Parramatta Creative Circle
Young adults (15-25)
Story Factory Parramatta
The Creative Circle is a new Story Factory initiative aimed at young creators (aged 15-25). Story Factory Parramatta will host a series of events bringing together experienced creators (think artists/writers/filmmakers/musicians) with early career writers and creators.
Participants will have the opportunity to meet and learn from practising artists in an informal environment. During each event guest artists will be invited to share work, speak about their creative process and answer questions.
In addition to these events, at the end of the program, Story Factory will publish a collection of writing from participants. All participants will be invited to submit writing which responds to the themes, ideas and creative works shared during the program.
Events will run on selected Friday evenings from April to September 2023.
Creative Circle #1 – Kevin Ngo, Rico Craig & Bilal Hafda
Kevin Ngo is a community arts worker living in Western Sydney and loves creating opportunities for young people and for those living in the area to experience and share culture, art and stories. He has worked with organisations including the 4Elements HipHop Festival, Outloud, Sydney Theatre Company and Bankstown Poetry Slam on a variety of projects including community events and theatre productions.
Bilal Hafda runs creative writing workshops all across NSW and works with schools and community groups full-time, at the Story Factory, facilitating and designing workshops to assist young writers to find their voice and publish their work. He is also a spoken-word artist and has performed twice at TEDx Sydney, at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, and has featured at a number of slams. He currently hosts and runs the Bankstown Poetry Slam.
Rico Craig is a poet, writer and workshop facilitator. Bone Ink (UWAP), his first poetry collection, was winner of the 2017 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2018. His recent collections, Our Tongues Are Songs (2021) and Nekhau (2022) are published by Recent Work Press.
Creative Circle #2 – Zeadala
Zeadala is a singer-song writer and rapper from South West Sydney. Known for her captivating and soulful live shows, she combines her love for acoustic music with Hip Hop beats to bring forth positive vibes and a purpose to authentically connect and uplift her audiences. Her lyrics, rooted in self-empowerment, healing and connection to land.
Creative Circle #3 – Marcus Khoudair
Marcus Khoudair is a screenwriter who teaches high school English, facilitates listening and storytelling circles, and loves dancing. A recent masters graduate of AFTRS focusing on naturalist drama, satire, and community collaboration, Marcus is passionate about fusing film projects with creative education environments for school students. His goal is to build space for unstimulated solitude into the mainstream education system, and, to this end, he has worked with Co-Curious, OutLoud, Story Factory, Snapchat, and Matrix Education where he is currently Leading English Teacher. Marcus is an accredited Youth Mental Health First Aider and avid tahini enthusiast.
Creative Circle #4 – Eileen Chong
Eileen Chong is a Sydney-based Australian poet of Chinese descent. Chong writes about food, family, migration, love and loss. Her poetry collections are Burning Rice (2012), Peony (2014), Painting Red Orchids (2016), and Rainforest (2018) all from Pitt Street Poetry, and her most recent collection is A Thousand Crimson Blooms from the University of Queensland Press (2021).
Chong writes about food, family, migration, love and loss. The Singaporean-Australian poet Boey Kim Cheng has said that ‘Chong’s work offers a poetry of feeling, rendered in luminous detail and language, alive to the sorrows and joys of daily living.’
Creative Circle #5 – Christina ‘STYNA’ Huynh
Christina Huynh is an award-winning illustrator and muralist based in Western Sydney, Australia, that paints under the name STYNA. Her art practice involves creating murals, illustrations and picture books from differing mediums of pencil, watercolour, ink and pen to acrylic and aerosol.
With an enthusiasm for goldfish and all things fragile in our natural world, Christina creates stories that express her everyday thoughts, experiences and childhood memories. She finds inspiration in storytelling, human emotion, wayfaring and the heritage of people and place.
Upon completing her studies for a Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication) at Western Sydney University in 2011, Christina has been involved in various public art projects, including the Canal to Creek Public Art Program in 2020, one of Australia’s most extensive public art programs as well as illustration projects, including illustrating ‘Grandma’s Treasured Shoes’ by Coral Vass and published by the National Library of Australia in 2019.
Christina works with local councils and schools today, focusing on art-for-purpose and place-based projects and collaborations.
Creative Circle #6 – Mawunyo Gbogbo
Mawunyo Gbogbo is an ABC journalist specialising in popular culture, and the author of Hip Hop & Hymns. She has worked as a music and pop culture reporter for ABC News Digital; a features reporter and producer for ABC Radio Sydney; a segment producer for the Today Show on the Nine Network; and an associate producer for Insight on SBS TV, where she won a UN Media Peace Award.
Mawunyo was born in Ghana, raised in Muswellbrook in the NSW Hunter Valley, and now calls Sydney home.