Kat Byron from the Darwin Fringe Festival joined Kate and Baini to wrap up the 2026 iteration of the Top End's creative heartbeat.

The festival took place in July, presenting between 70-100 shows from acts local and abroad. Kat shared a few highlights from the festival and named several of this years award winners, including Big D’s Boyband Bootcamp which took home the prize to perform at next year’s Adelaide Fringe Festival.

2026 marked 10 years of involvement from Festival Director, Hannah Illingworth. Kat expressed her gratitude towards Hannah’s diligence and vision that has guided the festival for so long. Hannah and the Fringe festival are both nominated in categories for tonight’s NT Performing Arts Awards.

Applications will open in October for next year’s Darwin Fringe Festival, and Kat invited listeners to get creative and apply. “Everyone put their little creative thinking hats on…get some silly ideas together. October is when we’ll open our applications."

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Saturday saw DJ Tr!p release Bad Boy, featuring Cooperblack, but last week 8CCC Brekky had a chat with Cooperblack about the DJ Tr!p remix of their Like an Aeroplane, also featuring Tamara Day's "ghostlike vocal unison", that's been sitting in the vault but released to the world in June. Adelaide's DJ TR!P "flips Cooperblack’s original into a drifting world of sea mist synths, glitched French-touch textures and late-night melancholy". A great collab across the country resulted in this fun reinterpretation of the 1998 original, recorded on a Tascam 4 track and SoundEdit 16 and then released on 2021 album Interpacer.

A bit of a general vibe about listening to music in 2026 follows and the pitfalls of AI, especially around indigenous languages.

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The theme for National Stroke Week this year is F.A.S.T Heroes and Alice Springs Hospital Stroke Clinical Nurse Coordinator, Lucy Thorne spoke on 8CCC Big Brekky about this year's campaign to celebrate people who quickly spot stroke symptoms and take fast action. There will be a presence in the hospital foyer on Tuesday and Wednesday and an awareness stand with resources and blood pressure checks on Thursday at Yeperenye Shopping Centre. They are developing resources to get the message out in more local Aboriginal languages in the hope of informing more people before it's too late.

"A study in the Alice Springs Hospital found strokes were three times more likely to happen [to Indigenous Australians] than non-Indigenous Australians, and also [more likely] to happen at a younger age, and more severely." Stroke Foundation chief executive Lisa Murphy

[image supplied. L-R Bridget Hoey, Lucy Thorne, Dr Anna Holwell, Scholastic Nyika, Abbey Bull and Natalia Despot]

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8CCC's Kate Lyons-Dawson sat down with Charlie Ivan to talk about the upcoming release of the Charlie Ivan Band's sophomore album Of Nothing. To be launched this Friday 7 August at Araluen Art Centre supported by Jack Spencer, Charlie spoke about the influences that fed this 'desert folk' album, significantly that stretch of road north of Pimba, as well as growing up in Mparntwe Alice Springs.  Gravitating towards bleak things framed as something beautiful it was recorded in Mparntwe Alice Springs on Arrernte Country with Dylan Young (Way Dynamic), Of Nothing follows the 2024 debut, Where The Dogs Go To Die, drawing on years of songwriting shaped by the landscapes of Central and Western Australia. Charlie will be joined by band members Ned Gaynor on bass and Sam Sargent on drums, on the tour that begins the following week. Here we play track A Mirror In A Dark Room, which represents the album's themes and direction more than the other pre-released singles.

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A closing and direct statement for Border Band, which began in 2005, Lost Coast is their final and most concise album. The title comes from video game Half-Life 2 with the album cover coordinates "pointing to several different interpretations of a lost cost."

Border Band "strikes again, returning to the campfire beyond the border": Liam Beale, Ricci Waters, Ryba Rygiel and Lily Marcos-Song. With Bass, Woodwind, Brass from Hector and Drums, Synths by Zil, both Beyond Our World.

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Mark Romei spoke with 8CCC's Kate Lyons-Dawson about his Watch This Space exhibition: Redaction, Absence, Opacity, on until 1 August, which examines Australia's use of hotels as sites of immigration detention, focusing on a network of facilities concealed through both their everyday appearance and bureaucratic redaction. Operating as "Alternative Places of Detention" (APODs), these sites are embedded within ordinary urban environments, their carceral function obscured by familiar architecture and limited public visibility.

