about Paul Costigan and a WORD or two
I am an independent writer, commentator, researcher and consultant on all things visual arts, photography, music, urban design, development and planning, and a host of related climate change issues. I also have an interest in and experience on arts and not for profit boards and administration.
Prime interests:
Photography, Arts, Culture and Urban Issues.
(photograph by Gael Newton)
I like the use of the term ‘Urbanity’ as it sums up the interest in aesthetics, arts, and advocacy for resilient, engaging and healthy urban spaces.
I share with a growing number the passion for taking action on climate change within our urban environments and how this should start in our backyards.
My employment and related background is:
- 13 years as the CEO for the Australia Institute of Landscape Architects – includes experience in administration, governance and corporations law, juries, accreditation, publications, online forums, advocacy and policy development.
- National Director for Museums Australia
- An independent cultural consultant
- Executive Officer for an Arts and Recreation Industry Advisory Body (involved lots of education and training matters, including accreditation)
- Artistic Director of Megalo Access Arts (Screenprint and access arts)
- Too much time in arts advocacy and part-time writer on the visual arts
- Served on many committees and boards of management of arts and not for profit companies
- Somewhere back there I was a school teacher
- I pretended for two years to be a national serviceman in the army
- Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts); specialising in photography & print making (Screenprint)
- Between 2014 and 2023 I wrote regular opinion pieces on urban, political and cultural matters for local newspapers and news magazines in Canberra.
The other high interests are travel, visiting urban sites, roaming cities, enjoying visual arts (particularly photography) exhibitions and visiting galleries.
When time allows, I read all sorts of things (non fiction)and I love growing vegetables and herbs which then leads back to the pleasures of cooking and eating great food.
I maintain several online sites, including my photographic research site photo-web, that has research and historical papers on photography
and then there is my blog A Word or Two.
My partner is Gael Newton and she blogs on her own site – click here
Please make contact if there are opportunities that we may be able to assist with.
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This forum, A Word or Two, is a place for all manner of comments and photographs about anything and everything, such as politics, climate change, urban developments, the city of Canberra, the visual arts (especially photography), books and TV programs including those now on DVD.
As I like to roam and travel, this has resulted in a lot of images and thoughts on many places, people and events.
So I am going through a huge backlog of stuff to talk about and then to upload. We are also picking up former opinion pieces and reviews and migrating them over to this site.
(Photograph by Gael Newton)
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About our Reviews and Commentary
This forum (or blog) hosts reviews of anything and everything. I update it as often as possible – ideally daily – or whatever.
This includes visual arts exhibitions, books and other reading matter, DVDs, TV shows, music, music events, reviews about reviews, reviews of other people’s online pages – you name it – we choose to review and talk about anything.
Any of our reviews are our opinions. That’s why they may stray off the topic and provide other tangential comments about related issues. We also reserve the right to return to any posting and to update them; so yes changes may occur even after the post has been uploaded. Such is the ways of the world!
We very much like to look at other people’s reviews and if relevant, we may comment on those reviews.
We enjoy this – we hope you do also.
Watch this space.