The Colour Cycle: Esteemed UK and Australian artists share WHO ARE WE NOW? in this special season!
This podcast was produced on the unceded lands of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nation, and the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Always was. Always will be. Aboriginal Land.
As part of British Council’s UK/AUS Season, Diversity Arts Australia (DARTS) is proud to present a new season of The Colour Cycle podcast spotlighting synergy between trailblazing female creatives in the UK and Australia!
Four insightful episodes—titled UK/AUS – This is Who We Are (Part One)—emphasise the experiences of women of colour and Indigenous women working in the arts and creative industries in the UK and Australia. The guests share cross-cultural knowledge, unpack the differences between regions, the notion of resilience, existing as women in artistic spaces and what they’ve learned throughout their careers.
Novelist and producer Sharmilla Beezmohun and filmmaker and broadcaster Pearl Tan (Pearly Productions)
This podcast is a collaboration with This Is Who We Are, a UK-Australian movement of intergenerational & intersectional women artists, producers and creatives of colour who are transforming sectors, thinking and spaces.Co-directors Melanie Abrahams (Director. Renaissance One), Paula Abood (Director of The Third Space), Lena Nahlous (Executive Director of Diversity Arts Australia and host of The Colour Cycle podcast), Nur Shkembi (Melbourne based curator, writer and scholar). Festival Curator Melanie Abrahams Project Manager: Sarah Dara. Producer Renaissance One.
This season is available on our website below or on all good listening platforms: iTunes, Spotify, Whooshka, Patreon, Pocket Casts, PlayerFM, Stitcher and Listen Notes.
Support Diversity Arts on Patreon to help us continue to deliver our Colour Cycle podcast series.
Episode 1: This is Who We Are – Deborah Cheetham & Chi-chi Nwanoku on transforming classical music
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 their decades-long careers, decolonising systems and breaking down doors in Australian and UK classical music.
Both speak to Melanie Abrahams who is our partner on this project, creative director and curator with Renaissance One in the UK.
Music: Threads of Existence, part three of a composition from Deborah Cheetham’s Woven Song – Pukumani series.
More background information:
Episode 2: Women, Hip Hop and Resilience – MC Trey (AUS), DJ Sarah Love (UK) and Maya Jupiter (USA)
In this episode we’re speaking to three award-winning women of the Hip Hop world across three continents. These pioneers discuss working across regions, why community is integral to Hip Hop, and what resilience means to them.
In Australia is MC Trey, a pacesetter in the world of hip hop whose legacy spans 20 years of music about everyday life, love and her Pacific community. In London is one of the busiest award-nominated aficionados of hip hop, DJ Sarah Love who’s also a broadcaster, TV presenter and journalist. In California is Maya Jupiter who was born in La Paz to a Mexican father and Turkish mother. She grew up in Australia where she fell in love with Hip Hop, later dropping three albums and hosting music shows on TV and radio.
Guests (in order of appearance): MC Trey, DJ Sarah Love, Maya Jupiter
Host and Interviewer: Lena Nahlous
Producer: Nadyat El Gawley
Vocals: Maya Jupiter, Mia Xitlali and Sandino González-Flores.
Qanoon and Oud: Halim Al-khatib
Drums: Evan Cristo,
Bass: Juan “El Unico” Perez,
Keyboard: Quincy McCrary
Guitar: Quetzal Flores.
Video Production: Abby VanMuijen of RogueMark Studios, Art by Eliza Reisfeld and Animation by Marisa Rafter
More information
This podcast is in collaboration with This Is Who We Are, a UK-Australian movement of intergenerational & intersectional women artists, producers and creatives of colour who are transforming sectors, thinking and spaces.
Episode 3: This is Who We Are – Things They Never Told Me
In this episode, we’re peering a little into our personal lives today with some quick vox pops from artists and creatives. Our question: What is something we learnt about later in life, that we wish somebody in our lives had told us about? It could have come from our mothers, fathers, extended family, or people we came across growing up.
UK performance artist Aleasha Chaunte considers becoming a parent and what she learned from her mother and family; and Sharmilla Beezmohun talks about how she wishes she knew that the older we get, the less we know.
Guests (in order of appearance): Aleasha Chaunte, Jennifer Lee Tsai, Dj Sarah Love, MC Trey, Maya Jupiter, Sharmilla Beezmohun, Pearl Tan
Interviewers: Lena Nahlous and Melanie Abrahams
Host: Lena Nahlous
Producer: Nadyat El Gawley
Co-written by MC Trey (Australia) and Savuto (Fiji) / TAPASTRY ©
Video shot by Only Ideas Studio, Fiji.
This podcast is a collaboration with This Is Who We Are, a UK-Australian movement of intergenerational & intersectional women artists, producers and creatives of colour who are transforming sectors, thinking and spaces.
Episode 4: Ask the other question – unpacking intersectionality
This episode we’re unpacking intersectionality. What is it? Why is it important, and what does it mean to live an intersectional life?
In London, freelancer, editor and novelist Sharmilla Beezmohun (Co-founder of independent literature organisation Speaking Volumes) unpacks the question with Sydney filmmaker Pearl Tan, a lecturer in directing at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, who is studying for a PhD looking at the intersectional experience of diversity workers in the screen industry. Later on in the show, UK based independent producer and curator Melanie Abrahams chats to poet and playwright Chérie Taylor Battiste on the lived experience of intersectionality.
Guests (in order of appearance): Pearl Tan, Sharmilla Beezmohun, Chérie Taylor Battiste
Interviewers: Lena Nahlous and Melanie Abrahams
Host: Lena Nahlous
Producer: Nadyat El Gawley
More information:
This podcast is a collaboration with This Is Who We Are, a UK-Australian movement of intergenerational & intersectional women artists, producers and creatives of colour who are transforming sectors, thinking and spaces.