ArtPlay is the City of Melbourne’s dedicated children’s arts centre, where artists and children work side by side to create new work. For over 20 years, ArtPlay has pioneered co-creating with children, positioning them as collaborators in contemporary arts practice. Shadows in Twin Cities 쌍둥이 도시의 그림자들 is a major intercultural collaboration co-produced by ArtPlay and the Jeonju Cultural Foundation since 2020.  

The project connected children in Melbourne and Jeonju through shared creative experiences, bringing together children, artists, families, organisations and cities across language, culture and distance. Working with artists Jessica Wilson and Gijong Yoo 유기종, the project positioned children as artists and cultural connectors, placing their creativity visibly within civic life. 

Photo: ArtPlay Shadows creative team 2025

Cypher Culture is an award-winning community arts organisation based in Naarm/Melbourne, advocating for street and club dance cultures within Australia’s arts sector. In 2025, Cypher Culture delivered a landmark program of performances, panels, workshops and public events, connecting Australian and Asia Pacific communities through ballroom (Vogue), hip hop and street dance.  

Image courtesy of Cypher Culture.

ENCOUNTER is an intercultural theatre company based on Noongar Boodjar. Guided by radical empathy, the company creates bold international work that pioneers new ways of making theatre, carving out spaces for invisible stories to be seen.

ENCOUNTER’s mission is to disrupt the status quo by creating bold, inclusive theatre that challenges perspectives and sparks urgent cultural dialogue. It combines professional practices with community-rooted processes to foster radical empathy and meaningful intercultural exchange.

The ThisGen Fellowship, a paid program delivered by ENCOUNTER, supports mid-career creatives from Asia-Pacific diasporas and First Nations communities, fostering diverse leadership in the arts.

Photo: ThisGen 2024 fellows

Nominated for their work Inter.Sonix, Liquid Architecture is a community-founded, artist-first organisation exploring sonic relationships and practices at the radical edges of sound and listening. Inter.Sonix, curated and presented by Liquid Architecture, is a multi-year performance platform dedicated to showcasing Australia’s leading composers, sound artists and sonic theorists, fostering critical engagement with experimental sound practices through carefully considered annual programs.  

Image courtesy of Liquid Architecture.

SA/MOA (sacred/centre), visioned by Samoan-Tasmanian artist Lila Meleisea and produced by Performing Lines Tasmania, is a powerful multi-arts project exploring Samoan knowledge systems, island identities, and intercultural connection. Presented with the companion program LUMI at Moonah Arts Centre for Ten Days on the Island 2025, the project fostered deep cultural exchange between Samoan, Pasifika, and Tasmanian Aboriginal communities, celebrating shared heritage and strengthening Asia Pacific relationships through art, ceremony, and community collaboration.  

Photo: Jillian Mundy

Regional//Regional (R//R) is Asialink Arts & Culture’s flagship multi-year program, and the first of its kind to connect artists and producers from regional Australia with peers across Asia and the Pacific. Uniquely focused on regional-to-regional collaboration, R//R addresses the cultural and artistic isolation faced by communities with fewer networks and international opportunities than urban centres.  

Image courtesy of Asialink Arts and Culture: Regional//Regional (R//R).

Chamber Made and CultureLink have developed a significant cross-cultural partnership since 2018, creating carefully layered, genre-defying works that centre compelling female voices and explore complex histories. Their partnership began with the internationally renowned Dragon Ladies Don't Weep featuring pianist Margaret Leng Tan. 

Their latest collaboration, One Day We'll Understand, produced by CultureLink in partnership with Chamber Made, centres Singaporean visual artist Sim Chi Yin's decade-long research into the Malayan Emergency. Directed by Chamber Made Artistic Director Tamara Saulwick, the work excavates hidden histories, Chinese diasporic experiences and colonialism's legacies through multiple temporal and narrative layers. 

Image courtesy of Chamber Made.

Physical Futures is a long-term program produced by Australia’s Choreographic Research Centre Critical Path (Sydney), initiated and led by Artist/Curator for Choreographic Technology Matt Cornell, in partnership with Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (Taipei), and the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan. 

Artists from both countries engage in a series of mentored labs, contribute to an international private wiki titled OpenTab, and present their collaborative work in both Taiwan and Australia - in multiple languages and mediums - with free entry for audiences. 

The program refocuses consideration of our shared futures, to the human body’s place within them—because even a digital future will also be a physical one. 

Photo: Critical Path - Physical Futures, CLAB Future Vision Lab, Group Shot 2024.

Haji Oh is an artist, a third-generation member of Japan's Zainichi Korean community and a migrant to Australia. She was awarded a PhD in Fine Arts from Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan, and is the recipient of the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2024-2026.  

