Day: September 11, 2020

Diana Ellinger  started out her professional life as a graphic designer, working for years in Melbourne’s communications industry before relocating to Canberra with her husband. In a new city with some new inspiration, she decided to finesse her amateur art skills and enrol in painting workshops at ANU’s Art School.

‘Since then my art practice has largely existed in the margins of my life,’ she explains. ‘The sneaky stolen moments when children are sleeping, or carefully slotted in around design jobs.’ She credits this extreme multitasking as the reason it’s taken her a little over a decade to properly find her voice!

Diana returned from Mumbai, where she had relocated in 2018, with her young family in March of this year. Promptly moving into then-temporary accommodation at her mother-in-law’s house on the Bellarine Peninsula, Diana has experienced a burst of creative enthusiasm. With a new regimen of dedicated studio time

When Sophie Penkethman-Young landed her dream job as Digital Programming Associate at the Sydney Opera House in February of 2020, she had no idea how busy her new job was about to get. To be fair, none of us knew how much our lives were about to change back then. But for someone working in digital programming at one of Australia’s most prestigious cultural institutions, the almost immediate halt of physical events in March of 2020 meant that things were about to get really intense.

‘At first it was a bit chaotic’, Sophie says of the quick pivot to creating a weekly digital program from scratch (!) when COVID hit. But alongside a talented team, Sophie helped put together an impressive digital offering which includes never-before-seen footage from the Opera House archives, podcasts, long-form articles and behind-the-scenes content. In May, the team added weekly live recordings and live-stream performances to