Hi everyone,
The hills are alive! Hope everyone is soaking in all the warm sunshine.
Not only is spring in full bloom, but so are the incredible artists that we’ve had the honour to work with. From Tender to Testing Grounds, one of the greatest joys that the entire CuriousWorks team share is the opportunity to support artists to create kaleidoscopic stories from Western Sydney.
We’ve been busy bees since our last update – welcoming our incredible Future Culture 2024-25 cohort & continuing our program Utopia with lead artist Emmanuel Asante at Liverpool Boys High School.
In the midst of our artistic projects, arts programs, and community collaborations with organisations such as UTS Shopfront, the ARC Linkage project led by Sukhmani Khorana from UNSW, and more, we’ve also taken the time to pause and reflect as a team, working on our essence statements together in our Fat Chats sessions, as they relate to our work as well as having our annual Wellbeing Day.
Furthermore, we’re also hiring! We are looking for a Senior Creative Producer to join the team. Reporting to the CEO, the role is responsible for working collaboratively with the team to co-design and deliver the CuriousWorks artistic program. This role arose out of several chats in our team meetings where we collectively identified that we needed a layer of support embedded in our team to mentor early career creative producers and help deliver programs of scale.
Curious about we’ve been up to? Read on…
Tender
Tender is exhibiting at Fairfield City Museum & Gallery from the 16th of November 2024 to the 25th of January 2025.
Tender reveals the nuances and tender sides of the communities of Western Sydney through four individual but interconnected documentary films by multidisciplinary artists: Mohammad Awad (3awadi), Carielyn Tunion, Diamond Tat, and Sharon Mani.
The opening night of Tender at the Sydney Opera House was the epitome of how art connects us in myriad ways. There’s a special magic in how it brings us together – sparking awe, conversations, tears, and laughter. We are all so proud of the infinite amount of care and hard work that everyone involved poured into Tender. Re-live all the magic through our highlights video above, which was filmed and edited by Juan Guillermo Robayo Gómez.
Tender showcased at the Sydney Opera House as part of their UnWrapped season in September 2024. It was part of the Tours Digital Immersive Experience located in the Western Foyer. You can now stream the films here.
This work was produced by CuriousWorks, under the creative and technical direction of Elias Nohra. It was commissioned by Sydney Opera House and supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Future Culture
We’re so excited to have these four wonderful individuals join CuriousWorks for the next 9 months! We welcomed Kirsten Maglalang, Kobra Sayyadi, Emma Pham and Cassandra Li into our team and our space at Fairfield City HQ in October 2024 by spending some slow time together sharing food, coffee, divining our own futures and beginning to plan our next nine months together. Miranda Aguilar, program producer, guided us all through creating a social contract together to set our intentions and ways of working. Watch this space for more info on how Future Culture progresses.
How do you build a more relevant, equitable, sustainable and future-focused arts culture? You invest time and money in the people; and you create multi-directional opportunities for sharing, learning and growing relationships. Future Culture 2024-25 is a pilot program that aims to do all of that. Future Culture is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Senior Creative Producer
We’re hiring!
CuriousWorks is seeking a Senior Creative Producer to join the team. Reporting to the CEO, the role is responsible for working collaboratively with the team to co-design and deliver the CuriousWorks artistic program.
All the details can be found here. Applications are due by 11:59pm Monday November 25, 2024.
CuriousWorks: At A Glance
Here’s a snapshot of everything else we’ve been up to since our last update. Make sure that you follow us on our social media (LinkedIn, Instagram & Facebook) to keep up to date with all things CuriousWorks!
- PYT Fairfield, CuriousWorks and Curiously West Film Club will be presenting our Red Carpet Gala screening featuring all the wonderful works made through this past semester. It’s all happening on Saturday 23rd November, 7pm – 9pm at PYT Fairfield. See you there – it’s going to be a night to remember!
- Our Utopia program continues with lead artist Emmanuel Asante at Liverpool Boys High School. Watch this space for more details to come.
- We recently wrapped up our final Open Door Days for 2024. Huge thank you to everyone who came through – it was an absolute pleasure for us to get to know and talk to you more! Keep an eye out for the next iteration in 2025.
- Our Testing Grounds participants have been keeping busy from shoots to green screen tests to sessions with their mentors. We can’t wait to see how these folks’ works continually evolve over the next period.
- We were welcomed to the UTS Shopfront: Managing for Social Impact program in which we were paired with talented students to work together on an Organisational Communications Plan over 12 weeks.
- We were a proud community partner on the ARC Linkage project led by Sukhmani Khorana from UNSW. This included a symposium titled ‘We have different yardsticks: Migrant Women Breaking Barriers at Work’ – a gathering of remarkable migrant women who have navigated structural obstacles to thrive in their careers.