CuriousWorks has all sorts of innovative ideas for building creative capacity in your team and your community. We’ve worked with councils, organisations and their communities in the suburbs, the city, the country and the desert. We understand the essential role local government and non-profits play across the country, but also that each LGA and community has unique needs that require a tailored, localised response.

We offer a diverse range of services, including:

• Fun, engaging arts and digital media workshops for your community – for all levels of talent, experience and background
• A creative media training program that is focused on leaving long-term digital media skills in your team and in your community
• Creative community projects with innovative arts outcomes
• Consultation around digital media strategy and communications

Contact Elias, our Head Educator, to discuss your project further: elias@curiousworks.com.au or (02) 9281 2570.

Case Study: Neighbourhood Stories in St Marys with Penrith City Council
CuriousWorks trained up a diverse group of local citizens to make media on equipment that was already available: old cameras, mobile phones, the computers at the library. This inter-cultural and inter-generational group then made short, compelling media pieces (text, images, sound and video) about different parts of Penrith and its people. All content was uploaded to an online map of Penrith.

The pieces were placed alongside research done by the council to build its Neighbourhood Action Plan; thus the content made by the participants played a key role in gathering information for the council and affecting the future development of the community. Penrith City Council recently won a prestigious local government cultural award for this project.
Learn more here: http://curiousworks.com.au/projects/neighbourhood-stories/

Case Study: Newman, remote Western Australia
Weeks before starting a long-term project in Newman, the designated base of operations, Newman Youth Centre, closed down. CuriousWorks had to shift its focus. We worked with young people in various community spaces, homes and even on the streets, helping them make media about their town. They made some great stories and were trained in how to use new media to lobby for their youth centre to be re-opened. They campaigned to council and were successful, with the youth centre re-opening in early 2011.

Meanwhile, we built capacity in all the schools in town to carry on the benefits of the project, to ensure sustainability. Media labs have now been set up in all the schools, as well as an after-school lab at the youth centre. Professional development was done with the most engaged young people we met, as well as the school teachers and youth worker. The town now has the capacity to tell compelling local stories in film and photography and share them through an annual local film festival.

Alongside all this, we worked with small Indigenous communities based around the mining town. In partnership with a burgeoning media outfit, we built a crew of professional Indigenous media makers who can make content suitable for the general public about their way of life. Their work is also showed at the local film festival and schools, slowly building empathy and a sense of inclusion between the very different cultural groups in that region.
Learn more here: http://curiousworks.com.au/projects/newman-stories/

Feedback from Penrith City Council:

Neighbourhood Stories from my perspective has been about using technology as a vehicle for empowering residents in a local neighbourhood, in this case St Marys, which has been identified as a disadvantaged neighbourhood by the Australia Bureau of Statistics.

The ripple effect of this project is huge – it allows new creative solutions for individuals and communities … it taps into their creativity, gives them a voice where they didn’t have a voice before. But most importantly it is not confined to the arts in an arts sense but also opens up a whole new series of creative solutions to everyone involved.
Cali Vandyk-Dunlevy, Cultural Development Officer, Penrith City Council

CuriousWorks’ specialty is empowering your students to make their own films and sharing that online. But we can do a diverse array of arts and digital media projects, tailored to your school.

CuriousWorks has developed an education model for delivering in-school digital media training that leaves a sustainable legacy of new media skills and activities for both students and teachers. The length, frequency, content and technology level are tailored to each school’s needs; we maintain best practice student engagement and skills development while being flexible enough to suit timetable scheduling and curriculum outcomes.

Essentially, CuriousWorks makes understanding the digital technology at your school simple, and gives you fun, innovative and useful ways to keep using it forever!

Contact our Head Educator, Elias to discuss your idea further with us: elias@curiousworks.com.au or (02) 9281 2570.

Feedback from previous projects:

One of the unexpected outcomes this project had was on me personally …The project has allowed me to see many different sides to my students and appreciate the abundance of skills they have. This had allowed my classes with them to be more innovative and creative as we have a closer connection and I have a better appreciation of them. And vice versa.

