Helping the community one conversation at a time

A creative job description is now available in Coolum with a new community project.

Amie Moffat and Jacqueline Sanderson are part of the public project the Keeper. Photo: John McCutcheon / Sunshine Coast Daily

A GROUP of creative Coolum locals are hoping to enrich the community one keeper at a time.

In collaboration with the Sunshine Coast Council the Keeper Project offers an individual the opportunity to work in a temporary role that observes, collects, makes and tells stories within the Coolum community.

Third and most recent keeper Amie Moffat said the project was "creating space for people to be able to talk".

"The project is basically about setting up in public space and having conversations with the local community and organisations," Mrs Moffat said.

Keeper assistant Jason Maling said the initiative sought to connect community members and heighten everyday normal activities.

"It's a process and it's less concerned with aims and outcomes and more about making something that happens every day a set of rituals in the community so we are embedding those things which we might consider as events or as strange or unusual and making them playful and making them normal and visible," Mr Maling said.

Second keeper Jacqueline Sanderson connected with the community through a public art activity while in the role and said the ability to remind people about our need for connection is what interested her about the project.

"I'm really interested in hearing stories and just chatting to people and I think that there is a certain type of magic in that," Mrs Sanderson said.

"There is a simplicity that we've forgotten as humans, we really want to deeply connect and that drew me into this project."

The visual artist said the project was very exciting.

"Anything could happen and when you engage community in different ways there is going to be positive outcomes," Mrs Sanderson said.

While the role of keeper comes with a set of playful rules, they are open to interpretation.

"We had this idea that there is a little bit of a legacy that goes on from one keeper to the next and we hand over that legacy and that's interpreted by the next keeper."

While the idea sprouted two years ago, the group recently secured a grant from the Regional Arts Development Fund allowing them to undertake a period of experimentation to shape how the project can become meaningful to Coolum.

The group hopes the creative job description attracts people with different skills, knowledge and experience and ultimately becomes what each person needs it to be over a long period of time.

To make the Keeper Project meaningful to Coolum the collective wants to encourage people to get in touch and offer suggestions or simply chat.

Mr Maling said if people engage with the project it will heighten the already rich culture in Coolum.

"Everything that we are doing already exists in the community all we are trying to do is draw attention to and make a little but more playful, the things that people already do," Mr Maling said.