Creative Australia Awards
When
Tuesday 18 November 2025Where
Brisbane, QLDCelebrating emerging talent and lifetime achievement at the 2025 Creative Australia Awards
Creative Australia has announced the recipients of the 2025 Creative Australia Awards at a ceremony at the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA).
From pioneering punk musicians and experimental sound artists to acclaimed poets, theatre directors and First Nations storytellers, the awards celebrate the artists whose work continues to shape and expand the nation’s creative life.
Adrian Collette AM (CEO, Creative Australia) said:
“These artists are bold, visionary and deeply connected to community. Whether redefining their artform or amplifying voices too often unheard, their work reminds us of the transformative power of creativity in Australian life.”
Meet the 2025 recipients!
Creative Australia Award for Dance: Rosalind Crisp
Creative Australia Award for Dance: Rosalind Crisp
For 40 years Rosalind Crisp has challenged the codes of contemporary dance, rigorously dance-asking the question: ‘what has dance got to say?' She situates the dancer as art maker. Her works emerge from sustained, studio practice and long-term exchange with an international, multi-disciplinary team of colleagues.
Rosalind was born in Omeo 1958. Trained at Victorian Ballet School Melbourne. Established Omeo Dance studio Sydney 1996. Invited to Paris 2002. Associate Artist Atelier de Paris 2004-2014. Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 2015. Performs world-wide, including Sydney Opera House 2019. Currently commissioned by Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company. Based in regional Victoria.
Creative Australia Award for Theatre: Kate Champion
Creative Australia Award for Theatre: Kate Champion
For over thirty years Kate has worked as a theatre and dance-theatre director in genres ranging from devised work, new Australian plays, classics, comedy, multi-art form, interactive and physical theatre with entities such as Belvoir, STC, STCSA, MTC Performing Lines, Opera Australia, The Hayes, Ensemble, NIDA, NICA and NToP. As Artistic Director of Black Swan State Theatre Company of WA she has directed Things I Know to Be True, Dirty Birds, The Pool, Prima Facie and Never Have I Ever. Kate works extensively both on large-scale projects as well as in the small to-medium and independent theatre scene.
Creative Australia Award for Visual Arts : Jenny Watson
Creative Australia Award for Visual Arts : Jenny Watson
Jenny Watson is one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. Since 1973, she has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally, most notably representing Australia at the 1993 Venice Biennale as the first solo female Australian artist to do so. Major survey exhibitions have been held at Heide Museum of Modern Art (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2017); Griffith University Art Museum (2016); and Potter Museum of Art (2012). Her work is represented in all major Australian state galleries and in international collections including those in Belgium, Germany, Japan and Austria. Watson has exhibited with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery since 1982.
Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature: Judith Beveridge
Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature: Judith Beveridge
Judith Beveridge was born in London, England in 1956 and moved to Sydney, Australia in 1960 where she has lived ever since. Her first book, The Domesticity of Giraffes, was published in 1987 and won major prizes. Since then, she has published seven volumes. Sun Music: New and Selected Poems (Giramondo Publishing, 2018) won the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry in 2019. She taught poetry writing for 16 years at Sydney University and was the poetry editor of Meanjin for 10 years. Her work has been studied in universities and schools and has won numerous awards. Tintinnabulum is her latest book (Giramondo Publishing, 2024).
Creative Australia Arts and Disability Award (Established): Uncle Paul Constable-Calcott
Creative Australia Arts and Disability Award (Established): Uncle Paul Constable-Calcott
Uncle Paul Constable-Calcott is an artist, an advocate for people living with disability and someone who strives to bring social change to benefit particularly First Nations people living with disability. Surviving Polio as a child and inspired by his parents, he sees disability as providing opportunity to tell a story of resilience. Uncle Paul brings this together with a lifelong involvement in visual arts, to advocate for people living with disability and support them to find their community and ways of expressing their own stories of survival and strength, often using the visual arts to provide a cultural platform.
Creative Australia Arts and Disability Award (Early Career): Yousef Alreemawi
Creative Australia Arts and Disability Award (Early Career): Yousef Alreemawi
A multi-disciplinary Palestinian-Australian artist whose practice spans music, cultural education, translation, community work, and disability advocacy. He is founder of the Tarab Ensemble, dedicated to the rich tradition of instrumental Arabic music. Known for his deep community engagement and mentorship of young artists, his practice sits at the intersection of culture, disability and identity. His work is grounded in collaboration and cultural exchange, bringing together artists and audiences across different musical traditions and lived experiences.
