Curated Events
In 2025 BWF has had the great fortune of working with First Nations Cultural Curators Sharlene Allsopp and Jillian Bowie, who’ve put together a series of sessions that complement and enhance the program. Please explore these sessions below; we hope you enjoy the breadth and depth these panels bring to the festival. BWF would like to extend a huge thank you to Sharlene and Jillian for their illuminating and exciting contributions.
Indigenous Futurisms
11:30am, Saturday 11 October, Fairfax Studio
Allanah Hunt, Mykaela Saunders and John Morrissey
Chair: Sharlene Allsopp
Terra Nullius declared we have no past. The dying race trope pretended we have no future. Indigenous Futurisms calls time on both. These authors write us back into the past and the future, where we have always been and always will be.
Pitch Blak: from Page to Stage
7pm, Saturday 11 October, Fairfax Studio
Leon Filewood and Rita Pryce
Chair: Jillian Bowie
Creative storytelling on stage to capture wide audiences takes a special kind of skill. In this session, we celebrate comedian Leon Filewood and performing artist Rita Pryce on finding a platform for their voices and interpreting their narratives in the most engaging ways.
Campfire
1pm, Sunday 12 October, Fairfax Studio
Gabriel Bani and Rochelle Pitt-Watson
Chair: Jillian Bowie
Join us as we delve into the ancient truths and practices of Bipo Taim (before time) and the challenges we face today as we strive to survive our language, culture, knowledge systems and stories in this modern world.
Place as Story Holder and Story-teller
4pm, Sunday 12 October, Fairfax Studio
Nardi Simpson, Anita Heiss and Fiona Foley
Chair: Sharlene Allsopp
These writers explore the agency of place/Country in meaningful and diverse ways. How do these writers respect that agency in their recent works? How did writing these stories change them?
The Writing Group as a Place of Joy
10am, Thursday 9 October, Underground Theatre
Darby Jones, Haylee Escalante and Dakota Feirer
Chair: Sharlene Allsopp
How do safe place and safe community nurture creative work? We invite you to listen in as we yarn about connection in the places we create with, and for, each other. This is the space where the stories we tell/write/listen shape us. The joy of the journey, not the outcomes.
Blak to the Future
4pm, Saturday 11 October, Underground Theatre
Leon Filewood, Rita Pryce, Gabriel Bani and Rochelle Pitt-Watson
Chair: Jillian Bowie
Our stories follow us, from dancing and ceremonial grounds and around the campfire onto stages, screens and books, welcoming others into our world and being recorded across modern structures for generations to come.