Working with CaLD Creatives and Communities

Dr Ruth DeSouza is a highly experienced multidisciplinary educator, researcher and consultant, specialising in cross cultural engagement, cultural safety, and the interface of digital technologies within CALD communities. Her background is in nursing where she has extensive experience as a clinician, researcher and academic in New Zealand and Australia and has published work on community engagement in the arts. Ruth is a 2020 RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, based in the School of Art and a member of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform (ECP). Her fellowship project aims to engage health professionals in finding new ways to understand, co-design and implement sustainable cultural safety initiatives in a range of health contexts. Ruth has extensive networks across the Melbourne creative industries and is on the Fair Play project reference committee.

MC Trey (aka Thelma Thomas) has over 20 year’s experience as a hip-hop/ soul artist, with nominations for the ARIA, Urban Music, 3D and Jack Music Awards. She was nominated as one of Sydney’s Top 10 Creative Innovators in the field of music. Trey has entertained crowds in Australia, NZ, Fiji, USA, UK and Japan at the 4Elements hip-hop festival, Spirit Festival, Platform 1 Hip Hop festival, Big Day Out,Pasifika Festival, The Basement, Homebake, Waitangi Festival and St.Kilda Festival. She has supported music heavy-weights such as Lupe Fiasco, Common, RZA, XZIBIT, Jurassic5, the Fugees, Naught by Nature, Run DMC, the Hilltop Hoods, SIA and many more. Her last release ‘Getaway’ was produced by Melbourne producer Samuela in 2019. She has hosted music shows on Foxtel TV Network, Channel V and Red. Off mic, MC Trey runs her creative business, Tapastry which provides avenues for arts and youth workshops, events coordination and creative projects working with the Australian Museum, Juvenile Justice, high schools and community, government and the private sector.

Artistic Director/ Editor/Facilitator/Trainer Paula Abood is a writer, community cultural development practitioner, creative producer and educator. She has worked with diverse communities in capacity building projects for 30 years. Her productions include The Cartographer’s  Curse (2016), Auburn Cartographies of Diversity (2016),  Sacred Women’s Voices (2013 / 2011), Parenting Stories (2010), Hurriya and her Sisters (2009), The Book of African Australian Stories (2006), Poetry on Rooftops (2006), and Of Middle Eastern Appearance (2001). Paula was awarded the 2007 Western Sydney Artists’ Fellowship for the blogging project Race and the City and was the 2013 recipient of the Australia Council’s Ros Bower Award for lifetime achievement in community cultural development practice.  She has developed resources and taught widely on subjects including cultural diversity, advocacy, and community development at TAFE and in community education settings. Paula co-developed the Certificate IV in Community Arts and Cultural Development that runs out of St George TAFE in Sydney, and is a leading trainer and educator on human rights approaches across the community, arts and education sectors. Paula was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy from UNSW in 2007 in the area of cultural studies.

Dr. Görkem Acaroğlu is a theatre director and interdisciplinary artist in hybrid performance with 20 years’ experience in documentary and digital performance, live art, text-based theatre, immersive and site-specific and community engaged practice. She runs Metanoia Theatre Company, specialising in experimental and site specific work interfacing technology and live art. Görkem was an inaugural Sidney Myer Creative Fellow and a key trainer in the Fair Play program in 2020. She has a long history of socially engaged practice working with culturally diverse artists and communities in Melbourne and Western Sydney, and has been a passionate advocate for diversifying the arts over the past two decades.  

Kim ‘Busty Beatz’ Bowers is a musical director, composer, sound designer, remixer, DJ and performer. Of Xhosa heritage and living on Yuggera country, she has been making fearless art to activate, pollinate and liberate for over 25 years.  Her music is featured in cult Australian films Fresh Air, Eleven, Love and Other Catastrophes and The Well, and she has composed for films including Amar (directed by Fatima Mawas) and Love Bites (directed by Jermaine D’Vauz). Composition and sound design for theatre credits include Samson (Belvoir Street Theatre NSW), Straight White Men (State Theatre Company of South Australia), The Longest Minute (Debase and Queensland Theatre), Prize Fighter (La Boite Theatre Company QLD). Musical direction credits include East London West Sydney directed by Breakin’ Convention’s Jonzi D, Polytoxic Dance Theatre Company’s The Rat Trap, and she is the resident MD for the internationally renowned Briefs. This beat-making mama is the MD, composer and sound artist of the international smash-hit Hot Brown Honey, which saw her win the 2016 UK Total Theatre Award for Innovation, Experimentation & Playing with Form, two Green Room Awards and the 2017 Helpmann for Best Cabaret Performer.

Geetanjali is lecturer in marketing at the UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney. She earned her PhD in marketing from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She also has a post-graduate management degree from the Indian School of Business.

Monique Araujo (she/her) is a Naarm based music industry all-rounder working predominantly in the events space. Having held booking and event curation roles at some of the cities most notable venues including The Gasometer Hotel, The Toff in Town and currently Colour Nightclub, Monique is establishing herself as a key player in the Australian music industry. Alongside behind the scenes experience, Monique works as a vocalist and songwriter and performer in a number of projects both in the live music and club realms.