Creative Australia Arts and Disability Award (Early Career): Honor Eastly
Creative Australia Arts and Disability Award (Early Career): Honor Eastly
Honor Eastly is an award-winning artist and mental health advocate whose work challenges stigma and reimagines how we talk about psychological distress. Her acclaimed ABC podcast No Feeling Is Final—an experimental memoir about her own experiences of chronic suicidality—was praised by The New York Times, The Atlantic, and TIME, and named an Apple Podcasts “Series Essential.” She later adapted it into a sold-out multimedia performance for The Big Anxiety Festival. Honor co-founded The Big Feels Club, which has reached over one million people, helping individuals and workplaces better support people with long-term mental health conditions. She won the Australian Mental Health Prize for her advocacy and creative work.
Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development: Scotia Monkivitch
Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development: Scotia Monkivitch
Scotia is a cultural leader with extensive experience in education, mentoring, strategic planning, project management, research, and community cultural development. She specialises in programs supporting people experiencing disability, disadvantage, mental health challenges, creative ageing, and those in rural or remote communities. As Founder and Executive Officer of the Creative Recovery Network, she leads national initiatives embedding culture and creativity in Australia’s disaster management system. Her creative practice spans movement-based theatre, installation-performance, film, live art, and online collaboration. Scotia’s work bridges communities, organisations, and government to strengthen the role of arts and culture in social recovery and resilience.
Kirk Robson Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development: Moale James-Proud
Kirk Robson Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development: Moale James-Proud
Moale James-Proud has worn many hats—Artist, Writer, Journalist, Curator, Producer—but at her core, she is a storyteller, sharing her own narrative or amplifying the voices of others. Raised in a community of Educators and Artists, including musicians, dancers, weavers, performers, and storytellers, she developed a deep passion for storytelling across various mediums such as live events, theatre, podcasts, print media, photography, spoken word, and community workshops. Her experience spans community arts projects, non-profit organizations, grassroots initiatives, private institutions, and government arts agencies. Through her work, Moale strives to embody values that uplift community, encourage deep listening, empower others, foster a better for future generations, create safe spaces for women and matriarchs, and protect energy and spirit.
Creative Australia Award for Emerging Experimental Arts: Robin Fox
Creative Australia Award for Emerging Experimental Arts: Robin Fox
Robin Fox is an internationally recognised audio-visual artist and composer whose work spans live performance, exhibitions, public art and composition for contemporary dance. His AV laser works, which synchronise sound & visual electricity in hyper-amplified 3D space have been performed in over 70 cities worldwide.
His critically acclaimed performance work TRIPTYCH premiered at Unsound Krakow late 2022 and has toured extensively since with highlights including Berlin Atonal, Barbican (London), Ephemera (Warsaw) and the Lincoln Centre New York among many others. TRIPTYCH was awarded the Isao Tomita Special Prize for electronic music at Ars Electronica 2023. He is co-founder and Artistic Director of MESS.
Creative Australia Don Banks Music Award: Peter Black
Creative Australia Don Banks Music Award: Peter Black
Peter 'Blackie' Black is the co-founder, guitarist, main songwriter and sometime singer of legendary Punchbowl punks the Hard-Ons, who formed in the early '80s and had an unparalleled 17 consecutive No. 1’s on the alternative chart in their original run.
They have directly inspired generation after generation of Australian punk and rock bands and count amongst their fans the likes of Dave Grohl and Henry Rollins. They have toured the world numerous times and are the subject of not but two documentary feature films; the first of which 'The Most Australian Band Ever!" focusses on the band’s multi-ethnicity and the barriers they had to break through to get heard.
In addition to the Hard-Ons, Blackie also fronts Nunchukka Superfly together with fellow Hard-Ons co-founder Ray Ahn, and he has recorded numerous solo albums - numbers 8 & 9 are set for release soon. In 2016, he not only undertook but – incredibly – completed the endeavour of releasing a song a day for the entire year. Not acoustic solo home recordings, not covers; this was fully fleshed original material, with a drummer and occasional guest instrumentalists - including the Hoodoo Gurus' Dave Faulkner - and it was properly mixed and mastered. It was a crazy feat that ate up countless hours and thousands of dollars, but that’s how much Blackie loves making music.
Creative Australia Don Banks Music Award: Raymond Ahn
Creative Australia Don Banks Music Award: Raymond Ahn
Raymond Ahn is the founding member of Sydney band The Hard-Ons. Raymond Ahn plays bass, sings, composes, and provides visual art for the Hard-Ons
Raymond has been performing live and releasing recordings without pause since 1982. His position as a musician of East Asian heritage has been profoundly influential to many.
Raymond Ahn has been a fierce champion of the DIY ethic, deliberately walking an independent path of creativity, always putting his art and music ahead of any other concerns including commercial ones. Raymond has since day one considered music to be a wildly adventurous endeavour. The genre-defying Hard-Ons are a testament to his life-long vision.
2024
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2023
2022
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2021
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2020
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2019
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2018
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2017
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2016
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2015
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Previous years
The Australia Council Don Banks Music Award was created in 1997. Before then, the Australia Council offered The Don Banks Memorial Fellowship.
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