The Colour Cycle Podcast – Season 4

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. 

Talent includes:
Classical musicians Deborah Cheetham AO (First Nations Chair of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Artistic Director of Short Black Opera)
Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE (Founder and Artistic Director of the Chineke Foundation)
Hip-Hop artists MC TREY, Maya Jupiter & DJ Sarah Love
Poet-playwright Chérie Taylor Battiste and curator-producer Melanie Abrahams who both make a living out of words

Novelist and producer Sharmilla Beezmohun and filmmaker and broadcaster Pearl Tan (Pearly Productions)

READ THE GUEST BIOS HERE

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, SpotifyWhooshka, PatreonPocket CastsPlayerFMStitcher 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.

Guests: Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE, Professor Deborah Cheetham, AO

Interviewer: Melanie Abrahams
Research and presentation: Lena Nahlous, Diversity Arts Australia
Host: Lena Nahlous
Producer: Nadyat El Gawley

More information:
Short Black Opera
Ensemble Dutala
Chineke!

Music:
Threads of Existence, part three of a composition from Deborah Cheetham’s Woven Song – Pukumani series.
Credits:
Music composer: Deborah Cheetham AO
Guzheng: Mindy Meng Wang (guest musician)
Flute: Lisa-Maree Amos
Oboe: Joshua De Graaf
Clarinet: Justin Beere
Audio recording courtesy ABC Classic
Woven Song – Pukumani on YouTube
Filmed on location at NGV Australia
Cinematography and Production: David Ward

More background information:
The Chineke! Effect – if you can see it, you can be it
Classical Drive with Chi-chi Nwanoku 
Classical Drive with Deborah Cheetham
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 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 TreyDJ Sarah LoveMaya Jupiter
Host and Interviewer: Lena Nahlous
Producer: Nadyat El Gawley

Music: Inshallah
Credits
Songwriter: Maya Jupiter
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
Supporting the arts can increase our resilience
The Complex Intersection of Gender and Hip-Hop
Life and Hip Hop : women’s role in the industry
DJ Sarah Love Juice Crew interview

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

Music: Getaway
Credits:
Co-written by MC Trey (Australia) and Savuto (Fiji) / TAPASTRY ©
Recorded at Treehouse Productions, Fiji

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 TanSharmilla Beezmohun, Chérie Taylor Battiste
Interviewers: Lena Nahlous and Melanie Abrahams
Host: Lena Nahlous
Producer:
Nadyat El Gawley

Music: Getaway
Credits: Co- written by MC Trey (Australia) and Savuto (Fiji) / TAPASTRY ©
Recorded at Treehouse Productions, Fiji
Video shot by Only Ideas Studio, Fiji.

More information:
Intersectionality: Ask the other question
How intersectionality can help storytellers
How to be a good Indigenous ally
Not quite right for us
Speaking Volumes – What Reflecting Realities means to you?

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.