Theatre and Performance

live arts residencY

introducing seedpod

RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITY FOR LIVE ARTS PRACTITIONERS WHO LIVE, WORK OR STUDY IN THE CITY OF BALLARAT

Following the success of Punctum’s Ballarat 2024 Seedpod program, Punctum and the City of Ballarat are pleased announce the return of the Ballarat Seedpod residency in 2025. Proposals are invited from artists at all stages of their career working in any area of live arts or contemporary performance who live, work or study in the City of Ballarat.

Seedpod is a renowned residency program created and produced by award-winning, regionally based live arts company - Punctum. It is research led and artist centred. By ‘live arts’, Punctum means innovative or experimental performances or events that disrupt traditional ways of working together or propose new ways of interacting with audiences.

A 2025 Seedpod residency offers the successful artists time, funding, resources, and space to test ideas, push the boundaries of their creative practice, and understand how their work makes meaning with members of the public. Artists seeking to grow their practice in a responsive, rigorous setting of enquiry, experimentation and collaboration are invited to apply.

Seedpod artists/organisations will be expected to offer a public sharing of their exploration as a way of testing and understanding how their proposition works.

Getting started with your proposal

Please get in contact with Punctum via hq@punctum.com.au if you would prefer to apply in an alternative format, or if there are any barriers we can assist you with during your proposal process. To prevent loss of progress in case of an internet outage, we recommend writing your responses on a Word document and paste them into the Call Out form.

To help you start thinking about your proposal, here are some tips from the review panel to consider:

• If your work draws from cultural traditions, tell us about those traditions.

• If your work is process based, tell us about your process.

• If you need assistance translating, let us know.

• Be specific about your ways of making which you are seeking to use during your Seedpod residency.

• Propose URL links that give an indication of your past work.

• If you link to your web page or blog, make sure it’s up to date.

• If you mention how your work has been received in the past, include links to reviews/responses.

• If the Seedpod residency is a step in a new direction, talk about what has informed your work in the past and how it is influencing this new direction.

• Tell us where you understand your approach, concept, materials used, or form might sit within, or contribute to, contemporary performance and live arts practice.

• Use short phrases or if you prefer, dot points.

The opportunity to submit your proposal is now open, and closes at midnight 28th January 2025. Artists will be advised of the results by March 7th 2025.

2024 seedpod cOHORT

john kachoyan

John is an award-winning queer Armenian-Australian artist and a multi-artform writer, director, developer and educator who began his career in the theatre. He holds an MA in Theatre from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, studied script-editing at AFTRS and originally trained as a playwright at NIDA. John writes about his Seedpod proposal:

“‘Naming Rites’ or ‘Pomegranate’ seeks to explore the fragments and whispers of the presence of Armenian immigrants on the Goldfields and reconstitutes their existence in live performance through my own performing body, as a queer Armenian-Australian. This history, such as it exists, is incomplete, fleeting, and sparse – and the ghosts of Armenia are dotted throughout contested sights in Ballarat and beyond.

“The investigation delves the contested histories of immigrants (known and imagined) who fled persecution in their homelands. The Armenian Genocide is the historical ghost in all Armenian’s lives – a history still denied in official acknowledgement – parsed off as ‘civil unrest’. Names have power – especially ‘GENOCIDE’ right now.

“There are explicit Armenian links to the region; Mt Ararat in historical Armenia: the resting place of Noah’s Ark or Armenian Reef near St Arnaud, named after a local ‘Anastasia’, a tattooed Armenian man called John arriving in the port of Melbourne in 1854 and then disappearing and Armenian priest’s assistant Johannes Gregorius part in the Eureka rebellion - all strands of anchoring ‘fact’. Johannes was born Հովհաննես Գրիգորյան (Hovannes Gregorian) Hovannes means ‘John’. Names shift and morph, losing and gaining meaning.

“My process is one of research, experiential play, text and image collection and refining, moving into a process of response and devising in site-specific ways. This is a new old way of working as it were – a generative, iterative process, without formal production outcomes, but always steering towards the public sharing. I aim to develop a durational performance that embodies, reincarnates and resurrects these forgotten voices to share with an audience their absence and to tease the crumbs of their lives into a fuller remembering.”

alexandra ann minchin doherty

Sandra Minchin-Delohery is a visual artist, academic and disability advocate. Having worked internationally and performed throughout the world, Sandra now defines herself as a “re-emerging artist” after a rare chronic illness diagnosis. Today Sandra channels her creative energy into articulating the stories of illness and wellness, abled and disabled. Sandra writes of her original Seedpod proposal:

“As an able-bodied person, I never really gave my body much thought until one day something changed. Five years ago, I started to feel very unwell. I was diagnosed with a mixed autoimmune disorder with Scleroderma, Interstitial lung disease, and overlap syndrome polymyositis. My white cells are attacking my red cells. I am now considered disabled and have an invisible chronically ill non-ideal body.

