists and animators

 

Influential individuals and organisations include: 

  • Pina Bausch and Tanztheater 

  • Maria Montessori

  • Buckminster Fuller

  • Joost Bakker

  • Museum of Old and New Art

  • Mammalian Diving Reflex

  • The Green School, Bali

  • Rimini Protokoll 

  • Back to Back Theatre

  • The School of Life 

  • Kopergietery

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