The Colour Cycle Podcast by Diversity Arts Australia

First aired: 16 March 2022 This episode brings together Professor Deborah Cheetham AO, First Nations Creative Chair of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and producer of Australia’s first Indigenous opera, and Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE, founder of the first professional orchestra in Europe to be made up of a majority of Black, Asian and ethnically diverse musicians. These two trailblazing women talk about...

First aired: 10 Jan 2022 In 2020, Sydney Arts Management Group (SAMAG) facilitated a panel asking what was the role and responsibility of the creative sector in the fight for racial justice. Hosted by Diversity Arts’ Lena Nahlous, the talk featured leading activists, artists and community leaders, who explored whether we should take the path of reform or instead “blow it all up” and completely ret...

First aired: 6 Jan 2022 Lena Nahlous interviews poet and theatre producer Zainab Syed, who tells us about how she successfully engaged Muslim communities in Western Australia. The episode focuses on Performing Lines WA’s staging of Layla Majnun , a solo show devised by diverse and emerging artists from WA and featuring US Farsi scholar and storyteller Ustaadh Feraidoon Mojadedi. Zainab reveals how...

First aired: 17 August 2021 Lena Nahlous talks to multidisciplinary artist, activist, Ted x speaker and creative director of FOLK magazine Moreblessing Maturure about fighting erasure, the importance of having spaces to experiment and create, and the need for critics of colour. Spotlight: singer-songwriter and performer Zaya Barroso. Thank you to the Future Women, the City of Parramatta and Parram...

First aired: 12 August 2021 The creation of physical spaces — theatres, film companies and galleries — is integral to showcasing the work of culturally diverse artists and true pluralism of Australia. This episode explores the need for these spaces, with a particular focus on a diverse creative hub in Adelaide called Nexus Arts. We also ask: what happens when a global pandemic shuts down these cri...

First aired: 12 August 2021 Can we increase cultural diversity on and behind our screens through official diversity standards? How necessary and effective are standards and targets? Lena Nahlous explores these questions by speaking to the Head of Inclusion at the British Film Institute (BFI) Jennifer Smith and Australian filmmaker Pearl Tan, a participant in British Council’s INTERSECT program.&nb...

First aired: 12 August 2021 The past two years have seen worldwide changes in the ways we talk about racial and cultural representation. Contemporary audiences are increasingly seeking out and demanding greater diversity in our screen and performing arts sectors. Writer/broadcaster Sunil Badami talks to CEO of Creative Diversity Network (UK) Deborah Williams about how things are shifting glob...

First aired: 12 August 2021 The past two years have seen worldwide changes in the ways we talk about racial and cultural representation. Contemporary audiences are increasingly seeking out and demanding greater diversity in our screen and performing arts sectors. Writer/broadcaster Sunil Badami talks to CEO of Creative Diversity Network (UK) Deborah Williams about how things are shifting globally....

First aired: 12 August 2021 What is the power of language? How does the language we speak inform artistic practice? What do you do when the State has historically attempted to erase that language? Our special guest in this episode is singer-songwriter and British Council ACCELERATE alumni Gina Williams, who creates contemporary music in her Indigenous Noongar language with her musical partner Guy...

12 August 2021 The Covid-19 pandemic saw a surge of Anti-Asian racism. In response, Diversity Arts Australia launched I Am Not A Virus , an artist-led project that provides powerful counter-narratives to xenophobia and racism. This episode spotlights interviews from Asian artists, partners and curators from the I Am Not A Virus project, along with two spoken word pieces that were commissioned as p...

First aired: 11 August 2021 In 2020, Diversity Arts Australia and British Council launched the Creative Equity Toolkit, a how-to resource that supports organisations in reaching diversity goals. This episode was filmed at the Toolkit launch at Sydney Opera House. It features conversations about the global anti-racism movements of 2020, allyship, building alliances between the culturally diverse im...

First aired: 8 May 2020  Genuine diverse leadership has the potential for the audiences who are engaging with culture to see themselves, their narratives and histories, reflected in what they see and experience. This panel discussion includes arts leaders from the UK and Australia who participated in the inaugural year of the INTERSECT program. INTERSECT is a joint British Council and Diversi...

