We Create Safe Spaces
Report Launch
3:00PM, SUNDAY 16 MARCH 2025
Critical Path’s First Nations Artist-Curator Jasmin Sheppard invites you to the launch of the report We Create Safe Spaces.
Please join us on March 16 at 3:00 PM for drinks and nibbles, screening of short films by First Nations artists and a casual discussion and sharing of the report with Jasmin Sheppard (Tagalaka), Tammi Gissell (Wiradjuri, contributor and Critical Path’s First Nations board member) and Joshua Staines (Wiradjuri, report writer).
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SUNDAY 16 MARCH 2025
3:00 PM
FREE, RSVP BELOW
THE DRILL HALL, CRITICAL PATH
1C NEW BEACH ROAD, DARLING POINT, NSW, 2027
GADIGAL & BIRRABIRRAGAL COUNTRY
RSVP HERE
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We Create Safe Spaces began at a gathering at the Drill Hall, Critical Path, on the 2nd of April, 2023. Ten First Nations contemporary dance artists based in Sydney began the conversation, highlighting how many of our community and our peers have had to battle the system, struggle through unhealthy ways of working, revealing the lack of scaffolding within arts organisations to support the unique way we work and inhabit spaces. Throughout the following two years nineteen NSW based or connected First Nations dance artists have been consulted through online and in-person discussions.
The report is the culmination of two years and nineteen one-on-one consultations from the NSW First Nations Dance community, documenting their experiences of the sector as First Nations artists, good practice, harmful practice, and areas of growth and forward thinking.
The purpose was to understand the unique needs of First Nations people working in the sector, to understand the challenges, and to understand why, after lots of work on behalf of the sector, including many allies, do First Nations people still come up against a vast difference in how they experience the sector.
We would love your company and conversation.
Please note this event contains sensitive content regarding racial discrimination and culturally significant content.
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As a First Nations community of dancers, artists and dance makers, we acknowledge that we live on Sovereign Land of First Nations people of this country now known as Australia. We pay our deep and unwavering respect to the caretakers of the land we live, perform and make work on, the Elders of our past who paved the way, so that we can create and dance here. We honour our Elders who continue to take care of Country and our communities, and we look to the future and our youth who are the future leaders. We acknowledge our own communities and families and our respective Countries.
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This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
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IMAGE ID: a person lying on their back on the floor of a performance space surrounded by ash.
IMAGE CREDIT: Plant a Promise, Henrietta Baird, Sydney Festival, 2025, pictured: Tara Robertson, photo: Sarah Malone.
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Critical Path respectfully acknowledges the Gadigal and Birrabirragal peoples of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land where the organisation is based.