“I think our mission statement says it quite well,” says Executive Director of Arts Out West Tracey Callinan. “Our mission statement is to promote, facilitate, educate and advocate for arts and cultural development for the communities of the Central West.”

Arts Out West is one of the 14 regional arts development organisations across NSW. Each is an independent organisation with a governing board, but all are coordinated with Regional Arts NSW. Based out of Bathurst, the organisation covers 11 local government areas and more than 500 artists in the Central West.

Tracey took over the Executive Director role 10 years ago on her return from working overseas.

“I had just done a stint of work in England working on a big education program there about embedding creativity into education, which I loved, but it was time to come home,” said Tracey, who was born in Cootamundra and spent her early childhood in Canowindra.

Tracey grew up playing piano and went on to study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she fell in love with another instrument.

“I kind of accidentally fell into playing harpsichord, particular continuo playing, which is a very particular type of accompanying,” said Tracey who has worked as a professional musician in a number of countries around the world.

Her role at Arts Out West is a varied one and often keeps Tracey on the road.

“Sometimes I'll have a whole week where I'm sitting in my office in Bathurst, but they are pretty rare, most weeks I'm out and about somewhere,” said Tracey, who had spent the day in Condobolin and Parkes, before stopping by the Orange City Life office for our interview.

“The first part of the work we do is providing assistance; so whether it be somebody working at professional level in the arts or creative industries or somebody who is a hobbyist, we can help them find funding or it could be giving advice on how to incorporate, helping them with a business plan, we set up professional development opportunities or workshops and that takes up a huge amount of my time.”

Promotion is another big part of what Arts Out West do and they have a full-time communications officer on staff.

“We also work on relationships and partnerships, both within the arts and crossing beyond the arts. We try to connect people and organisations up so they can work on things together,” said Tracey.

“We do an awful lot of work connecting across to health — we do arts and health programs in some of the hospitals, we have a musician in hospitals program, things like that. But it could be to education, corrections, and we have a partnership with the National Parks and Wildlife Services.”

Some highlights of her time in the job, have been coordinating an artist exchange program to the UK and the introduction of Wiradjuri signage into the redevelopment of the Lachlan Health Service.

“That actually improved health outcomes and Western NSW Local Health District were so happy with the outcome of that that they are now rolling that model out to all the hospitals in the Western NSW LHD so that would be an example of something that had success in its own right and has a legacy that is having an impact elsewhere,” said Tracey.

And on top of it all, Tracey decided to fill her spare time by undertaking a PhD at Charles Sturt University, looking at place appropriate policy development for cultural and creative industries.

“We have some seriously good artists,” said Tracey who is passionate about the arts scene in the Central West.

“My mission is to get people to understand that regional areas do not have to be treated as second rate areas, that we have excellence here, that we have a really healthy thriving arts scene and that that need to be recognised.”