our current projects
Steep is a 3 year youth-led, creative countermapping project across the Shoalhaven region. The project is designed to support young people explore and share significant places of meaning informed by local stories, art, and lived experiences.
Yuin Country
Steep
Balding is Easier than Being Bald Exhibition
Shoalhaven Regional Gallery
In spaces where nothing is fixed, infinite possibilities can feel expansive yet overwhelming. Balding is Easier Than Being Bald speaks to this tension and invites you to reflect on your own relationship to uncertainty and transition.
More than 2,781 young people from across the Shoalhaven and Illawarra participated in the projects between 2023-2026. 175 participants and 19 emerging arts leaders, who co-produced the exhibition, were mentored and supported by BE along with established contributing artists such as Nicole Smede, Simon Grant and D'arcy Maguire.
Yuin Country
Be Studios is a social enterprise creative agency, providing film making and audio production services.
We provide creative industry employment, experience, mentorship, and skills development opportunities to young people who have lived through sustained hardship.
BE Studios
Flow
Dharawal Country
Flow is a multidisciplinary 4 year project developed in partnership with children, young people and their community in Bellambi and surrounding suburbs. Participants develop skills and create work together using photography, sculptures, film-making, stop-motion, scriptwriting and performance exploring the importance of play, agency, momentum and monsters.
Young people also produced Follow the Flow, a 2 part multi-modal interactive exhibition and premiere screening of Flo Mo, a collaborative animated film.
Illawarra Local Team
Dharawal Country
The Illawarra Beyond Empahy team has been working in community for over 15 years. Our project team has deep relationships with young people and community leaders in Bundaleer, Warrawong, Bellambi, Lake Illawarra, Port Kembla, Berkeley and surrounding suburbs. We’ve produced award winning feature films (Protection and Rites of Passage), podcast series (Ready Steady, Parting, SHIFT), public art murals (Bundy Maps), short films (The Driver, Blue Rose, 2506), recorded albums and new compositions (Heard), produced participatory festivals (Blue Rose) and provided mentoring and support work for participants to access workshops in circus, choreography, movement, music, singing, scriptwriting, production, sound engineering, poetry, sculpture, illustration, animation, film-making and more.
Our Illawarra team are currently supporting local participants to develop the next multi-year largescale collaborative project.
Shoalhaven Local Team
Yuin Country
The Shoalhaven Beyond Empahy team is always on the road connecting with the many ‘one road in; one road out’ regional towns. Our team has been working with local communities for the past 6 years and produced the award-winning Grit Project podcast series, the Steep Report, Unmapping Becoming a public art mural series, A Presence short films, new compositions and place-based installations with local festivals and partners.
The Shoalhaven team is currently in development with local emerging leaders to co-design the next multi-year project.
Sound Portraits
Mobile
Sound Portrait project is about listening to your life. Participants are invited to gather sounds, voices, and textures from their own lives, and their community and shape them into a fictional sound portrait. A sonic landscape that doesn't require standing on a stage or telling a straight-line story.
The project is a collective composition that holds the whole group's textures, senses and connection together.
Sapphire Coast Local Team
The south coast currents flow up and down between Sydney and the VIC border. Beyond Empathy has always connected with partners and community along these currents. Long established relationships have been strengthened through the shared housing crisis challenge and severe natural disasters.
Our Sapphire Coast team is spending time connecting, listening and offering partnership with local community organisations.
Yuin Country