We kick off this week at the McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery where Curator Jane Eckett walks and talks us through their latest exhibition Centre 5 – Bridging the Gap with a focus on the work of a group of seven artists who, in the 1960s set out to change public opinion about public art…

Then we meet playwright, poet and now crime writer Julie Janson to talk about her first crime thriller, Madukka: The River Serpent where we meet Aunty June, a unique indigenous private eye armed with her Cert 3 in Investigated Services from TAFE…

And finally, it’s our first Screens and Streams for the year and Marc Gracie is back for a big catch up on all our summer viewing…

It's all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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Happy new year and welcome to our first regular show for 2023…  hope you enjoyed our summer specials and, of course, if you missed them you can catch up with the podcasts here online.

So, here we go with another year… and what would the start of the year be like without the Midsumma Festival? And this year it’s HUGE! How huge? We ask the festival’s Artist Development Manager Harriet Devlin and Access Consultant, Francois Jacobs who are both hanging on the line…

After that, we’ll find out about just one of those Midsumma shows… Theatre Works Executive Director Diane Toulson is here to tell us about The Milf and the Mistress… and hiow she came to be directing that show…

Then we’re hitting the Geelong Road and checking out the final days of the current exhibition at Geelong Gallery… we’ll chat with the galley’s Director, Jason Smith about Mandy Martin – A Persistent Vision…

And finally, ahead of January 26 we’ll have a listen to This Is Australia, a new song by Marrugeku in Broome with rapper Beni Bjah that offers its own version of Childish Gambino’s 2018 global sensation, This Is America…  but before we hear it, we’ll meet Rachael Swain, the Co-Director of its excellent, powerful video clip that challenges us with a view of our country that some might find a little challenging…

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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Well, here we are at our final Behind the Scenes Summer Special for 2023. In April last year we met singer/songwriter Stella Farnan to talk about her very lovely album Come Stay at Mine. In that conversation, we noted that she came from a very musical family and so this week we’re going to meet a member that family, Stella’s dad Pete Farnan…  we talk about his first band, Serious Young Insects, as well as Boom Crash Opera, his teaching and work in theatre and, of course, his solo work under the name Pesky Bones…

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Welcome to the second Behind the Scenes Summer Special for 2023. This week we meet the outgoing Artistic Director of the Australian Art Orchestra, Peter Knight, and get to listen to some of his music both from his time with AAO and from his new solo album, Shadow Phase as well as music from his collaborations including Closed Beginnings and 1988...

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Welcome to the first Behind the Scenes Summer Special for 2023. This week we get on board The Blues Train where we’ll meet the event’s founder and curator Hugo T Armstrong plus blues musos Bret Mosely, George Kamikawa, Miss Lou’s Blues and Oscar La Dell…  and we’ll listen to their music PLUS a little bit of Midnight Jackson to take us out…

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Well, here we are at the end of the year which is the time that Marc Gracie joins us for a look back at what stood out on our Screens & Streams for 2022 – what were our favourite feature films, our favourite docos and our favourite streaming series? And what were our biggest disappointments?

Plus we’ll look ahead to what we’ll be seeing in 2023, including a chat with Kate ten Buuren, Curator of How I See It: Blak Art & Film at ACMI…

It’s all on this week’s special annual Screens & Streams Wrap Up edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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Gee Whiz, It’s Christmas…  at least it is according to the title of Vika and Linda Bull’s Christmas album…  we’ll be meeting one of them later in the show because Christmas also means Carols by Candlelight…  but more about that later…

First up though, let’s skip Christmas and jump straight into January with a couple of our favourite new year festivals…

New Year’s Day is when the Peninsula Summer Music Festival kicks off and we’ll catch up with Co-Artistic Director Melissa Doecke for a glimpse at this year’s line up…

Then, a week later, District Live is back at The District Docklands with free concerts every Saturday throughout January…  we’ll meet one of the headline performers in this year’s programme, international superstar, Isaiah Firebrace…

