Finalist in the 2021 City of Ballarat Creative Industries Award!

This morning, in the midst of lockdown number 5 in Victoria, I had a little party in my loungeroom as the Federation Business School Commerce Ballarat Business Excellence Awards finalists were announced.

It’s a totally honour to be named a finalist in the City of Ballarat Creative Industries awards category along side two other incredible businesses – Stoke Design and Form Imagination. What a hoot!

It’s wonderful to take a moment to pause and feel acknowledged for the constant adapting, re-imagining, rescheduling, and all the new skills I’ve been learning to keep my business thriving and most importantly continue to make work that I hope will help local organisations make a difference in the community.

Huge thanks to all my clients who have also re-imagined the way they work, allowing us to come together to create in new ways, including podcasts, digital projections, research projects and of course photography and video. We’ve spent hours planning to make the most of time as restrictions ease and we’ve spent more hours reworking plans as lockdowns come into effect. The support, appreciation and trust I’ve felt from you all, especially over the last 18 months has been instrumental in my ability to be named a finalist this year. Thank you.

To look back over the last 18 months, despite a pandemic AND during lockdowns and realise I’ve been able to do all the below (along with loadswotwo regular photo and video projects between lockdowns) just makes my heart sing. Thank you to these incredible organisations for allowing me to help you realise your work in creative ways.

Here’s just a small selection of who I’ve been working with:

Cafs to create a night time projection of art celebrating and supporting the LGBTIQ community in Ballarat
guide YMCA in how to film footage themselves and send to me to edit so we could produce a series of 5 online videos to help engage at risk youth and teach them how to repair pushbikes
work with Grampians Disability Advocacy to create a 15 minute documentary on one incredible Indigenous women sharing her story of her experience of being stolen from her family as a child (to be released soon!)
Create a podcast with Women’s Health Grampians, helping diverse women with intersectional backgrounds share their lived experience stories in Regional Victoria.
Work with a network of schools in Melbourne to edit hours and hours and hours of zoom interviews into short videos that highlight the learnings from remote learning during the pandemic
A second project with Women’s Health Grampians to create a series of videos highlighting the impact of Covid on young women’s experiences of Mental Health and Employment.
Create a series of 5 videos for Hume City council to explain the importance of early learning to new migrant and refugee families.
Developed and taught a photography short course for Survivors of sexual abuse and published a book of their work for the Continuous Voices project
Created a music video responding to peoples experiences of the pandemic for City of Ballarat’s “In So Many Words” project
Receive a grant from Creative Victoria and complete a research study called Photographers as Changemakers and write a report of the impact of photography on social change, with interviews with 18 photographers across Regional Victoria.
Receive a grant from Regional Arts Victoria to invest in livestreaming equipment and help adapt and stream Ballarat theatre maker Marg Dobson’s show Picture Her for Melbourne’s Photo 2021 festival and allow VCA students to share their major show.

It’s been a constant flow of thinking, trying, thinking, trying… and gardening. I interspersed so much of 2020 (and now in 2021) with spates in the garden, which helped me relax and imagine different ways of working. It’s been equal parts exhausting and rewarding.

Huge congrats to all the other finalists this year, along with everyone who took the time to submit an application and everyone who continues to run small businesses in Victoria. Just to be turning up every day as a business owner is an epic achievement.

And finally a special thanks to City of Ballarat for sponsoring the Creative Industry awards!