CEO REPORT
I feel a mixture of a sense of privilege, luck, deep contentment and pride to be the person who gets to write the introduction to the CuriousWorks 2024 annual report - it’s a mix of sentiments that I experience regularly as the CEO of this small but fierce organisation.
I also feel deep gratitude…
There’s a lot to be proud of from the year that was 2024. I hope this report, in its entirety, captures its essence and nuance. In the spirit of “celebrating the wins” (which we try to remember to do as much as possible), I want to share some highlights…
Centering the artist as worker
Future-Focused
Grounded in our Communities - thinking expansively
Financially, CuriousWorks remains in a strong position. In 2024, our fee for service social enterprise activities proved once more to be a healthy earned income stream amounting to $105,532, which was 15% of our total income and a 20% increase on 2023 social enterprise earnings. We saw modest increases in arts production income and donations also. Overall, the results for the 2024 financial year were: total revenue $707,405, with a surplus of $9,628, and total retained earnings at year’s end of $353,544. (View our Audited Financial Statements for the year ending 31 December 2024 here).
2024 was a big and bright year on many fronts. I hope you can see and feel this as you scroll through this report outlining our activities in detail. I hope also that you see that our work is more than a list of programs and a bunch of stats. At its heart, our work is about representation, equity, opportunity, collective meaning-making, connection and shared experiences, joy, solace, curiosity, potentiality, resistance, hope and the dreaming up of a better future with, within, and across our communities in our home grounds in South West Sydney.
Again, what a privilege it is to be the person that gets to write this intro!
Warmly,
Kiri
Kiriaki Zakinthinos, CEO
I also feel deep gratitude…
- to the team of artists that make up our core staff who work consciously with integrity, purpose, and deep connections to local people and places every day to produce good work;
- to the 103 incredible creatives who trusted us with their art and their labour in 2024 and offered us so many moments of connection, insight, and collective meaning-making;
- to the partners, funders, collaborators and peers who share our vision for a democratic, generative and relevant culture, and for a fairer and more equitable arts sector;
- to our expanded network of followers, friends, and supporters of our work - thank you for the love - whether it be a comment on our socials, a DM, a heart-to-heart chat, or a little or big donation;
- to our dedicated and generous Management Committee for their time, attentiveness and expertise;
- and to our broader Western Sydney arts and community arts allies and accomplices, who recognise the power of pooling and exchanging knowledges and resources for the greater good of our communities.
There’s a lot to be proud of from the year that was 2024. I hope this report, in its entirety, captures its essence and nuance. In the spirit of “celebrating the wins” (which we try to remember to do as much as possible), I want to share some highlights…
Artistic Vibrancy
- Tender was wrapped in love when it opened at the Sydney Opera House in September. We filled the Western Foyers with our people on opening night who were there to see the works on a 270-degree canvas above and around us. Fairfield City Museum and Gallery presented the works more intimately in November and held the space gently for Mohammad Awad (3awadi), Carielyn Tunion, Sharon Mani, and Diamond Tat to share insights into their creative processes and stories. Audience and media responses were heartening, heart-warming, heart-bursting… add as many heart/love references here as you can think of.
- We commissioned 9 new works and supported 7 creative developments across programs like: Tender, Testing Grounds, Future Culture, and our presentation at New Beginnings Festival.
- New works received 175 exhibition days collectively across the Utopia, Homelands Tour, and Tender presentations. The Homelands exhibition on the Western Boardwalk of the Sydney Opera House alone garnered an estimated 25k visitors per day.
- We wrapped up three years’ worth of joyous and grounded embedded creative and community development activities with FunPark in June and worked with our coalition of partners to secure funding for a further three years under the auspices and leadership of organisations based in Bidwill. This ensures that FunPark is grounded even deeper in the communities it serves. We’re staying connected and will support them into the future because legacy stretches both backwards and forwards in time, and we’re proud to be a part of the FunPark legacy and family.
- We expanded our partnerships across sectors, working innovatively with universities, councils and service organisations towards collaborative creative outcomes. These are evidenced in selected social enterprise projects such as Stories from Queen Street, Conscious Music Videos, and SSI’s modern slavery and tech-enabled abuse educational video stories.
Centering the artist as worker
- 103 artists were engaged across 2024, earning $191,353 across all projects collectively. Of this, $14,751 was earned by early career artists while gaining on-the-job practical training and mentorship in social enterprise jobs and project work.
- We piloted Future Culture - embedding 2 artists in residence and 2 interns into our team on salary, recognising and honouring that sound creative and learning processes take time, investment and security.
- We professionalised some of our internal processes, formalising job planning and performance reviews, and began conversations around job crafting and self-directed professional development.
- We took a proactive approach to wellbeing, creating an action plan, carving out time for slow and creative play, and taking turns to share wellbeing tips and resources.
Future-Focused
- We continue to invest in building our social enterprise stream of earned income. 2024 saw a 20% increase in earnings compared to 2023. We also delivered our largest social enterprise contract to date to client satisfaction on time and on budget, and will continue to pursue these larger scale projects that offer valuable opportunities for early career creatives to be mentored, gain on-the-job paid experience and build new skills.
- We supported the “next-generation” of creatives through 4 internships: 2 through salaried, long-term roles and two through Western Sydney Uni who were able to gain credit for their degrees while garnering on-the-job experience.
- We welcomed new Management Committee (MC) members and a new Chair in late 2024, ensuring smooth successions. We adopted a new Diversity and Skills Matrix for the MC to identify areas for expansion in expertise and lived experience, ensuring representation and relevance at the leadership level into the future.
- Professional development for our team and artists remained a focus, with skills and knowledge-sharing initiatives such as Fat Chats (peer-to-peer learning) and Future Culture all-in sessions to collectively dream up an Equity Action Plan (currently in the works).
Grounded in our Communities - thinking expansively
- We worked with UNSW, WSU and peer organisations such as Milk Crate Theatre and Arts and Cultural Exchange on programs that seek to increase the social impacts and benefits to our local communities of focus, recognising the fertile, expansive and generative nature of these transdisciplinary and peer partnerships.
- Our Open Door Days provided an opportunity for 40+ local artists to book time with the team to discuss creative ideas, pathways, and opportunities, and to get to know each other.
- Our team represented CuriousWorks at various sector advocacy and development events such as The Smith Family’s Speed Mentoring Day at Liverpool Girls High School, Multicultural NSW’s Digital Engagement Summit, WSU’s Strengthening Social Cohesion Conference and UTS Shopfront’s Managing Social Impact students who worked with us through a project-based learning approach to create a communications and business plan.
Financially, CuriousWorks remains in a strong position. In 2024, our fee for service social enterprise activities proved once more to be a healthy earned income stream amounting to $105,532, which was 15% of our total income and a 20% increase on 2023 social enterprise earnings. We saw modest increases in arts production income and donations also. Overall, the results for the 2024 financial year were: total revenue $707,405, with a surplus of $9,628, and total retained earnings at year’s end of $353,544. (View our Audited Financial Statements for the year ending 31 December 2024 here).
2024 was a big and bright year on many fronts. I hope you can see and feel this as you scroll through this report outlining our activities in detail. I hope also that you see that our work is more than a list of programs and a bunch of stats. At its heart, our work is about representation, equity, opportunity, collective meaning-making, connection and shared experiences, joy, solace, curiosity, potentiality, resistance, hope and the dreaming up of a better future with, within, and across our communities in our home grounds in South West Sydney.
Again, what a privilege it is to be the person that gets to write this intro!
Warmly,
Kiri
Kiriaki Zakinthinos, CEO