“My art practice presents my body as both a site and a material and includes live art, video, photography, objects, and live art/experimental theatre. I consider myself an emerging artist in Australia due to having to take time out of my art practice. My work investigates the representation of the non-ideal sick female body and examines how illness/pain can be framed as beauty. Through my work, I challenge common representations of illness and disability.

“For the Seedpod Residency, I would like to interrogate what it means to live with a chronically ill/ disabled body daily. I would potentially like to develop two works that are in the early production stages. I would like to present a sample of the first performance as a live art piece and present the concepts, structure, talk through ideas, samples through a PowerPoint presentation for feedback. This would also include inviting some of Ballarat's disabled community in to chat with me to discuss what it means to live with a disruptive body.

“The first performance I would like to develop is a live art piece that has a repetitive/ endurance action over three days, (this would be the resolved performance to be shown within a gallery setting) I would start the performance with a white table and chair and the above pills (that are red and white referring to my red cells attacking my white cells). There would be hundreds of pills on the table. The action would be, me sitting at the table in a white hospital gown filling multiple pill organisers with the above tablets, repeating this action repeatedly, till there is a huge build-up of the pill organisers, this performance alludes to the daily and ongoing regimented regime of chronic illness that is required to subdue an unruly body.”

the outcomes for 2023:

MEGAN J RIEDL - UNSPOKEN: THE BALLARAT POETESS

Megan J Riedl's Seedpod proposal, set out to explore the connection between Megan’s spoken word practice and the history of Australian women's censorship, with a focus on the work of Ellen Young a published 19th century ‘Ballarat Poetess’.

Megan proposed to investigate Young's voice compared to contemporary spoken word, and spoken word's role in women's agency and social change. The timeline of development proposed for the work coincides with the 170th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade, and examines women's involvement in the rebellion, tracing the legacy of women's agency in Australia's political history.

Through the Seedpod residency, Megan sought to challenge herself professionally, and shift her emphasis from writer to performer, combining world-building, playwriting, and spoken word to create a unique performance style.

Megan requested artistic support and mentoring, assistance securing venues and delivering a public presentation during the residency, and support to build connections towards a premiere and potential tour of the work in 2024/2025.

rae howell - the piano: hook, line & tinker

Rae Howell proposed "The Piano: Hook, Line and Tinker" as an exploration of waste, recycling, and repurposing, focusing on unserviceable and abandoned pianos. Through her practice as a piano technician, Rae deals with an increasing number of unusable pianos, and as a composer and multi instrumentalist, she seeks to address this waste problem by transforming unwanted pianos into new works of art.

Through the Seedpod residency, Rae sought to develop an exhibition, talk, and live reconstruction using reclaimed piano components, highlighting what can be recycled or repurposed. The proposal's connection to 'contested sites' related to waste management, the need for better recycling and repurposing practices, and aligns with Ballarat City Council's plan to become a 100% circular economy by 2050.

Rae sought support to build connections with council waste collection agencies and to access a studio space to disassemble and reconstruct a piano during the residency. Through the presentation, she hoped to understand how a live audience engages with the work, towards further development of an interactive exhibit of unique musical instruments and kinetic sound sculptures.

the THEME:

Ballarat Seedpod residencies offered an opportunity to live arts artists seeking to investigate and develop new work in the field of ‘contested sites’.

Artists can nominate their own site within the City of Ballarat as one they recognise as ‘contested’.

A contested site can be one which one which is historically known as conflicted, or currently ‘holds’ contestation, or one that through a future lens may well become contested.

The fissures, fault lines and tensions of these contested sites might be cultural, social, historical and/or environmental. 

Public access will be an important consideration.

‘Contested sites’ remains a theme for 2025.

 What RESIDENCIES WILL RECEIVE IN 2025:

The two Seedpod residencies each include:

• $3,000 for artist fee, project materials, accommodation, travel

• $2,000 in-kind producing, production management and technical support

• $500 in-kind professional marketing and box office coordination

• $500 in-kind dramaturgical/mentoring support

• $500 in-kind documentation/review writing

• In-kind use of a studio space in the City of Ballarat equipped for research, development, rehearsal, meetings and access to presentation sites for one week.

 Seedpod artists/organisations are expected to offer a public sharing of their exploration.