The National Arts and Culture Alliance has been out and about talking to artists about their practice with communities in Australia. NACA caught up with 3 leading community and cultural development artists to see how they felt their sector was developing and where some changes might need to occur. Yanni Scott-Davis, Poppy van Oorde-Grainger and Shakthi Sivanathan, three dynamic and award winning Australian artists have taken some time out to share with you their thoughts. We asked each of the artists the following questions: Who inspires you in the world of creative community engagement and why?Tell us about the project that made you most proud…Tell us about a project where things have gone horribly wrong …What is the rant all your colleagues have heard a million times, about what’s wrong with the way our sector goes about its work?For you to continue in your work, and continue to push the creative and social approaches you take, what needs to happen?What do you feel are the three big questions that the sector needs to ask itself in order to grow?Shakthi SivanathanShakthi founded CuriousWorks in 2005. He has worked since then with the CuriousWorkers to deliver a series of creative initiatives that have sustainable and innovative outcomes for all Australians: The Migrant Project, which recast Sydney as a city built on a history of migration; the CuriousWorks model for leveraging digital media in marginalised communities everywhere; The Stories Project, a model for facilitating professional media from cultural leaders and building alternative media sources; and the Lanka Project, recasting the relationship between Sri Lanka and Australia. In which communities do you work/have you worked?A great many – but on long-term initiatives, Western Sydney and the Pilbara, remote Western Australia.What are some sources of inspiration for your work?I know it’s daggy but the communities we work and the people I collaborate with are my number one inspiration. My other 'texts’ have been movements and philosophies that inspire me: the Upanishads and Hindu philosophy; the open source community and the process of agile development; narrative therapy; user-centered design; hybrid art forms like poetic fiction or film, Bharathanatyam, Parkour, the music video and site-specific experiences that combine theatre, dance and film. Bands that have thought about what music is and why they play it, like Midnight Oil and Radiohead, also inspire me. The intersection between these movements and community development is what I find so valuable, and what enables me to define what our own industry can do to evolve and have a bigger impact.Who have been your mentors?The people who see the potential in you when you don’t have a track record are the ones who make it all possible. Shane Carroll and Khaled Sabsabi were the first people who opened doors for CuriousWorks – without them we would be nowhere, and Khaled has been someone who has seen the company grow and has remained a mentor figure for me in that context since the beginning. Linkshttp://curiousworks.com.au/http://thestoriesproject.com.au/http://www.allaroundyou.net/http://toolkit.curiousworks.com.au/welcomehttp://www.digitalasi.com/