Festival a first; honours creative artists

Thursday, March 31, 2011
Manifest to become an annual event

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific has honoured its creative artists during an awards ceremony named in honour of a pioneering filmmaker.

Talented: Steele McMahon, 16, received a Young Achiever Prize in song composing at the Manifest Creative Arts Festival. He travelled from Brisbane to perform during the awards ceremony that closed the festival. Credit: Ben Turner.

The Gabe Reynaud Awards closed the inaugural Manifest Creative Arts Festival. The ceremony honours the Avondale College of Higher Education alumnus and former Adventist Media Centre senior producer, who became the church’s first professionally trained director. Gabe’s vision: for the church to recognise the power of art, “not to preach so much [but] . . . to testify to [God’s] wonder and awe and mystery, and for artists to use their talents in all genres to testify to a God who is the embodiment of creativity,” said brother Daniel during the reading of the life sketch.

Manifest, coordinated by the church through Adventist Media and Avondale, will now become an annual event celebrating and encouraging the production of creative arts for ministry. The focus this year: filmmaking; song composing; and writing.

Recognition
Artist Joanna Darby received the Gabe Reynaud Award during the ceremony. Gabe’s wife, Andi, presented the award to Joanna, an alumna of Avondale who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Teaching in 2006. “[Joanna] has created a unique blend of art and ministry,” said Andi as she read the citation. “Her visual work has artistic integrity and outstanding quality. Her verbal art is innovative, refreshing, powerful and moving. Both overflow with a passion for communicating the love of Christ, delivered with humility and compassion. [Joanna] has combined her visual and verbal creativity into a ministry that reaches into churches, schools and community groups around the country. She exemplifies the power of combining art and ministry.”

Joanna’s mission is to share the stories about faith but to “make them more engaging for contemporary audiences and for different types of learners.” It is “not just about listening anymore, it’s about experiencing—feeling and seeing,” she says.

Recognition (with renumeration)
Manifest offered $1000 for the winning entry in each category of its competition.

Glendon Harris from Alstonville Seventh-day Adventist Church received the Hope Award recognising excellence in filmmaking for Her Story: Sarah. The documentary explores the issue of self-esteem through Sarah Chambers, a young adult from the church who suffers adult onset acne.

Benjamin Milis and Jodie Barnes, members of Avondale vocal ensemble The Promise, received the Psalter Award recognising excellence in song composing for “God Is Here.” The song, in an inspirational style using three-part harmony, reminds the listener of God’s presence at the death of Jesus on the cross and of God’s presence today.

Former Signs Publishing Company editorial assistant Scott Wegener received the Signs Award recognising excellence in writing for “Know Misunderstandings.” The article uses humorous misunderstandings to challenge the reader about the beliefs with which they identify.

Nick Lindsay (filmmaking, Me Syndrome), Steele McMahon (song composing, “Raw”) and Stephanie Fox (writing, “Darwin and His Critics”) each received the Avondale Young Achiever Prize. Steele even travelled from Queensland to perform during the ceremony. The Year 11 Brisbane Adventist College student and the two other winners each receive $200 and a $500 discount on fees at Avondale.

Affirmation
Adventist Media Network chief executive officer Neale Schofield affirmed creatives in his keynote by reminding them their gift can “revolutionise” the spreading of the gospel. “You may feel the church is not ready for you,” he said. “Well, the world is. Take this as a signal God wants you to do something much bigger in your life.”

Dr Grenville Kent, lecturer in Old Testament and arts in the School of Theology at Wesley Institute, presented the charge. He spoke of the Jewish influence in Hollywood, noting how the Jews had moved from the synagogue to the cinema. Adventists need to move into a similar creative space, he said.

Another of the festival’s speakers, Adventist writer Kay Rizzo, concurs. “Creativity will happen, whether we support it or not, so why should we lose it to the world?” Kay, the author of 58 books including I Will Die Free, On Wings of Praise and the “Serenity Inn Series,” shared from her writing experience but says she also learned from others. “I have been encouraged and inspired by being part of this festival,” she says. “It reminds me why I am doing what I do.” However, she adds encouragement should not be limited to festivals such as Manifest. “In local churches, we need to look for more ways to involve creative people and creativity in our worship services and in engaging with the community.”

Signs Publishing Company book editor Nathan Brown coordinated the workshops in the writing stand and the writing category of the competition. “Manifest builds on the writers’ seminars we have hosted in conjunction with Avondale in the past,” he says. “The creativity and energy that comes from interacting between the different fields of creativity add an extra dimension.

“Creativity matters—to the individuals who have dreams to create and to all the rest of us who can be challenged, inspired or engaged by their ways of seeing life,” he says. “So, anything we can do to encourage such creativity will make a difference in lives, churches and communities.”

Inspiration
Manifest, which Avondale hosted, March 23-26, also included an academic lecture, at which Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church senior minister Dr Bruce Manners presented findings from a study of Hope Channel viewers, and a showcase of Adventist Media’s new DVD-based evangelistic series Beyond the Search.

Inspiration came from SONscreen, an annual film festival organised by the church in North America. Co-founder Stacia D Wright attended, presenting two short film showcases. One featured the premiere in the South Pacific of Adopting Haiti. The documentary tells of the evacuation—with help from the United States State Department and from cable news network CNN—of children from the Maison de Enfants de Deu orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Director Timothy Wolfer, a film and television major at Pacific Union College, travelled from California’s Napa Valley to introduce it.—with Nathan Brown

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Brenton Stacey
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Brenton Stacey

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Brenton is Avondale University’s Public Relations and Philanthropy Officer. He brings to the role experience as a communicator in publishing, media relations, public relations, radio and television, mostly within the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific and its entities.