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| Susan Street is right at home at Kelvin Grove's Creative Industries Precinct. |
Distinguished academic, dancer and choreographer Susan Street is a great example of Queensland's brain gain.
After six years in a key role in the performing arts in Asia, she has joined the steady stream of expatriate professionals lured to Queensland by the Smart State's vibrant academic and business sector.
Susan worked as Dean of Dance within the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts from 1999 until this year. In September she returned to Brisbane to take up the position of Dean of the Creative Industries Faculty in the Creative Industries Precinct at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
The precinct is Australia's first site dedicated to experimentation and commercial development in the creative industries.
Working closely with partners from government and industry, QUT provides a unique opportunity for designers, artists, researchers, educators and entrepreneurs to easily connect and collaborate with others to create new work, develop new ideas and grow the creative industries sector in Queensland.
The $60 million site boasts some of the most advanced digital facilities to support the creative work undertaken and some of the most exciting partners in identifying the next generation of ideas.
Susan feels right at home on the Kelvin Grove campus, alongside both her academic colleagues and the aspiring dancers, designers, artists and writers who make up the student body.
"It's a very rich environment and there's a great feeling of confidence about the place."
"At a time when worldwide the creative industries broadly defined is worth $2.2 trillion, the Creative Industries Precinct has really put QUT ahead of the game.
"It's about developing the people resources we have and making sure the structures that already exist - government, universities and private sector - work well together." Susan started dancing lessons when she was five. She later trained with Ballet Victoria, before carving a career for herself in folkloric dance, first in Melbourne and later in Europe after she joined the International Folkloric Dance Theatre in Amsterdam in 1980.
She returned to Australia in 1982, moved to Queensland and became part of the State's burgeoning 1980s arts scene, performing, choreographing and working as an academic administrator and teacher in dance at the Brisbane College of Advanced Education.
In 1988 she became Head of Dance at QUT, a position she held for 10 years before moving to Hong Kong.
In 1991 she received a Master of Arts in Arts Criticism from City University, London.
Susan Street sees her role as head of the Creative Industries Faculty as diverse, complex and multi-layered.
"I understand the creative process and the balance needed in terms of practical and intellectual skills when it comes to training artists.
"It's about harnessing energy, managing people and resources, encouraging work and promoting success.
"Working in Asia I dealt with the rote learning approach. Students' technical skills were first rate but it was a very insular kind of education.
"Here at QUT there's an emphasis on the individual, an acknowledgement that different students shine in different areas, expressing themselves in their different arts projects.
"It's an environment that allows students to not only train as dancers or actors or musicians but to look at other disciplines and see how they might contribute to the creative industries in a much broader way.
Susan also hopes to teach some dance technique classes at QUT.
"It's great to be involved helping and training young people who are really keen to do exciting things, who are ambitious and excited about the life that's ahead of them."
Last reviewed 19 January 2006