The Colour Cycle

Many people have made assumptions about our next two guests. Zainab Syed is a performance poet from Pakistan, she wears a headscarf so people assume she's a refugee or hardship and that her work should reflect this. But her story is one of privilege. We'll talk to her about "Changing the Narrative" - how do you change the stereotypes or assumptions made about artists of colour. We also meet Kevin Bathman whose work about the inter-marriages of Indian and Chinese couples in south-east Asia doesn't fit easily into most boxes.

We know that people are moving around the world and fleeing persecution, fleeing environmental disaster at a rate that has never before happened in history. In this episode we talk to an artist who was unable to practice his craft in his home country for fear of persecution. We talk to Damon Amb about his journey as a refugee and how he is now working to rebuild his life and re-establish his artistic practice in a new country.

As our next guest tells The Colour Cycle, the great Australian author David Malouf is never referred to as the Great-Lebanese-Gay-Australian author. So do non-Anglo artists always have to represent the cultural identity of their parents or their birthplace? Why aren't they simply referred to as Australian artists? How does the colour of your skin or the language you speak at home inform your creative work? Does it have to?  In this episode, Author and TV and radio host Sunil Badami talks to Lena Nahlous about identity politics, and asks, what is the Australian voice and who does it belong to.

We talk a lot about the challenges for artists of colour to break into the arts sector and the pervasive stereotypes they face based on cultural backgrounds. But what if, on top of all that, you're also trying to manage the added difficulties of language barriers, work and trauma as a recently arrived refugee to Australia? In this episode, we meet an extraordinary woman, Carolina Triana who has created huge opportunities for artists from refugee backgrounds by establishing the New Beginnings Festival. The festival has created a rare opportunity for exiled artists to showcase their work in front of an audience they may never, otherwise, have had the chance to reach.

What does it feel like to grow up without seeing yourself reflected on TV? Screenwriter Benjamin Law describes this exclusion as 'quietly dehumanising' and a form of 'structural racism'. He joins Lena Nahlous on the Colour Cycle to talk about his comedy series that is changing the face of our TV screens. Benjamin Law talks about casting the predominantly Asian-Australian characters, why quotas work and about creating new opportunities and new reflections for writers of colour in Australia.

Australia's recent census data shows that half of the population were born overseas or have a parent born overseas. But do we see this reflected on stage, on screen and in our arts sector? Launching in January 2018, The Colour Cycle Podcast by Diversity Arts Australia aims to disrupt cultural whitewashing. Each week Lena Nahlous talks to an Australian cultural leader, artist, screenwriter or author about what it feels like to not see yourself reflected in the cultural landscape and how can we increase diversity - so our arts and screens look like Australia.