Tell Your Story

We are an initiative that aims to create a safe, open and inclusive space for CaLD young people to bring their unique experiences and backgrounds into the process of storytelling and performing to the forefront of the Australian arts communities. Tell Your Story aims to facilitate artistic expression, confidence and participation in young people from diverse backgrounds in a nurturing environment so that each individuals’ unique cultural identity is demonstrated through the performing arts.

Having access to and participating in the arts is essential for every human being. For youth who are from new and emerging communities, engagement in the arts allows for deeper cultural connection, inclusion, confidence and empowerment. The objective of this course is for children to engage with others in similar circumstances and discover themselves artistically within a safe environment.

for the circular movement of knowledge

for the circular movement of knowledge is an online series of conversations where artists create new relationships with peers through knowledge exchange.

This project is commissioned and produced by Urban Theatre Projects.

During one-week digital residencies, 6 Utp artists will engage in exchange with a collaborator who holds knowledge in an area of interest to them. At the end of the week they will open up their digital space to share their learnings with audience via video and podcast presentations.

Bouncers

Comedy Central and Sky (UK) has commissioned a new eight-part digital series, Bouncers, which follows a rag-tag trio of clueless security officers and their boisterous supervisor as they struggle to keep their jobs in the temp department of a security company.

KickstART Festival

Youth week WA 2022

Youth Week WA (formerly National Youth Week WA), is an annual statewide celebration of the positive contributions of young people to our community throughout Western Australia. More than 100 events take place across the State each year, many of which have received a Youth Week WA grant provided by the State Government of Western Australia through the Department of Communities.

This festival is produced by Propel Youth Arts WA.

The Youth Week WA 2022 theme is

Courage to Change
Booraka Korangan-ak

Courage to Change is about empowering young people to shape decision-making, enact change and imagine the futures we wish to inhabit.

Courage to Change was decided in consultation amongst Creative Coordinator Noemie Huttner-Koros, the Youth Week WA Planning Committee, and Noongar translation by Kadjin Project Officer Kobi Arthur Morrison.

“Courage to Change – Booraka Korangan-ak is a call to action, to boldly and with care imagine a future grounded in regenerative solutions and mutual healing, to take those difficult first steps together. Once. And then again and again. ”

– KickstART 2022 Creative Coordinator, Noemie Huttner-Koros.

At the ridges of our hands

AT THE RIDGES OF OUR HANDS IS A GROUP SHOW PART OF UNDERTOW FOR PERTH FESTIVAL 2022, THAT FEATURES WORKS FROM ARTISTS SHANICE KEERU MWATHI, CHILUBA YOUNG, PATIENT BEYAN AND ELSA WELDMICAL, CURATED BY LINDA IRIZA AND PRODUCED BY SOUL ALPHABET.

EXHBITION RUNS FROM SAT 05 FEB 2022 - MON 25 APR 2022 | WAYLUP - FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE OPEN FROM 9AM - 5PM | OPENING FRI 04TH FEB AT 6.30PM

In the words of Sisonke Msmang - “In Yoruba ontology, the human personality consists of three elements: ara (body), emi (soul) and ori (inner head). One’s success or failure in life depends on the head. Adorning the head then, is a way of honouring the ori…The photographs exhibited in Undertow telegraph our ori. They remind me that I love us when we are ordinary and unspectacular. They tell me we make beautiful things everyday - out of the ridges of our hands. In these pictures African women are not detained by the camera nor distracted by its gaze. The women in these photographs are searching the skies, on the lookout for unidentified objects on the horizon. In these pictures our gazes are fixed firmly on the future.”

Remarkable Women

To celebrate the Remarkable Women in our lives, artists and women in communities across Western Australia will be invited to contribute stories of a woman who inspires them: a hero, someone quietly remarkable or simply a fabulously ordinary woman, to be honoured in text, performance and song. It may be a short story, a letter, a poem, a recipe, a drawing or a photograph in the language in which contributors are most comfortable, mother tongue or English.

The stories will be part of a performance installation co-produced by Half the Sky & Studio Kiin, under the guidance of lead artist Emele Ugavule & Creative Producer, Linda Iriza. The collection of written stories will be an important part of this event and will be eventually added to an online collection of stories on this website.

Loungeroom Project

Rolling out from 22 November 2021, 3 tutorials per week, WAYTCo proudly presents Loungeroom Project 2.0: A 4-week Online Summer School that will remain available on this site for you to revisit any time over the holidays and beyond.

The tutorials cover a range of theatre and performance making skills: in storytelling, writing, acting, movement, improvisation, lighting and more.

Project 54

Project 54 is a multidisciplinary collective body of work curated and produced by Soul Alphabet that navigates the past, present and visions of the future of Afrikan music and it will also be paying tribute to Afrika as the birthplace of the many musical genres we hear today.  

All artists involved in this project are invited to be in conversation with the stories that such sounds hold for them. They will be invited to respond through musical performances, film, spoken word, dance, paintings and much more. This project was conceptualised by Soul Alphabet and artist Nelson Mondlane and it will be in partnership with Propel Youth and supported by Western Australian Music. 

Studio Kiin storytellers were humbled to be involved in this project.

