Since 1989 Hastings Council has also fostered and supported a range of community public art projects such as the Werrikembe Mural, Harry’s Lookout and the Shelley Beach installation, The Seven Villages Project, Windmill Hill and Cowarra Dam.

These key initiatives and the cooperative relationships that have since developed between Hastings Council, artists, community groups and local business have helped to create a new event that has taken public art and sculpture to new levels of acceptance and integration with community life and with Council’s cultural and environmental management programs.

In 2000 a group of creative people came together with a shared vision for an event that would present sculpture and public art in an outdoor environment. They were looking for an event that could give voice to creative expression and ideas, encourage discussion and reflect the community identity and cultural depth of the region.

And so – Confluence was born… It began as an arts forum and grew to become a month of public art and sculpture.

The name Confluence was chosen to reflect the meeting and collaboration between artists and community and community and sculpture. The event is also a meeting place for different cultural perspectives. Confluence also reflects the strong geography of the region, dominated by the coastal and estuarine environments of stunning beaches, rivers, lakes and wetlands.

As a major part of Confluence, the AquaSculpture 2003 outdoor sculpture prize and exhibition was created. This event was a focal point – linking together the community, the arts and the environment to create a distinctive, memorable cultural event that brought people into contact with art in the public domain.

Many of the community artworks produced for the exhibition were an outlet for community creativity and issues such as peace, the environment, reconciliation and the plight of the refugees. The event has created a vehicle for community discussion and debate, allowing messages to be made in a really different way.

AquaSculpture is a great example of a community initiative sparking a major collaborative project, with new partnerships forming between environmental managers, artists, business, cultural and community organisers and Hastings Council.

This collaboration won project recognition, when i n 2004, the inaugural AquaSculpture exhibition and prize was awarded the Community Cultural Development (CCD) Board of the Australia Council’s prestigious Partners Award.

The successful nomination for the award was a joint partnership of WaterWise NSW and Hastings StormWater Environment Education Program (SWEEP) for AquaSculpture, sculpture by the Hastings River held in Port Macquarie in October 2003.

By using community cultural development processes, the project partners were able to focus on the message of water conservation and environmental management through a series of community sculpture workshops led by visual artists, culminating in a sculpture prize, outdoor exhibition and community celebration.