She creates installation works utilising weaving, dyeing, unravelling, cyanotype and audio. Drawing on her experiences as a descendant of migrants, she creates artworks to give expression to the unspoken memories of women and unnamed individuals. Her practice explores the inheritance of memory by sharing experiences and dialogue through the collaborative process of community engagement and workshops. 

Image courtesy of Haji Oh.

Threshold creates experiences that invite people to connect more deeply with each other. Their innovative work spans audio-theatre experiences for people to enjoy at home and in schools, as well as hybrid interactive performances. Threshold's work has been presented at venues and festivals across the world, featured in the NYTimes and translated into Mandarin.  

Led by Kiribati-Australian writer Marita Davies, The Flying Canoe reimagines indigenous storytelling for the digital world. The result is an ongoing intercultural collaboration of immersive storytelling, hybrid presentation and educational exchange, centring Pacific voices and connecting communities across borders through digital creativity. Based on Taungurung Country in regional Victoria, The Flying Canoe has been an ongoing collaboration between Marita Davies, Lucy Harris and Zoë Barry and Threshold co-founders Sarah Lockwood and Tahli Corin. 

Photo: The Flying Canoe promo, by Grace Auld

Aunty Sana Balai is a respected Bougainville Elder from Buka Island, Papua New Guinea, living in Australia since 1990. A curator, writer, and researcher, she specialises in Pacific, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander collections, mentors diaspora artists, and has curated major exhibitions for NGV and QAGOMA, with cultural integrity leadership.  

Image courtesy of Aunty Sana Balai.

Yuriyal Bridgeman is a multi-disciplinary artist working between Australia and Papua New Guinea. His work spans photographic portraiture, video, sculpture, installation, drawing, and painting. Central to his practice is a connection to the ancestral men’s practices of his tribe and a theme of cultural resilience for the Yuri Alaiku of the Simbu province of Papua New Guinea. 

Bridgeman is a co-founder the artist collective Haus Yuriyal (Jiwaka, Papua New Guinea), in which he acts as artist and facilitator of the group’s contemporary art projects. Bridgeman’s practice is engaged with the reinvigoration of shield making practices, which were suppressed in the early-to-mid 20th century by colonial forces in a campaign to discontinue cultural practices in the region. Bridgeman expands and protects this cultural practice, ensuring its continuation and bringing the visual language of the Yuri Alaiku into contemporary art. 

Image: Yuriyal Eric Bridgeman Artist portrait with his artwork SUNA (Middle Ground), University of Queensland Art Museum

Winnie Dunn is a Tongan-Australian writer from Mount Druitt and the General Manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement. She has edited several acclaimed anthologies, including Brownface, Sweatshop Women, Straight-Up Islander, and Another Australia. Her debut novel, Dirt Poor Islanders (Hachette, 2024), won the 2025 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists Award and the 2025 Creative Australia Kathleen Mitchell Award. Dirt Poor Islanders was also shortlisted for two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. 

Image courtesy of Winnie Dunn.

Marrugeku is an Indigenous intercultural dance company based in Australia whose groundbreaking practice has redefined contemporary performance through Indigenous-led storytelling and collaboration across the Asia Pacific for the last fifteen years. Through long-term partnerships with Centre Cultural Tjibaou. Nouméa and Atimira Dance, Auckland, and touring works such as Le Dernier Appel, Marrugeku has built powerful artistic and cultural exchanges with New Caledonia, Aotearoa, Fiji, and Vanuatu, fostering deep trans-Indigenous dialogue, capacity building, and creative resilience. 

Photo: Carita Sari

Founded on the principle of ‘We Share One Ocean, One Island’, Small Island Big Song produces collaborations between artists continuing the cultural lineage of their island homelands from across Asia and the Indo-Pacific. 

Outcomes include two award winning albums, a feature film, and theatrical concerts with an extensive residency of impact activities, which has toured to eighteen countries across four continents reaching audiences of over 200K+. Their latest production One Ocean premiered at the Holland Festival 2025 (co-commissioned). 

Small Island Big Song is an Australian/Taiwan co-production founded in 2015 by Taiwanese theatre producer BaoBao Chen and Australian music/film producer Tim Cole. 

Image: Small Island Big Song, One Ocean cats by Bon 

Elyas Alavi is an Afghanistan-born Hazara artist, poet, and curator based in Naarm/Melbourne. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, installation, and performance, examining displacement, memory, gender, and sexuality. His work interrogates histories of the SWANA region, exploring entanglements with globalization, settler colonialism, and the mobility of Black and Brown bodies. Alavi regularly collaborates with other artists, including cameleer descendants John and Jim Hinton for the 24th Biennale of Sydney, and emerging Hazara artists for the 3rd Lahore Biennale. He has presented major projects at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, the Diriyah Biennale, TarraWarra Musuem, MUSMA Italy, and ACE Adelaide. 