Curu Mai

Curu Mai is the program of events related to Salote Tawale’s exhibition at PICA, I don’t see colour. Curated by Creative Producer Emele Ugavule, Curu Mai sees digital and physical events celebrating Fijian culture and creative practices. Spanning from digital forums to community storytelling days, Curu Mai allows for deeper engagement with the themes arising from Tawale’s exhibition, whilst providing multiple access points for all ages to learn more about Fijian culture and communities.

Curu Mai means Enter or Come in in the Bauan dialect of the Fijian language, and through this program, a doorway into PICA will be opened to invite the local Fijian community to celebrate their culture while experiencing the work of one of Australia’s leading Fijian-Australian artists.

Curu Mai: Digital Forum - Rai vakakviti: Memory recount through the iTaukei worldview.
Facilited by Emele Ugavule, Rai vakaviti: Memory recount through the iTaukei worldview is a talanoa (conversation) between three leading iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) storytellers, offering the opportunity to learn about how the uniqueness of the iTaukei worldview informs the way Fijian storytellers preserve, interpret and communicate memory through historical archives, visual art and theatre making. In this discussion, they will touch on themes relating to genealogy, accessibility, and sustainability.

Curu Mai: Talanoa with Salote Tawale
Join Fijian artists Salote Tawale and Emele Ugavule as they discuss the impacts of environmental racism on the future of arts ecologies, and their creative expressions. This conversation provides deeper insights into the exhibition I don’t see colour, currently at PICA.

The starting point for I don’t see colour is a conversation that took place between the artist and a philosophy student at a party in the UK. Presenting painting, installation and video, “I don’t see colour” is a response to this exchange and an attempt to process the implications of this statement in the face of the unevenly felt impacts of climate change brought on by colonial and capitalist structures. The artist imagines climate change as an indiscriminate force that doesn’t see colour either.

Curu Mai: Community Day - Na lewe ni yagoda sa noda i talanoa
The final event for PICA’s Curu Mai public program, presented to coincide with Salote Tawale’s exhibition I don’t see colour, we are inviting Fijian community and friends to join us for ‘Na lewe ni yagoda Sa noda i talanoa: Our flesh is our stories’ on October 4th for art making and storytelling in PICA’s reading room. Creative Producer Emele Ugavule will lead a printmaking session, where participants can create their own masi kesa inspired cards and adornment.

Oceania Leadership Institute

Oceania Leadership Institute (OLI) is a culturally rooted leadership development program designed for Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) young adults and community organizers. The OLI curriculum forefronts Pasifika values, community, and history as the foundation of our holistic leadership praxis.

We are committed to the development of critical consciousness through embodied practice and the integration of post-colonial and decolonial theory, anti-racist curriculum, liberation theologies, and social justice advocacy.

‘Think in’

Half The Sky grew out of a series of (virtual) conversations between 5 women, working in the arts, living in lockdown in Perth, Western Australia. In the throes of a global pandemic we realised change was urgent and new conversations essential. We had to do something to challenge norms, transform habits, re-focus values and inspire others to create a world without gender discrimination. We were artists and art-workers. Why not a festival? Festivals are a way to celebrate culture and communities, to engage in conversations and debate and to showcase new ideas.  

Throughout the year Half The Sky is holding events – think ins, workshops, seminars – which will culminate in an annual gathering of women which celebrates all our achievements – in conversation, debate, music, performance and art. This blog records the journey.

Our Mirrabooka Think In began with Bev Port-Louis welcoming us to Country and Emele Ugavule bringing the room of women together and creating a space to connect with a sense of openness and generosity of spirit. Half The Sky's Chris Scoggin captured the afternoon in words and graphics, the story growing as the afternoon unfolded.

Kolyang Creative Hub 2021

The Kolyang Creative Hub is the singular event in the WA arts ecology that brings artists & industry-heads together, providing time and space to reflect, question, learn and share. It is a future-focused site for breaking down silos and knowledge-sharing within the sector: fostering critical thinking and developing innovative new ways of working.

Kolyang Creative Hub is many things.
It is artist responsive.
It creates space to think.
It is emergent and evolving.
It is a space for experimenting with practice, process and models.
It weaves the collective industry together.
It’s about advocacy.
It’s about self-determination.
It’s about making us stronger for the future. 

Born in 2020 during COVID as a response to the lockdowns, the 4-week program has become an annual event to facilitate interdisciplinary artistic practice sharing, creative developments, panels & conversations.  

With roots stretching deep into the wider sector, 35 independent artists were paid to attend in 2020, increasing to 62 artists in 2021 to develop and drive the content of the Hub to suit their diverse needs.

To the Front

To The Front is a workshop program designed exclusively for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) and First Nations artists in WA by Static Drive Co. It will upskill and connect aspiring artists working, or wanting to work, in live performance. Successful participants will be paid to learn from some of WA’s finest practitioners, as well as receiving masterclasses from artists all over Australia. To The Front will also provide tickets to shows, memberships to arts organisations, backstage tours of Perth’s venues, and more. 

After the workshops, participants can nominate to test out their new craft in a friendly, fun Practice Lab at Subiaco Arts Centre. Writers will be allocated performers, and will write a short performance piece for their cast from Monday - Friday. Over Saturday and Sunday, the Performers and Makers will work to stage the short pieces; mentors will be on hand to provide guidance to all participants throughout the week. On Sunday evening an invitation-only performance of all the new pieces will be held for friends, family, and select industry members.