Balding is easier than being bald, on show at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery until 02 May, is an unusual exhibition and not just because of its intriguing title. The range of diverse, intensely colourful, multi-media works—set in the small, north gallery, painted black—certainly makes for a lively, buoyant, close encounter with the minds of the young artists featured. Rather than being a standard group show, however, the artworks are more evidence than exhibition.
Balding is easier than being bald is evidence of the vital Cultural Arts & Community Development work done by Beyond Empathy, a not-for-profit organisation, operating throughout the Shoalhaven and Illawarra regions.
Beyond Empathy
In the organisation’s own words: Beyond Empathy is an award-winning community arts and cultural development company with over 20 years experience working alongside communities facing ongoing challenges. We create powerful artistic projects grounded in creativity, culture and lived experience. By championing self-determination, Beyond Empathy supports young artists to tell their own stories, strengthening identity, inspiring connection, and creating meaningful social change for participants and audiences alike.
What’s on show in Balding is easier than being bald is a collaborative body of work co-produced by over 2781 young people experiencing recurring hardship. The artworks were produced over 2023-2026 through two Beyond Empathy projects, Steep and Flow.
Try to imagine what it takes to initiate, fund, coordinate, implement and facilitate projects such as these. Then there is the matter of making sure projects incorporate Beyond Empathy’s practice principles:
10 Principles for Creating Together
- The art must align with Beyond Empathy’s mission to partner with people living under pressure, to create new artistic projects which bridge divides, build pride and lead to social change.
- The art must be developed by/with the community, drawing on their life experiences.
- The art must be both unfamiliar and accessible and should focus on multiple ‘stories’.
- The art must exceed the expectations of the community and artistic peers.
- There can be no selection or casting process for participation that involves rejections. If a person comes, you must find a way for them to be involved.
- The community and the Beyond Empathy team must all have a go at the technical or craft tasks connected to the attitude.
- The artwork should, in its style, represent the diversity of the people that have contributed to its creation.
- If a participant is unable to turn up for a workshop or a performance, the team will still progress with the workshop or performance, possibly creating a new direction for the art.
- All project credits are to be determined in an ethical and fair way, collaborating with the creators of the art.
- The artwork must be presented first in the community where it was made.
What it takes
Now try to imagine the personal resources, people skills, and creative know-how required for Beyond Empathy team members to: adhere to these principles; successfully engage young people living under pressure from recurring hardship, as well as meet and manage whatever issues arise from this; earn these young people’s trust; maintain and sustain the cycles of engagement over months, sometimes years; keep mind and heart open.
As some who has decades of professional experience in this field, I can tell you it is no mean feat to successfully do the subtle, complex, multi-layered, multi-faceted, transformative work Beyond Empathy’s practitioners do. It is this very particular kind of arts-based facilitation—activating and guiding these potentially transformative spaces—that is the subject of my doctoral research.
Late last year Beyond Empathy’s CEO, Alice McLintock, invited me to come and talk to team members. What struck me immediately I entered the room where everyone was gathered was how young the team is (and not solely due to me being in my mid 60s, so everyone seems young to me).
It was a truly edifying experience for me being in a room full of these young practitioners—something akin to finding members of my sparse tribe that I had no idea existed.
Putting Principles into Practice
Let me draw your attention to number 5 in Beyond Empathy’s 10 Principles (above): There can be no selection or casting process for participation that involves rejections. If a person comes, you must find a way for them to be involved.
My experience and research suggest this is the real testing ground for Beyond Empathy’s principles in practice and the practitioners committed to applying them. The ask here, is to create and hold a space where everyone and everything each person brings is accepted and accommodated—including whatever psychological impacts of recurring hardship are shaping the participants in their day-to-day lived experience.
In practice, what this means for Beyond Empathy’s practitioners, in the phases of direct engagement with communities, is that from moment to moment, in real-time, they have to, all at once: be open-minded, non-judgemental, curious about everyone who shows up; have to hold firm to the belief that every person has creative ability of some sort which can be accessed with the right conditions, support and structure. They have to be prepared to: respond, rather than react, if they encounter direct challenges and provocations; meet resistance with understanding and compassion; take action to keep people psychologically safe (and perhaps, physically). I could go on, and on, and on.
Meaningful Change
In my view, it is what happens in these spaces, these direct encounters, immersed in arts processes, that meaningful personal and social change has the greatest potential to emerge.
In a conversation with Shaniece Igano, one of the Beyond Empathy team leading the Flow and Steep projects (that gave rise to Balding is easier than being bald), we reflected on what a privilege it is, as Cultural Arts & Community Development practitioners, to witness truly meaningful change—to see people’s internalised stories and ideas about themselves shift, or crack wide open. It is evident they are having a radically different experience of themselves, getting to think about and understand themselves in a completely different way. What emerges from this shift in view and self-regard is a positive transformation of their idea of who they are, what they are capable of, and what is possible for them—an act of becoming.
As Shaniece so aptly puts it, “It’s really cool that we can facilitate that. Yeah.”
On your visit to Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, while it may be tempting to look at Balding is easier than being bald as simply an art exhibition, I urge you to also see it as compelling evidence of the truly artful, cultural arts and community development work of Beyond Empathy.
Exhibition information
Balding is easier than being bald is currently on show at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery until 02 May 2026.
Balding is Easier Than Being Bald reflects what it’s like to live within uncertainty. It offers insight into the collaborative energy of young people reshaping their worlds, and celebrates their creativity, resilience and curiosity navigating a world that is ever changing. In spaces where nothing is fixed, infinite possibilities can feel expansive yet overwhelming. Balding is Easier Than Being Bald speaks to this tension and invites you to reflect on your own relationship to uncertainty and transition.
Also on show now until 02 May
Vipoo Srivilasa: Re / JOY Solo exhibition of artist Vipoo Srivilasa’s large scale ceramic sculptures presenting a joyous celebration of migration, belonging and hope.
On show 21 March – 02 May
Dennis Golding: POWER – The Future is Here A collaboration between artist Dennis Golding and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from Alexandria Park Community School to make superhero capes, created during a workshop in 2020, led by Golding who was an artist in residence at the school.
DISCLOSURE
In the exhibition blurb for Balding is easier than being bald, I am mentioned as one of the established artists and cultural leaders who provided mentoring and support to Beyond Empathy. In addition, I am currently an External Supervisor to individual team members.
Beyond Empathy is assisted by the NSW Government through Create NSW and the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
