CuriousWorks recently committed to strengthening its links with existing communities and expanding its reach to new ones by making two key additions to the team.
We welcomed Caitlin Newton-Broad as our new Community Director and Gary Spink as our first Communications Director. Both bring extensive experience to their roles that will benefit our future plans at this exciting time in the company’s development.
Over the next three years, CuriousWorks will embark on its most ambitious ever program of high-profile artistic projects with leading Australian and international film, theatre and arts organisations. Apart from creating new ways to tell the stories and share the experiences of multicultural Australia, these partnerships will create exciting new opportunities for our ‘Curious Creators’ (the most talented and motivated young people from our Western Sydney training programs).
At the same time, we will start new grassroots programs in schools to discover and encourage the next generation of story-tellers and cultural leaders.
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“I am thrilled to be joining CuriousWorks at an exciting time, when the company is creating multi-platform fictions based on longstanding collaboration with communities in Western Sydney. I believe CuriousWorks has a beautiful vision for telling Australian stories. Both the production process and the stories themselves are grounded in the development of young artists and community leaders and seek a new vernacular to reflect our communities.”
Caitlin Newton-Broad is a creative producer with an ongoing commitment to community cultural development, artistic adventure and access to the arts for everyone.
She has worked across Australia, Europe and Asia supporting artwork that innovates in the public realm. She has worked for Blast Theory (UK), PACT, Urban Theatre Projects, Belvoir – Company B and Performance Space (AUS). She has an ongoing interest in innovative arts in education programs, including UK and Australian models. From 2011 to 2014 she was Co-Artistic Director at Shopfront Contemporary Arts, an arts co-operative owned by young people in suburban Sydney.
Caitlin will support local artists to tell stories of Western Sydney through film, performance, installation and writing and also holds responsibility to develop the grassroots program and Curious Classroom, building from the clear path set down by Elias Nohra and Mark Taylor.
Gary is charged with the responsibility for gaining greater recognition for CuriousWorks’ significant achievements and bringing our work to the attention of new audiences.
“CuriousWorks is an amazing organisation, achieving incredible things, but too few people have heard about us. I want the stories of multicultural Australia not just to be told, but that diversity to be embraced and celebrated,” Gary said.
He wants that to happen within the traditional western Sydney communities we work with, and in the wider Australian population.
Gary brings us broad communications experience gained from a varied career that includes newspaper journalism, photography, teaching media and drama in Melbourne secondary schools and numerous senior PR roles for public organisations in Australia and Europe.
He had a 12-year stint in the UK that included media relations roles for two organisations (the Open University and London’s Natural History Museum) that worked in partnership with the BBC on long-term major projects.
Since returning to Sydney, he has been Communications Manager for the SCG and the Sydney Football Stadium, a role he continues part-time while working for us. Variety is the spice of life as they say.
We look forward to what CuriousWorks can achieve with Gary and Caitlin’s enormous experience and genuine passion for what we do. These are exciting times!