Curious Works
Community arts and media organisation that identifies, nurtures and builds a new generation of storytellers.
Curious Works enables individuals and communities in the margins of society to tell their stories powerfully and sustainably and ensure these stories occupy a central space in cultural digital distribution channels.
2014 Pitch
Funds raised: $30,550
CW pitched at TFN in Sydney on 26 June 2014 to support its ‘Curious Creators’ project and raised $30,550 (including $10,000 in matched funding from Creative Partnerships Australia). Focusing on a group of 14 highly engaged and talented young people, the program is addressing the need for fresh voices, confident leaders and diversity in Australia’s creative arts.
The impact...
Viewing ourselves through media, popular ideas of self are formed and changed over time. CuriousWorks captures this media frame with a broader lens to include disenfranchised individuals and communities looking for a pathway back from society’s margins. Offering a new generation of narrators the means to tell their stories powerfully and sustainably - and bringing those stories to the centre of digital distribution – this dynamic community arts and media organisation is leading innovation in cultural media production.
Focusing on a group of 14 highly engaged and talented young people, the program is addressing the need for fresh voices, confident leaders and diversity in Australia’s creative arts. The Curious Writers Group and the Experimental Screen Group, the Curious Creators Professional Development Program and the Cultural Leadership Development are building capacity and confidence in media storytelling and vocational aptitude. In addition to the 14 Curious Creators, the program has reached another 15 future leaders, artists, volunteers and indirect beneficiaries.
Equally reckonable are its intangible project objectives: a sense of well-being and optimism for the future among the individuals concerned, community cohesion and a collective pride of place. CW was featured in TFN’s annual review in December 2014 and now, twelve months after presenting in Sydney, the organisation attests to an augmentation in storytelling, filmmaking and production skills, and, ultimately, employment prospects, as a result of the TFN funding.
With its unwavering conviction in the social benefits of cultural and artistic respect (not to mention the acceptance of its first feature film Riz into the 2015 Sydney Film Festival), CW has converted its credentials and networks into key supporters and additional funding. One of the TFN donors has accepted an invitation to join the Committee of Management and CW has established a new funding partnership with Nelson Meers Foundation to support its community program with $64,240 per annum for 2 years (2015-16). The organisation also received pro-bono strategic accounting advice and the pitch training skills acquired in preparation for the collective giving event were applied to secure $8000 additional funding through 10x10.
Modern media has less interest in traditional conventions than it does for what is latest and ‘new’ but this is advantageous when it comes to social change. CW confronts how things stand with a vision of how things could be: co-opting stage, film and the internet to reframe social discord and fragmentation into a shared sense of belonging.
Read their Impact Report
Learn more about Curious Works.
Supporting Sustainable Development Goals:
