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Podcasting

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Text Editing

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Journalism

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Proofreading

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Technical Writing

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Copywriting

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Poetry

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Creative Writing

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Daniel Lopez Lomeli

Daniel Lopez Lomeli

Daniel López Lomelí is a multidisciplinary artist born in Mexico City and currently based in the Blue Mountains, Australia. With a background in architecture, the space where he first witnessed the vast scale of material waste, particularly plastics. Fascinated by their overlooked potential, he began collecting discarded polymers such as polyethylene terephthalate amongst many others to transform into sculptural works that question our relationship to plastic and its perceived disposability. In his hands, plastic becomes something dynamic: a gesture frozen in time, shaped through controlled heat and fire into forms that mimic weighty materials or emphasize the raw honesty of transformation. Central to his practice is a reverence for material memory and a deepening sense of ecological interconnectedness. Drawing from the Japanese concept of Kodama—spirits that inhabit trees, forests, and mountains—López Lomelí expands the idea to include plastic: an omnipresent material born of fossilized life, decayed over millennia, now shaping the rhythms of our daily existence. His sculptures embody what Donna Haraway terms the "Chthulucene"—a call for more curious, caring, and creative ways of living within our damaged world. Imbalance, for López Lomelí, is truthful. His asymmetrical forms celebrate imperfection as a form of equilibrium, reflecting a belief that we relate most deeply to the flawed, the broken, and the unfinished. Through these works, he invites viewers to reconsider value, origin, and agency—not as fixed, but as ever-evolving. Working across sculpture, installation, projection, and collective making, his recent projects investigate themes of transformation, identity, and time. In 2024, he was awarded the Casula Powerhouse Scholarship, which includes a forthcoming exhibition integrating his sculptural language with the site’s architecture.

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Margaret Davis

Margaret Davis

Margaret Davis Director, Playwright, Teaching Artist Margaret has had a long career in the performing arts, principally as a director and playwright but also as an actor, dancer, choreographer and lecturer. She was the first woman appointed as a director with an Australian mainstage theatre company (1981 Assistant Director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia) and also built the Riverina Theatre Company to professional touring status in the mid-1980s. She has directed more than 50 productions for leading theatres around Australia (including Griffin, Belvoir and Malthouse) and with her own company, Two Planks and a Passion. Her particular interest in physical theatre is reflected in her original works Isis Dreaming and Spilling Bodies and the gothic horror novel adaptation, The Monk. Other produced works as a playwright include Mad Before Midday and The Woman on the Twenty Dollar Note, for which she received an AWGIE nomination for best play for young audiences. In May 2017 Margaret created and directed a production of a new work about food and memory, Breaking Bread, which featured a team of 16 writers and actors from the Blue Mountains area and had a sell-out season. Margaret has staged a second new work, Eating Pomegranates, with a successful season at Wentworth Falls School of Arts in March 2019. The work, which celebrates bodies through all stages of life and death, was developed through a QLab residency at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre and the support of the Blue Mountains Cultural Trust. Since 2018 Margaret has been a resident artist with the Annual Youth Theatre Festival at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, devising and directing physical theatre pieces with Year 11 students from Blue Mountains High Schools. In 2019 she was the Guest Director on the Originate project at the Joan, working with a group of emerging theatre artists and an astronomer from Western Sydney University to produce Push Me Away Pull Me Closer as a response to the concept of black holes and gravitational forces both in space and in human relationships. Margaret lectured in Contextual Studies for the BA in Performing Arts at AIM for ten years and also freelances as a dramaturge and script assessor (principally with the Australian Writers’ Guild.) During the Covid 19 crisis Margaret wrote The Angel Code as part of Q Theatre’s Short Message Service and an autobiographical piece for Come to Where I Am – Australia: a joint initiative of Critical Stages (AUS) and Paines Plough (U.K.) and also began developing a third Blue Mountains work, Lookout/Look Out! with the assistance of a Rapid Response grant from Blue Mountains City of the Arts Trust and further funding from CreateNSW. Her play Sanctuary was a finalist for the Silver Gull Award in 2021. In development: Lookout/Look Out! (collaboration as Writer/Director with Dharug Elder Chris Tobin, Performers Shane Porteous and Georgia Adamson, Dharug Visual artist/Storyteller Jessica Tobin, Video Artist Sean O'Keeffe and Dramaturg Danielle Maas. In development: full length play script Did You Tell Anyone Where You Were Going? Margaret also freelances as a Mentor, Script Assessor and Acting Coach.

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Katya Petetskaya

Katya Petetskaya

I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance and visual art based in the Blue Mountains, Australia. Growing up in the former Soviet Union during the turbulent 1990s shaped my critical approach to narratives about the status quo. My work explores alternative forms of knowledge and modes of existence. Through performance and visual art, I examine expanded ways of perceiving and engaging with the world and the environment. My approach to performance art is strongly influenced by my visual arts background and my research in more-than-human choreographies. I work with objects as collaborators and my body as both medium and tool, generating 'living images' that transform the known into the unknown. Everyday objects, often overlooked, become active participants, revealing their own performative agency. This expanded practice seeks to explore ecological entanglements and non-human intelligence. I am currently undertaking a PhD in performance art and interdisciplinary practice at Macquarie University, Sydney, where my research focuses on more-than-human choreographies and extended mind theory. I investigate how human and non-human entities co-create within performative environments, expanding notions of agency and collaboration. My current artistic research includes developing performances in collaboration with weaver ants, working alongside Macquarie University researchers studying natural complex systems. These investigations have deepened my inquiry into interspecies co-creation and ecological intelligence in performance-making.

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Blue Mountains Musical Society

Blue Mountains Musical Society

Blue Mountains Musical Society was founded by music lovers Heather Gwilliam, Jenny Edwards, Barry McNicol, and pianist Phyllis Huthnance, who all agreed that a musical society would be just the place for stage folk and musos alike to get together and produce good music and lasting friendships. A public meeting was called and with an enthusiastic group of 45 people the very first BMMS production of Trial by Jury at Springwood Uniting Church was in full swing. For just $3 a ticket the audience packed into the church hall. So positive was the response that members decided to go full steam ahead and form a committee. This all happened in 1981! Not that long ago really, when one considers how far BMMS has come since those early days. Since 1981 BMMS has been rehearsing and proudly presenting operetta, musical comedy, concerts and youth programs at the Springwood Civic Centre. In 2012, BMMS performed their last musical in the centre before it closed for renovations, allowing BMMS the opportunity to travel to new audiences at new venues, performing Sweeney Todd in 2013 at the Q Theatre, Monty Python’s Spamalot at the EVAN Theatre Penrith Panthers in June 2014, CATS at The Lighthouse Theatre, Orchard Hills in November 2014 and back for one last show at EVAN Theatre with The Who’s Tommy in May 2015. We returned to the Blue Mountains Theatre and Community Hub, previously known as the Springwood Civic Centre in late 2015 with The Phantom of the Opera. In 2025, BMMS will be staging a new production of the Broadway smash hit, Come From Away, in May, followed by Legally Blonde in October.

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Jodie McLeod

Jodie McLeod

Jodie McLeod is a writer and award-winning children's author/publisher at Wollemi Press. Wollemi Press is an independent children’s publishing imprint based in the Blue Mountains, Australia, and was established by Jodie in 2022 as the umbrella imprint for her three children's books, all illustrated by local artist Eloise Short: *** The Black Cockatoo With One Feather Blue (2024 CBCA Notable Picture Book, 2024 Whitley Award – Best Children’s Book, RZSNSW, Shortlisted REAL Award: Picture Book [YABBA/KOALA/CROC Awards] 2024) *** Leonard the Lyrebird (2018) (Whitley Award – Best Children’s Book 2019, RZSNSW; Shortlisted REAL Award: Picture Book [YABBA/KOALA/CROC Awards] 2019), and its follow-up: *** Lilah the Lyrebird (2022) The MO of Wollemi Press is to publish 'stories worth sharing' – stories that, because of whatever it is that makes them special – be it their sense of fun, their characters or their beautiful message – simply refuse to be untold. Jodie is an experienced speaker at schools and festivals, whether for author visits or creative writing workshops, and works regularly with writing organisation Westwords. Along with her work as a children's author Jodie also offers copywriting services, having worked with a big list of agencies and clients. She's also worked for many years in magazine publishing, editing and feature writing, with an Honours degree in Creative Writing (UOW). When she's not writing, you might find Jodie running the trails of the Blue Mountains where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

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Renata Commisso

Renata Commisso

Renata Commisso is a multidisciplinary dancer, choreographer, movement director, and community arts facilitator based in Little Hartley. With over 12 years of international experience, she has performed with esteemed companies including Les Grands Ballets Canadiens (Montreal), Opéra de Lyon (France) and Victor Ullate Ballet (Madrid), before returning to Australia in 2018 to establish her independent practice. Renata has collaborated with leading organisations and artists such as the National Gallery of Australia, Opera Australia, Form Dance, Marc Brew, Sue Healey, Living Room Theatre, and Julie-Anne Long. Her choreographic works—including YOUWHO? and Motherhood—have been featured at Sydney Fringe and integrated into the Western Sydney University curriculum. She has also worked as an inclusive choreographer and movement director across stage and screen, with credits including Look the Part (Bus Stop Films) and Fluffy (Sydney Festival 2022). Her current interdisciplinary practice explores creating dance and theatre works for and with young children, as well as intergenerational experiences that invite connection through shared movement and storytelling. Here has been supported through residencies with ArtsOutWest, Lithgow City Council, InnerWest Council, Canada Bay Council, Critical Path, Ausdance NSW, DirtyFeet, and Annandale Creative Arts Centre. Committed to inclusive and community-engaged practice, Renata facilitates creative dance and theatre programs for people of all ages and abilities through Milk Crate Theatre, the Centre for Creativity at the Sydney Opera House, Dance for Parkinson’s Australia, DirtyFeet (The Right Foot),and Sydney Dance Company. In 2021, she founded Move and Groove, a creative dance initiative that nurtures connection, creativity, and belonging. As both an artist and educator, Renata is passionate about the transformative power of movement and storytelling, and is currently available for performing, choreography, movement direction, and multidisciplinary collaboration. She is also very keen to get everyone dancing and feeling good in their bodies and currently facilitates local movement and dance classes you can join. (Check the website or Get in touch!)

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Jacqueline  Forster

Jacqueline Forster

Jacqueline Forster is a journalist, writer, and editor working on the unceded Country of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples in the Blue Mountains, NSW. With over two decades of experience contributing to leading lifestyle publications in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, Jacqueline’s work spans journalism, copywriting, creative writing, publishing, and marketing, with a strong focus on sustainability, slow living, and community connection. She is a long-standing contributor, and former staff member, of ABC Organic Gardener magazine, where she writes extensively on edible gardening, regenerative agriculture, and grassroots food systems. Her work has appeared in PIP, Shepherdess (NZ), ABC Gardening Australia, Australian Country Style, WellBeing, Slow, The Sydney Morning Herald, and local publications she co-founded - Blue Mountains Love and Harvest Blue Mountains. Bucket list interviews include Alone Australia winner Gina Chick, author John Marsden, and Kiwi culinary queen Annabelle Langbein. She once wrote winning coverlines for the ABC’s iconic annual Cricket magazine. Outside of publishing, Jacqueline coordinated the Blue Mountains Edible Garden Trail from 2019 – 2025, is a board member of social enterprise, Farm It Forward, and volunteers at local environmental and cultural events. Jacqueline is available for freelance writing commissions, editorial projects, and collaborations that align with her values. Whether crafting a feature article, creating engaging coverlines and ledes or attention grabbing media releases, Jacqueline brings clarity and strong editorial instinct to every project.

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Missy Gilbert

Missy Gilbert

UnitePlayPerform is an Australian arts health organisation enhancing wellbeing through creativity in a globally connected world. Founded by Australian contemporary artist and experience designer ØFFËRÎNGŠ, UnitePlayPerform is a transformational therapeutic methodology incorporating play, making, co-creation and community. The master method is delivered via educational Playshops, retreats, digital experiences, performance works, exhibitions and therapeutic products that invite self exploration and leadership. “UnitePlayPerform was developed by Artist ØFFËRÎNGŠ as a new system to nurture and enhance the everyday lives of humans in such potent and challenging times. The concept was born unexpectedly within the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as a response to the isolation and segregation of our communities. UnitePlayPerform started to realize the positive impact that a practice like this could have on individuals and the lives they may affect around them. The ripple effect could be global, and the potential could be life enhancing as a legacy for generations to come. Post incubation phase, now in 2022, UPP has expanded to become a multi-disciplinary arts health organisation supporting the ongoing delivery of all that we do. A crucial element of the journey has been the assembly of a small team of world-class thought leaders, innovators, neuro-psychology theorists, cultural strategists and iconic play design experts who have collaborated to bring this vision to life. UPP aims to facilitate new pathways born at the intersection of art, health, science and wellbeing.

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Mareike Gronwald

Mareike Gronwald

Dr Mareike Gronwald is a German-born emerging artist and sociologist living in the Blue Mountains/ unceded Darug and Gundungurra land, exploring sociological questions through artistic practice. Mareike has always had a strong passion for art, drawing and painting from an early age. However, her desire to learn about how human societies function led her into the world of academia where she was working as a sociologist in national and international research projects in Hamburg and Mannheim, obtaining a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Mannheim in 2013.Whilst working as an academic in Germany, Mareike has attended art classes in Mannheim and Berlin. In 2014, Mareike moved to Australia becoming a full-time mother, working casually as a German language teacher in the community. Artistically, Mareike has been learning with and from ceramic artist Kumari Abeydeera and visual artist Liz Bryan during this time. She has also taken painting classes at TAFE (run by artist Matthew Tome). Mareike’s art is strongly influenced by her ongoing interest in sociological questions specifically the role, acknowledgement and perception of women (and as woman identifying) in societies and their Gefühlswelten (sensorial and emotional experiences) as well as the (re-)discovery of connection with nature providing solace, healing and a feeling of belonging no matter of the cultural background, age, gender or socio-economic status. From an art-historical perspective, Mareike has been inspired by the painters of German expressionism (“Die Bruecke”, “Blauer Reiter”) who reflected on societal and political questions in their art while also dealing with the spiritual relationship between human beings and nature focussing on expressing emotions and internal processes through colour and form. Mareike is mainly working with acrylics and water colours from her home in Blackheath, exploring and experimenting with different degrees of abstraction and the intuitive finding of organic shapes and images revolving around nature, emotions and human-spiritual connections.

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Chandu Bickford

Chandu Bickford

Born and raised in the Blue Mountains, Chandu started her career as a nurse but spent her mornings and evenings on cliff tops painting impressionist landscapes in oil. In her mid twenties Chandu set off on a 7 month trip overseas - she didn’t move home for 12 years. Chandu spent much of that time in a remote village in Tanzania. It was here she saw the great need and opportunities for women in arts and business. In 2001 she created an international business based on fair trade principles between East Africa and Australia. She supported the micro economy and the health and wellbeing of families in the remote region and also promoted the sustainability of local customs, arts and traditions among indigenous villagers and tribe’s people. Chandu's years in a mud hut without electricity, running water or transport, found her swapping her sable brushes for simple living. Her new art form became writing poetry and prose on dodgy notebooks by lantern light. For the last 20 years Chandu has been studying, teaching and mentoring organisations, groups and individuals in the business, leadership and creative industries. An avid writer and poet she has won a scholarship with the Faber Writing Academy, been awarded local prizes for her short stories and poems, has enjoyed 2 invited residencies at Varuna and been published in several anthologies. She is a sought after and inspiring public speaker and Emcee. Chandu dedicates her time between being a creative and actively supporting creatives to take their passion and practice out into the world. An inspiring and engaging facilitator and creative coach, Chandu offers bespoke group programs and one on one mentoring for artists and practitioners like you who wish to * step more fully onto your creative path * explore and clarify your talents, ideas and offerings * make your passion your profession or * explore and extend your creative and business offerings If you'd love more information and support book a complimentary Connection Conversation today. https://chandubickford.com/services/#holisticmentoring

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Lorraine Brownlee

Lorraine Brownlee

“I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. My father was a talented graphic designer in the film industry but it was my mother, a gifted amateur artist, who taught me to how to draw. Growing up near the sea at Clovelly, in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, my first love was the ocean and seashore. Although I studied art and design at school and University, my life took a very different direction but I never lost my desire to observe nature, be inspired by it and create unique designs from it. When I moved to the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains 25 years ago, I developed a great love for plants and flowers in all their intricate beauty. One of my favourite things is drawing the native plants which I see every day in the bush around my home. I do my best to observe nature and capture what I see in my initial pencil drawings. I then enhance the delicate, intricate shapes, lines and patterns to bring out their magic. By the time I come to the final pen drawings, I have turned natural form into pattern and each unique design seems to flow onto the paper, almost on its own. I then transfer my designs to my computer where I do all my colouring to create the final designs for my cards and art prints. My passion is to create unique, high quality, hand-drawn designs for you to enjoy.“ Lorraine Brownlee is Art Director and Editor of Auspress Marketing and Publishing, a successful boutique company which she runs with her husband Ian Brownlee in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

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Damien Milan

Damien Milan

Thank you for stopping by. I see myself as a dreamer and nomad at heart. I never really planned to become a photographer. My interest for photography grew from an incessant thirst for discovering new places and cultures. The beautiful complexity between people, emotions and places always fascinated me. Although I grew up in Belgium, I moved to Australia in 2007 and today I feel very lucky to call Katoomba my home with my wife Nastia who is a mural artist, our gorgeous daughter Mia and our cat Frida. As my relatives all live in Belgium, we take this opportunity to regularly travel to Europe during summer time to see them and also photograph a limited number of destination weddings. I love that weddings allow me to have a peek into people’s life for one day. I find it incredibly rewarding to be trusted to tell people's story on one of the most important days of their life. My work can be described as raw, cinematic, emotive and timeless. When documenting people's stories, I like to take the back seat and play the role of a quiet observer. Light is the core of my work and I am always up for experimenting with it in an intentional and artful way. All my photography packages include 35 mm film coverage as I love how film helps me to capture images in a more intentional way and I find the analog process very meditative. It pushes my creative boundaries and the beautiful imperfections of film suit the timeless nature of my work. Alongside weddings I also shoot elopements and after recently becoming a dad myself I started taking bookings for short family sessions in the Blue Mountains.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF NGURRA

The City of the Blue Mountains is located within the Ngurra (Country) of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples. MTNS MADE recognises that Dharug and Gundungurra Traditional Owners have a continuous and deep connection to their Country and that this is of great cultural significance to Aboriginal people, both locally and in the region. For Dharug and Gundungurra People, Ngurra takes in everything within the physical, cultural and spiritual landscape – landforms, waters, air, trees, rocks, plants, animals, foods, medicines, minerals, stories and special places. It includes cultural practice, kinship, knowledge, songs, stories and art, as well as spiritual beings, and people: past, present and future. Blue Mountains City Council pays respect to Elders past and present while recognising the strength, capacity and resilience of past and present Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Blue Mountains region.

MTNS MADE is proudly delivered by Blue Mountains City Council