Creative live and work spaces

Our funding will prioritise applications that show potential for:

• increased opportunity for, and awareness of creative practitioners to live and work in the city
• strengthened cultural sector connections and networks in the city.

We encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres and Strait Islander artists and creative practitioners.

Proposals are assessed against:

• artistic merit, experience and qualifications, professional development aspirations
• suitability of the creative practice for the creative live/work space
• evidence of need for the opportunity and how this will assist the applicant’s creative growth
• how the proposal delivers against the funding priorities.

For more information about the program, how to apply and the available property, please see:

• information for applicants
• residential tenancy agreement and Annexure A additional lease terms
• tenant information statement.

Billy Bain is a contemporary Indigenous artist of Darug descent.

His practice unpacks and challenges presumptions of Australian identity, subverting and humouring Australia’s colonial iconographies and narratives. Born and raised on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Bain creates work that explores his experiences as an Indigenous man existing within urban Australia, a place where he and his family’s presence and survival has been systematically denied.

With a practice that spans ceramic sculpture, oil painting, etchings and installations, Bain creates new narratives that discuss a contemporary idea of what it means to be a young Indigenous person in Australia today.

Billy Bain website

Amy Sole is a proud Wiradjuri/Worimi person. Amy is a playwright, director, actor, dramaturge, producer and advocate.

They’re a creative associate at Ilbijerri Theatre Company and a recent graduate of MFA (Directing) at NIDA and hold a Master of Theatre (Playwriting) from VCA. Recent works for theatre include Benched (director, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, 2022), Whitefella Yella Tree (co-director, Griffin Theatre Company 2022), Burning (writer/director, NIDA, 2022), Nan's Place (writer, Ilbijerri Theatre Company) and Doing (writer/director, Kings Cross Theatre, 2019).

Blake Rhodes (Mr Rhodes) is a Bundjalung and Yaegl artist, songwriter, producer and composer working primarily in hip hop and electronic music.

He’s the composer for NORPA's Flow multi-disciplinary theatre show and works with Indigenous media organisation Awesome Black as a composer and sound designer for its podcasts.

Mr Rhodes Instagram
Mr Rhodes Spotify

Karen Coull is an artist with a continuous obsession: honouring recycling/reuse within her art practice. Karen celebrates collage with the unwanted or discarded and recycles domestic materials. She’s especially drawn to incorporating vintage books and papers in her artwork, investigating notions of history and loss and how the past forms us.

Karen Coull Instagram

Margaret Tra (Maggie Tra) is an Australian born Khmer/Vietnamese DJ/music producer who makes music that represents her Australian upbringing with influences from Cambodia and Vietnam. She’s passionate about using music to bridge the gap between Asian diaspora artists in Australia and creating opportunities to represent south-east Asian artists globally. By using her work and love of music as a platform, she’s hopeful to see a breakthrough of more diversity in the music industry.

Maggie is the founder of the label SYS Sister Sounds, a collective of women and non-binary artists and music industry representatives.

Maggie Tra Spotify

Shivanjani Lal is a Fijian-Australian artist whose work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss. Recent works have used storytelling, objects and video to account for lost histories and explore narratives of indenture and migratory histories.

Lal’s work has been exhibited across Australia and New Zealand, India, Barbados, France, Indonesia, the UK and Italy.

Shivanjani Lal website
Shivanjani Lal Instagram