But before all that, there’s Christmas and before that is Christmas Eve and what would Christmas Eve be without Vision Australia’s Carols by Candlelight at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl… but just how big a job is it for the tech crew to get things ready for the big night? Well, the person who knows the answer to that is the Bowl’s Production Manager, Taylor Jones, and he walks and talks us through the process…

…and finally, as promised, we get to chat with Vika Bull, not just about their Christmas Album, not just about their new book, but about their up coming performance at Carols by Candlelight (and maybe a bit of goss about Linda while she’s not there???  😊)…

They’re all on this week’s special Christmas edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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In its latest edition the New Platform Papers from Currency House has not one but seven authors each offering a reflection on issues around what the Voice top Parliament might mean for our country and our culture. We’ll chat with one of those author’s Rachael Maza Artistic Director of Ilbijerri Theatre.

The Channel at Arts Centre Melbourne is a world class recording studio and high-tech learning lab and from now until the end of January it’s offering a fantastic range of creative workshops for young people including the chance to create hip hop, become an instant rock star, write a play perfo0rm magic and more. We’ll meet Zoe Rinkel, Senior Producer of Creative Learning, Programming to find out how it all happens.

And last time we spoke with Emilie Collyer she was a playwright, but this time she’s here as a poet whose latest collection, Do You Have Anything Less Domestic? Just won the inaugural Five Islands Press Award for poetry.

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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It's December already and as has become a bit of a tradition over the past couple of years, the Theatre Network Australia Member of the Month is none other than… Theatre Network Australia itself…  which is why we’ll be dropping into the TNA Office to have an end of year wrap up with TNA Executive Director Nicole Beyer…

And with the end of the year so near, it’s probably not too early to be talking about things happening at the start of 2023… Pop Choir at the Bar is an impromptu choir that learns and sings a pop song that was a hit anytime from the sixties until now…  and with the help of Sharon Stokes and Daryl John Moulton, you can be part of that choir and have your hit recorded on a video for posterity….  Don’t think you sing? Well Sharon’s here to convince you otherwise…

A few weeks ago, we had a look at some of the films in the Melbourne Queer Film Festival but one film we didn’t talk about was The Dream Life of Georgie Stone, a short documentary about how Georgie Stone’s transgender journey not only changed her own life, but helped change the lives of many other young transgender teens…  it won the festival’s Best Short Doco award so it seems like a good time to meet the film’s director, Maya Newell…

And finally, due to unforeseen circumstances, we didn’t get the chance to have a final chat with our Adelaide correspondent Geoff Cobham for the year…  but that doesn’t mean we miss out on an Adelaide story…   Glyn Lehmann and Shaun McNicholas are known as The Caretakers and for twelve months they collaborated on an album in an unusual way… one would start a piece and the other would complete it… we’ll meet Glyn and Shaun and hear a bit of the result of their project…  Six Rooms.

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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One last visit to our Darwin Correspondent Sophia Hall for 2022…  we’ll catch up with the news of the north before Sophia introduces us to her guest singer songwriter David Garnham who’s also written the next show at Brown’s Mart, The Full Spread…

In September last year we met Zya Kane who was creating Memory Go ‘Round a fascinating sensory performance experience that, remarkably, involved a Zoom screen and a hand delivered showbag of sensory items. Well, the Zoom screen’s gone but Zya is still here to talk about the finished product…

Meanwhile, at the Butterfly Club, relatively new production company, Pansy Productions, is presenting This Moment in Time, a new work that looks at how one fleeting conversation can change the whole trajectory of your life. We’ll drop by the Butterfly Club to meet company members Alistair Ward, Mashaka Gunnulson and Ruby Vadiveloo…

And lastly, Marc Gracie is here for our final regular Screens & Streams segment for the year (but don’t fret…  we’ve still got our annual Movie Wrap coming up at the end of December)

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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