Our recent recipients for February are working on the first episode of a gothic play/audio tour that will explore the Chinese heritage of Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb in Sydney now pretty well gentrified, with a great selection of restaurants, cafes, bars, pubs and designer retail. But it wasn’t always this way. As Mei Tsering, one of the writers/developers from the project explains, “The setting of the sound walk will be in contemporary Surry Hills but will go back in time to the early 1900s of plague quarantines, (when) rat catching was a lucrative job and the war was seen as a ‘restricted holiday’ out of the Surry Hills slums. The streets were run by fashionable young gang members and the Chinese living in the area were a dying community following restrictive immigration policies and problems with gambling and opium dens.” “The walk will follow two cousins of Chinese descent as they try and find the home of their ancestors. They hope to make an offering to be rid of a hungry ghost troubling their families. Hungry ghosts are spirits that return to take what they can if sufficient offerings haven’t been made by their living relatives.” We can’t wait… read more →

We had our first grant and dinner on Thursday night. It was well, awesome. Erika convinced everyone to trek Northside to drink wine and eat a lot, at Hell of the North, in Fitzroy. Despite raised eyebrows from the guys at the tapas menu, the food was insanely delicious, and the company, a whole lot more. Cheryl brought along her friend Steve, the man responsible for launching a Lego shuttle into space (awesome). He gave us a quick run down on an up and coming plan/invention he has going on. If you’re into cool start ups, you should check out Steve’s new project, or at least the hype for it. Tom and Jo from Big Scary were off doing their thing overseas so sent in their votes the night before – kudos for organisation skills. The winner of our our first grant was the cool dudes at Son Valise. They turn old school suitcases and the likes into functioning jukeboxes. If you haven’t heard of them already, have a look at their shop on Etsy. Then go on the best picnic you’ll ever go on. They are planning a ridiculously cool project involving new jukes, new music, and some of Melbourne’s – if not Australia’s best talent. We can’t tell you… read more →