FailureLab Sydney: The Highs & Lows of the Creative Journey

Marcus Westbury is the CEO of Contemporary Arts Precincts Ltd that is leading the development of the Collingwood Arts Precinct in Melbourne and the founder of the multi award winning Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia.

Marcus has been a writer, media maker and festival director and is the author of Creating Cities (Niche Press, 2015) and has been the writer and presenter of the ABC TV series Bespoke and Not Quite Art. 

Somaya Langley has a built a career at the nexus of art and technology. She has worked for multiple government cultural institutions, broadcasters, festivals and not-for-profit arts organisations as a curator, co-director, producer, technical specialist and production manager.

As a creative practitioner, her work primarily focuses on embodied and immersive audiovisual experiences. Her life is equal parts failure and success. Somaya is a Digital Curation Specialist at the State Library of New South Wales.

Jeremy Staples’ work is all about creating spaces for community engagement and providing a platform for people to be heard and share their skills.

He enjoys questioning, documenting, reading, writing and travel. He’s passionate about inspiring people to think and helping them along their own journeys.

Over the past five years, he has been researching the future of radical print media abroad, worked alongside and met with everyone from Maximum Rock and Roll, to Tokyo’s largest English print magazine.

Chloe has over 15 years experience as a creative strategist, collaboration broker, program producer and presenter.

As the founder of the consultancy firm Strategic Artistry, Chloe builds the capacity of governments, organisations, industries and communities to deliver creative outcomes. She achieves this through:

• Consulting on strategic community, cultural and industry development;
• Practitioner development as a trainer, coach, and keynote presenter;
• Brokering artists, stakeholder partnerships and resources;
• Joint ventures and investing in social and cultural enterprises;
• Producing quality events and programs;
• Facilitating participatory consultation processes; 
• Identifying opportunities for impact, collaboration and funding; 
• Providing strategic context through mapping related policies, plans, strategies and stakeholders to identify potential alignments.
   

• Audio guides for galleries, museums and cultural tourism (as a Cultural Tourism Consultant managing IZI.Travel across Australia and New Zealand)
• Virtual Reality of your locations and experiences (as a Business Development Consultant through Merkava Technologies)
• 3D printers for rapid prototyping, education and bespoke design

Chloe is a lecturer for the Bachelor of Entertainment and Arts Management through the Australian Institute of Music, teaching marketing research, venue and gallery management. She was an Event Manager for TEDxMelbourne 2015 managing live streaming to Federation Square and online. She is a journalist for Eastside FM in Sydney. Chloe serves as a Director on the Board of Management for Arts On Tour.

Chloe has over a decade experience in the Local Government sector as a specialist in community planning and cultural development. During her years in the Policy Division of Local Government NSW, she advised the 152 councils across NSW on all things arts and culture, and represented the sector nationally.  This role involved managing the Local Government Arts and Culture Awards and Summit which recognised best practice initiatives, undertaken by councils with their communities. Chloe continues to provide services to the Local Government sector as well as supporting other sectors in council relations.

Prior to working in the public sector, Chloe operated a technology business producing multimedia resources for galleries, councils and communities. Having come full circle she now she supports these industries to integrate emerging technologies, in particular audio guides, virtual reality and 3D printing facilitate new ways of engaging your audience.

Chloe is an exhibiting photographer, classically trained musician & creative entrepreneur.

www.chloe-beevers.branded.me 

Intermittent breaks from nursing to work in office jobs (not his thing) as well as dabbling in photography. Never quite believed in himself as photographer. Landed a full time gig at a small agency in Balmain, NSW, and went on to be ASICS Australia and Onitsuka Tiger’s only photographer for 3 years. Achieved more in those years as a photographer than he dreamed he would in a life time.

Made redundant in 2013 and took another leap into video production. Taught himself to shoot, script, edit, produce and direct. Has grown the business into a six figure turnover enterprise in under three years.

Annetta was awarded her PhD in Social Science in 2016, and she specialises in feminism, identity, personal stories, sociology and professional practice.

She is currently employed as a lecturer and tutor, with Western Sydney University in the areas of Social Science, Sociology, and qualitative research methods.

In addition to her academic pursuits and teaching, Annetta is also a freelance writer & editor, and is currently involved in developing works in both the academic and fiction arenas.

Her previous career was as a practising counsellor, advisor, and psychotherapist for over twenty years working in Australia, Italy, and the USA in the fields of injury and trauma recovery, grief and loss, mental health, and personal growth and development. 

DA Carter is a musician & lyricist who’s toured globally on streets and stages from Berlin to Burning Man to the Sydney Theatre, National Young Writers, Subsonic, Regrowth, Crack Theatre & Fringe Festivals.

DA performs his heady mix of beatbox, spoken word & freestyle with a microphone & loop machines.

Brent Francis Clarke, better known by his stage name B.C., is a poet and rapper from Wauchope, on the mid-north coast of N.S.W, living in Sydney. 

From the grottos of Newcastle to the far reaches of the imagination, this eclectic electro performance-poetry explosion will have you sidestepping and your sides splitting.

Launching the newest version of their bespoke music software MusicFox for Vivid Ideas in 2016.

Erin Brookhouse is a Sydney based choreographer, director, singer and performer.

Hailing from Wauchope, on the mid north coast of Australia, Erin began training in R.A.D. classical ballet and all styles of dance from the age of four. She pursued her studies at Brent Street P. A. earning a Cert IV in Performing Arts and furthered her acting with studies at A.T.Y.P., N.I.D.A. and Screenwise.

Erin is currently artistic director of Doll pARTS, a physical theatre collective who focus on site specific works which challenge venue and audience conventions. Their new work 'Battlers & Dreamers' is currently in pre production.

Bronsai Watkins (aka Spindles) is a Sydney based musician who spins songs about the two things she thinks are most important: love and revolution. Sometimes her feelings about these things become so strong that they demand physical space - for guitar strings to oscillate, vocal cords to vibrate, stereocilia to reverberate. She has spent the summer adorning these spaces with sea glass and cicada shells and midnights and Blue, and you are invited in. 

Blue Mountains singer/songwriter Nic Alexander, and Sydney soul poet Brent Clarke (aka B.C) are The Tinderbox Lullabies. They perform a mongrel breed of roots music and rap delivery, creating the affectionate term on which they've grown from, 'Gyp-Hop'.

Structured on acoustic guitar, sweeping vocal melodies and rhyming poetry, The Tinderbox Lullabies tell their stories through a truly honest dialogue using humour, hindsight, tongues in cheeks and big, dumb hearts on sleeves.