Mark is an architectural researcher and spatial practitioner whose work explores how creative and investigative methods can be used to document and challenge sites of violence. His practice brings together architectural research and artistic approaches to examine contested sites and consider how forms of violence are embedded within the built environment. Mark recently completed a PhD at Monash University and has collaborated with DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency) on projects in Australia, Palestine, and Sweden.

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The July Alice Springs Town Council meeting was well attended on Tuesday and Mayor Asta Hill spent some time with 8CCC's Kate Lyons-Dawson to unpack some of the big agenda items, including celebrating 55 years of the Council. The trip to Canberra by some of our Councillors and both Asta and Tennant Creek Mayor Sid Vashist for the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) Conference in June, gave the latter two an opportunity to present evidence at the Public Hearing: The House Standing Committee on Regional Dev, Infrastructure and Transport Committee "Local Government Funding".

Council resolved to take steps aimed at improving public safety and reducing the environmental impacts of private fireworks on Territory Day. Council also agreed to ask the Local Government Association of the Northern Territory (LGANT) to advocate for designated locations. A new Governance Framework designed to strengthen accountability, transparency and good decision-making across the organisation was endorsed and the Mayor noted the importance of the Newlandia event for young people in our community. Great news too that the concept design for the new Alice Springs Public Library was endorsed, allowing the project to progress to tender for the detailed design phase, where specialist designers will further develop the plans ahead of construction.

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Award-winning author Johanna Bell spoke with 8CCC's Kate Lyons-Dawson as she journeys down the Stuart Highway to deliver her Writing the Weird workshops. Previously Garramilla (Darwin) based where she founded a storytelling studio to elevate voices from northern Australia, she now lives in Nipaluna (Hobart) where she writes fiction, poetry and children’s books. Her work is widely published and received a Tasmanian Literary Award for her recent novel Department of the Vanishing, amongst other awards. Johanna also shared her experience around becoming a Churchill Fellow 10 years ago and the podcast Birds Eye View that resulted.

Designed for writers of all levels and forms, this Thursday in Tennant Creek and Saturday 1 August in Mparntwe, expect a mix of discussion, reading and generative writing and opportunities to share (for those who feel like it). You’ll leave the workshop with easy-to-use techniques for writing novel and surprising content, a library of ‘weird writers’ and a stronger connection with local writers. Tanya Heaslip will also be in conversation with Johanna on Friday from 5.30pm at Red Kangaroo Books.

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Co-founder and Artistic Director of GUTS Dance, Frankie Snowdon spoke with Big Brekky about the three new full-length works to be unleashed after six years of work, under the Desert Hothouse banner, in a dynamic three-day takeover of the Araluen Arts Centre precinct from Friday 31 July. This triptych of performances—staged across the theatre, gallery, and Aviation Museum lawn—explores sovereignty, self-determination, control, empathy, and mythmaking, forming a powerful collective experience that invites reflection and action. Besides the sold out one day immersive on Saturday, the performances begin on Friday with White Lies, choreographed by Katina Olsen, Public Property by GUTS co-founder Madeleine Krenek and, territory by Frankie Snowdon. The full program draws together a talented crew of 26 creatives, working in an open collaboration, with the core dancers based here in Mparntwe for nine weeks of rehearsals. Frankie explains how their process and collaborating is deeply centred around the understanding of this place where the performances are undertaken. The longform day has been curated by Erica McCalman, weaving the participants into the works and place. GUTS is always committed to premiering their work to their community first and have embraced this long-term funding to bring about their long-held dance dreams. "We're here for a fun time, not a long time."

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The Barkly Regional Council CEO Peter Harder spoke with 8CCC's Brian Coleman on returning from the Senate estimates in Canberra. The request has gone to Canberra to make the costs for services to remote NT fairer and bring it in line with the rest of the country. They discussed costs for asset maintenance and the municipal plan, including the pool, along with the current general state of tax imbalance.

" A cafe in Tennant Creek pays more [in rates] than an operational mine owned by international companies producing say, a half a billion dollars a year in revenue."

Referring to The Barkly: "It's a real community feel and the people step up!"

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