Many of the students who were involved in the project have had behavioural issues in their school careers. However, since being involved in the project many have had a dramatic reduction in RISC (a computer program that monitors incidents) reports. 3 students who have had over 20 RISC entries this year have had zero entered for this term.
Rebecca Franklin, Teacher, Holroyd High School

Thanks for the video, it looks fantastic…great work!.... it has been “most excellent” working with CuriousWorks. Your professionalism and engagement with the students was brilliant they are and were enthusiastic about working on the video and with you! The students enjoyed the process and the final video, we viewed it yesterday on the smart board. I think we might get a few film makers out of them for their HSC.
Paul McClaughlin, James Busby High School

Case Study: Refill at Miller Technology High School, Western Sydney
For two years, CuriousWorks empowered students at risk of leaving the school to re-engage and build trust again in the school system. These students have not only remained at school but have also become engaged, skilled media makers – some of them are now also young, creative leaders. The Refill kids also made a fantastic online comedy series.
Learn more about the project here: http://curiousworks.com.au/projects/refill

Case Study: Newman Senior High, Newman Primary and South Newman Primary
As part of our long-term project in Newman, we worked in these three schools in a capacity building framework. Through ongoing collaboration and professional development with the appropriate teachers, new media has been embedded into the school curriculum and students are taught to create local media stories in their own way. The schools have seen their students faces light up as a result and engage heavily, which has resulted in successful lobbying for new media labs in all the schools.

The schools now put on an annual film festival for the students and the community. Professional development continues between older students and younger ones – and between students and teachers, in some cases with students just nine years old passing on new media skills to their teachers.
Learn more about the project here: http://curiousworks.com.au/projects/newman-stories/

CuriousWorks can provide targeted advice and training on how new media can maximise the potential of your project or organisation.

We work with you to revolutionise the way you engage with your beneficiaries or clients. We facilitate the development of your own unique digital media strategy that helps you achieve your mission. The strategy includes website advice, using videos and photos online, blogs, publishing online, twitter and other social media, plus how to make the best use of our free online toolkit.

We use our unique brand of empowerment driven consultancy – we don’t want you to be dependent on us or keep paying contractors and consultants. We want to empower you using as many easy-to-use, open source solutions as possible, solutions that can be implemented by your own staff. And still keep you at the cutting edge.

Contact Elias, our Head Educator, to discuss your project further: elias@curiousworks.com.au or (02) 9281 2570.

In March 2011, CuriousWorks conducted a week-long training program for members of The GroundSwell Project. Over five days, Shakthi, Elias and the CuriousWorks team skilled us up in the uses and applications of social media, as well as demystifying key processes and techniques of digital story-telling.

In Curiouswork-speak, it was a truly awesome week, and we will definitely be returning to Shakthi and the team for further training.
Peta Murray, GroundSwell

I now use the training and consultancy I got at Curiousworks everyday. I get my photos on the Internet, I have a functioning website and blog, and use the new media to create identity for my not-for-profit organisation. I can’t recommend them highly enough.
Lorraine, Director of Forest Media

1. Visit our toolkit.

The CuriousWorks Toolkit is a free resource library for artists, educators, cultural leaders and media makers everywhere. Bookmark it: http://toolkit.curiousworks.com.au .

2. Take our Creative, Online and Social Media Intensive Training Course.

You don’t need a whole lot of money or a degree in computing or communications to have a voice on the internet. Websites, videos, blogs, podcasts, twitter feeds, facebook pages – all are achievable with a budget of $0 and whatever computer/multimedia tools you have handy. Sometimes you just need a little guidance to get you started, and then you’re off fulfilling your web publishing dreams!

This is why we started the Creative, Online and Social Media Intensive Training Course at CuriousWorks, to give people a kick start and the right advice to be able to sustainably build their own web presence or multimedia for minimal cost.

To find out more about our training services, including pricing details, email our Head Educator, Elias on elias@curiousworks.com.au or call us on (02) 9281 2570.

Feedback from participants at previous training sessions:
The trainers at CuriousWorks make learning easy and give you the quickest and most effective ways of tackling massive projects. For my sector in particular l couldn’t recommend CuriousWorks more highly, the understanding coupled with an extraordinary knowledge base and ability to teach puts the organisation at the top of my list.
Candy Bowers, Artist and Youth Arts Community Worker

CuriousWorks are great facilitators. The content was thought provoking and empowering and their passion and knowledge was really inspiring. Those 4 workshops were like a creative rebirth for me! And the fact that I had a little more of the basic computers skills than some others in the group didn’t slow me down, each of us got individual attention and got to learn at our own pace.
Norman Holmes, Financial Education Coordinator, Mission Australia.

CuriousWorks’ media training is fantastic… I was surprised at how quickly you can learn new media techniques and how effectively you can apply them without buying new equipment and software. The trainers show you how to work with what you’ve got.
Lorraine, Academic and Environmental Campaigner