Photo: Machiko Abe.

Avra Banerjee is a cross-cultural music ambassador bridging Indian classical traditions with contemporary global sounds. A sarod player and composer with over 65 original releases across multiple genres, his work transcends cultural and stylistic boundaries. Based in Perth, he collaborates globally, creating meaningful musical dialogue beyond borders. Avra leads the Perth-based world music ensemble SwaraSynthesis, dedicated to intercultural collaboration and innovation. A multiple international award winner, recent recipient of the West Australian Music Award, and a GRAMMY® Voting Member, he is equally committed to music mentorship and education, shaping the evolving language of contemporary world music. 

Image courtesy of Avra Banerjee.

Vocalists Daniel Wilfred and Sunny Kim form the heart of Hand to Earth, which has quickly developed an international reputation as one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary music ensembles. 

The quintet has released three albums, which have won international praise including a 2022 ARIA AWARD nomination, and performed in some of the most prestigious venues and festivals in the world including at the iconic Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Barbican Centre London, Lincoln Centre New York, Jeonju International Sori Festival (Korea), Luxembourg Philharmonie, and Vancouver Jazz Festival. 

Daniel sings in language, and is the keeper of Yolŋu Manikay (songs) from North East Arnhem Land that can be traced back for over 40,000 years. His is the oldest continuously practised music tradition in the world. Sunny sings in English and Korean intoning gestures that invoke raw elemental forces. 

Together they sing of the stars, of fire, and of the cooling rain against the drone of David Wilfred’s didgeridoo and atmospheres created by trumpeter and sound artist, Peter Knight, and clarinetist Aviva Endean who draw on the minimalism of Brian Eno and Jon Hassell to create a bed for these beautifully contrasting voices. 

Photo: Olio Sansom.

Nominated for the work PAHIT MANIS, Night Forest, Leyla Stevens is a Balinese-Australian artist who works within a lens-based practice. Her practice is informed by ongoing engagements with storied places, archives, cultural geographies and performance lineages through a transcultural lens. In 2021 Leyla was awarded the prestigious 66th Blake Art Prize for her film, Kidung, which engages with Bali’s silenced histories of political violence. Her immersive multi-channel film installations have been exhibited widely in prominent national and international group exhibitions, including at: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, TarraWarra Museum, UQ Art Museum, Artspace Sydney, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Guangdong Times Museum and Seoul Museum of Art. 

Image courtesy of Leyla Stephens.

Ulaanbaatar Biennale, ‘On the horizon, under the moon’ was a landmark new initiative and the largest contemporary art event ever held in Mongolia’s capital. Developed through a collaboration between the Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM) and Western Sydney-based Chief Curator Tian Zhang, the Biennale brought together a diverse coalition of artists to engage with some of the most pressing geopolitical and environmental issues of our time. Featuring 130 local and international artists across multiple venues and projects, the program served as a platform for connecting Mongolian audiences with international contemporary art and facilitating cross-cultural dialogues within the Asia-Pacific region. 

Photo: On the Horizon, Under the Moon (2024).

In 2025, Asia TOPA returned after a five-year absence. Presented by Arts Centre Melbourne, the festival spanned 20 venues across the city, celebrating Australia’s identity as an Asia-Pacific nation. It brought together 410 artists and collectives from 17 countries across stages, galleries, public spaces, nightclubs and university campuses. Featuring four program streams—Performance, Nightlife, Knowledge and Exchange—Asia TOPA 2025 attracted more than 750,000 audience members. Its commissions continue to tour nationally and internationally, extending the triennial’s reach. Asia TOPA fostered a strong sense of community, connecting people across generations, geographies and cultures. 

Image courtesy of Asia TOPA.

Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) is one of Australia’s leading contemporary ensembles. With an emphasis on improvisation, AAO explores the meeting points between disciplines and cultures, and imagines new musical forms to reflect the energy and diversity of 21st century Australia. 

Created by Artistic Director Aaron Choulai and featuring Papua New Guinea’s Tatana Village choir, Ane Te Abia celebrates Choulai's Motuan heritage and choral traditions in Peroveta alongside the distinct sound of the Australian Art Orchestra. 

Photo: Ane Ta Abia group, by Cam Matheson.

