OUR PURPOSE
CuriousWorks exists at the intersection of contemporary multi-arts practice and community arts and cultural development. We work across art forms and disciplines, with a focus on screen works, digital media, and emerging art forms.
OUR VISION
Working with artists and communities in South West Sydney, we actively shape a future culture that is vibrant, democratic, generative, and relevant for Australia and beyond.
We want to see a fair, inclusive, equitable, innovative arts landscape that reflects the plurality and complexity of lived experience in contemporary Australia.
We want to see resources disseminated fairly and imbalances corrected. We want abundant opportunities and pathways in the arts for all and especially for historically marginalised and minoritized people and communities.
We want a cultural landscape that is inclusive and expansive, where anyone can create, participate, enjoy, and feel belonging and agency to explore their potential through the arts.
We will play our part in creating this future culture from our base in South West Sydney.
HOW WE WORK
We nurture the ideas and the potential of art makers and future cultural leaders, creating space for the next generation to play, learn and grow. We believe in ethical and self-determined storytelling, and in the integrity of process, engaging deeply and meaningfully with artists, audiences, communities, and collaborators to produce and present new Australian work and cultural experiences that speak to the hyper-local of our home grounds in South West Sydney, and resonate far beyond.
We do this through commissioning new local work, co-creating cultural experiences with communities and artists, providing arts education programs, generating leadership and skills development opportunities, creating employment pathways, partnering in research and cultural development initiatives, and advocating alongside our peers for systemic change.
Our communities of focus often intersect, reflecting the reality of the plural and complex lived experiences in contemporary Australia. They include people from Western Sydney, First Nations peoples of Australia and the world, culturally and racially marginalised people and people of colour, LGBTQI+, young people, older people, people living with disability, people who may be experiencing financial hardship, and people seeking asylum or those newly settled in Australia.
OUR HISTORY
CuriousWorks is a Western Sydney-based organisation built by and for Western Sydney artists.
In 2005, CuriousWorks was a bold and ambitious start-up committed to telling diverse community stories, founded and led by a young Sri Lankan artist from Western Sydney, S. Shakthidharan.
Since then, CuriousWorks has matured into an expanding collective of established practitioners and professionals in the areas of socially-engaged arts practice and community arts and cultural development.
Our stomping grounds are the suburbs of South West and Western Sydney and we’re proud of our longstanding presence and strong relationships in the region – with our peers in the arts sector, with local artists at every stage in their creative journey, and with youth and community service providers, government agencies, schools, and the broader community through years of program and project co-design, delivery and evaluation.
Artist-led and dedicated to embedded longterm community engagement, our strengths emanate from a core staff and a network of creatives with deep connections to the localities we operate within and the communities we serve.
Over the years, CuriousWorks’ artistic vision and output has been led by an evolving cohort of established and emerging Western Sydney-based artists from a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds, mediums and perspectives. Our vision, artworks and programs remain a reflection of our continued commitment to a vibrant, democratic, generative, and relevant future culture.
OUR ANNUAL REPORTS
To learn more about how our work is making a change every year, read our annual reports here.
You can read our Strategic Plan here:
Strategic Plan 2025 – 2028