Departing from Melbourne, Australia, Return Flight is an international collaborative project, a cultural exchange opportunity and a multidisciplinary arts platform for emerging and established artists and writers. The project gives Melbourne contributors an opportunity to engage with practitioners outside their field and with international audiences. At the same time international contributors are introduced to the Melbourne audience, thereby further enriching the diverse tapestry of this city’s cultural program and the individual practices of all creative contributors involved.
In 2017, Return Flight will launched its inaugural program with the collaboration between Melbourne and Edinburgh, Scotland. The program includes five artists from each city creating new work for the project, then five writers from the opposite city creating written response works to a single artwork each. The project will manifest in an exhibition in Melbourne, Edinburgh and a publication in both digital and hardcopy format.
This year’s project is between Melbourne and Christchurch following the same model. Find out more about Return Flight MEL>CHC right here.
The project has had overwhelming support thus far. Some contributor feedback illustrates the project engagement to date:
“Return Flight has given me the chance to push my artistic boundaries and take my art to the next level.” - Edinburgh artist.
“It has been incredible to work with an artist across the world, blindly, and to discover that we are talking about the same kinds of things in our work.” – Edinburgh writer.
“I was also drawn in by the hugeness of it, the concept, the planning, the thousands of kilometres between Melbourne and Edinburgh.” Melbourne artists.