Horizon, presented by Bangarra Dance Theatre in 2024, features a landmark international collaboration between three leading First Nations choreographers from across Oceania. The production was Bangarra’s first mainstage cross-cultural collaboration and Frances Rings’ first major commission as Bangarra’s Artistic Director. 

A powerful double-bill, Horizon explores the cultural forces that bind us together across oceans and eons. The production features Kulka by Bangarra alum Sani Townson, and The Light Inside, choreographed by Māori choreographer and Arts Laureate Moss Te Ururangi Patterson (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) and Bangarra alumna and choreographer Deborah Brown (Waikaid clan, Meriam). 

Horizon forges new intersections between Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and Māori cultures, producing original works rooted in deep cultural heritage while advancing contemporary performance practice. Horizon will tour throughout Queensland in 2026. 

Photo: Horizon - The Light Inside, Sydney Opera House, by Daniel Boud.

The Invisible Line marks 50 years of Papua New Guinea’s Independence through new works from a 2025 artist exchange. Spanning Zenadth Kes (Zenith Kes), Papua New Guinea, and the Papua New Guinea diaspora in Australia, the exhibition traces shared time and practice, revealing culture in motion and connection as a lived, active force beyond borders.  

Image courtesy of Mulgrave Gallery.

Patch Theatre creates visually captivating performances for 4–8 year olds and their families, exploring how children see the world. Their works place children at the centre of the performance, promoting imagination, wonder and discovery. 

Patch has been making and touring art experiences for children and their families from their home on Kaurna Yerta since 1972. Patch has produced 120 unique works and won countless awards, and their performances have been presented across Australia and the globe, capturing the imaginations of children worldwide. Each year, Patch provides inspirational, design-rich theatre experiences to over 50,000 children. In 2025, Patch toured its critically acclaimed theatre production ZOOOM to Singapore, Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Shanghai.   

Image by National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying).

Arts & Cultural Exchange (ACE) is a Western Sydney arts organisation with a 40-year legacy of transformative Cultural & Community Development (CACD) work. Using art, creativity and culture to reverse disadvantage experienced by marginalised communities, ACE deliver ground-breaking, collaborative projects co-devised with artists and communities - up-skilling programs, artistic projects, pathways to professional practice, research and creative opportunities.  

Working agilely in response to community needs across all artforms – including dance, visual & performance art, music, literature, fashion, embroidery and technology – and spanning traditional and contemporary practices, ACE creates self-determined works that amplify community voices and tell local stories of universal resonance. 

Photo: Anne Loxley

Born in Hong Kong of Portuguese, Chinese and English parentage, Brian Castro’s first novel Birds Of Passage (1983) was joint winner of The Australian/Vogel literary award. Double-Wolf (1991), won The Age Fiction Prize and the Vance Palmer prize at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. After China (1992) again won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and Stepper (1997), was awarded the National Book Council Prize for Fiction. Shanghai Dancing (2003), won the Victorian Premier’s Award, the NSW Premier’s Award and was named NSW Book of the Year. The Garden Book won the 2006 Queensland Premier’s Award. He was the 2014 winner of the Patrick White Award for Literature and the Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry in 2018. His latest novel Chinese Postman was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award. 

Image courtesy of Brian Castro.

Dr. Chandradbanu Haroon was born in Perlis, Malaysia, he holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Monash University. A pioneer of Indian classical dance in Malaysia and Australia, he founded key academies, companies, and revived the Terinai dance form. He has been widely honoured, including an Order of Australia and the title of Adi Guru.    

Image courtesy of Dr. Chandradbanu Haroon.

Vipoo Srivilasa is a Thai-born Australian ceramic artist recognised internationally for his contributions to contemporary ceramics. For over two decades, his work has explored queerness, migration, spirituality, and emotional experience through an aesthetic that is accessible, positive, and beautiful. His practice balances themes of isolation, loneliness, nostalgia, joy, and hope.  

Alongside his studio work, Vipoo develops participatory and community-based projects that invite people to express themselves through clay and storytelling. He has exhibited widely in major museums and galleries across Asia, Europe, and the United States. 

Image courtesy of Vipoo Srivilasa.

Since 1970, William Yang has photographed Sydney’s social life. In 1989 he integrated his skills as a writer and a visual artist, he began to perform monologues with slide projection in the theatre. They tell personal stories and explore issues of identity. Many of his performances have toured the world. His retrospective exhibition Seeing and Being Seen was shown at QAGOMA in Brisbane in 2021. He featured in the Biennale of Sydney 2024. He often works with Contemporary Asian Australian Performance teaching others his story telling method. His latest performance piece Milestone toured to four Australian capital cities and Seoul in 2025. 

Image courtesy of William Yang.