First aired: 1 May 2020  In 2014, Caroline Bowditch premiered a dance theatre performance called “Falling in Love with Frida” with both disabled and non-disabled performers, and sign language interpretation embedded at its centre, the award-winning and critically acclaimed piece was shown 93 times to sold-out audiences across the UK and internationally. In this keynote address, Executive Dire...

First aired: 24 April 2020 Diversity and inclusion employment practices are often focused on recruitment, but not on retention. Promoting cultural competency in the creative sector is a step towards creating safe spaces that foster and encourage equity. In his keynote at the Fair Play symposium, Rob Hyatt from the Koorie Heritage Trust talks about the importance of identity in workplaces and speci...

First aired: 17 April 2020 In the creative sector, the most visible marker of power can be seen by who occupies positions of leadership, who is on the boards, who judges the awards and runs the company? Who hires? Who dispenses funds? Who signs off on the program or decides what work gets made? Tune in to the “Take it from the top” panel at the Fair Play Symposium in Melbourne – hosted by Diversit...

First aired: 10 April 2020 After years of talking about diversity in the arts sector, it’s starting to feel like a monologue that only reaches an audience of our own communities, say Dr Paula Abood and Aseel Taya, a Palestinian creative director, and installation artist. Aseel says when applying for arts funding, the process is not tolerant of people from migrant backgrounds and is even less accom...

First aired: 3 April 2020  So what is the status quo in terms of access and inclusion in Australia’s creative sector for people from First Nations backgrounds, People with Disability and culturally and linguistically diverse or migrant communities? How do you dismantle existing systems and structures of power? These are just some of the issues tackled by this panel on the ‘State of Play: Equi...

First aired: 27 March 2020 Tune in to Diversifying Screen and Stage with Deborah Williams, artist and CEO of the Creative Diversity Network (CDN) in conversation with performer, teacher and CEO of Arts Access Victoria​ Caroline Bowditch at The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas​ for Diversity Arts’ Fair Play season. Deborah Williams tackles assumptions about gender, race, disability and c...

First aired: 20 March 2020 Has representation become a buzzword? The representation box is often ticked when “People of Colour”, “First Nations” people and “People With Disability” are ‘invited into’ the conversation for a moment. But how can we create real systemic change? Tune in to the panel: Towards Creative Sector Self-Determination from our Fair Play symposium at the Wheeler...

First aired: 13 March 2020 First People’s First, how do cultural organisations, institutions and arts practitioners put this principle into practice in ways that move beyond tokenism? This is one of the critical issues unpacked in depth by Genevieve Grieves. Genevieve is a Worimi woman from southeast Australia based in Naarm, sometimes known as Melbourne. She’s an award-winning artist, curator and...

First aired: 8 March 2018 We often talk about the need for quotas to compel arts organisations to include more diversity in their programming. When Create NSW’s Screen division introduced a 50/50 quota for gender - they significantly increased the participation of female directors, writers, and producers within a very short period of time. So could quotas work to create a more culturally diverse a...

First aired: 1 March 2018 Over this podcast series we've heard a lot of strategies for increasing cultural diversity in the Arts and on our Screens - so are we there yet? Well, we're on our way but still have a long way to go according to a panel discussion that Diversity Arts Australia hosted at the Performing Arts Connections Australia conference (Australia's peak performing arts body for theatr...

First aired: 21 Feb 2018 In our first bonus episode, we are playing a live recording of the speech from Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tim Soutphommosane, during the Beyond Tick Boxes Symposium. It was so good we just had to share it with you. He challenges Australians to think about cultural diversity as more than just going out for souvlaki, dim suns or pho. Dr Soutphommosane al...

First aired: 15 March 2018 This ancient continent has been populated by diverse groups of people and artists from over 500 language groups and nations. We recognise that diversity didn’t start with Australia’s European colonisations and the migrants who came after. But too often Australia’s indigenous artists are relegated into one box to tick. In this episode, we talk to two important indigenous...

First aired: 8 Feb 2018 We know that people are moving around the world and fleeing persecution, fleeing environmental disaster at a rate that has never before happened in history. In this episode we talk to an artist who was unable to practice his craft in his home country for fear of persecution. We talk to Damon Amb about his journey as a refugee and how he is now working to rebuild his life an...