It’s always a pleasure to work with someone other people think is special and so it is that PS News applauds our very own Assistant Editor and Journalist, Ysabel Darling who has been selected to take part in a brand-new style of creative festival, one that you buy and enjoy at home.
The Whispers and Roars: Festival in a Box by The House that Dan Built is the product of a not-for-profit, female-focussed arts association that has received annual funding from Create NSW to bring together 35 emerging women artists to deliver their work so it goes straight into people’s homes.
Artistic Director and Chief Executive of The House, Danielle O’Keefe explained that the artists were given the challenge of creating a joyous and compelling work the contributing audience could experience at home.
“Here at The House we had a plan—a fabulous plan—to hold a four-week festival of innovative, inventive, completely out-of-the-box art by a group of brilliant emerging woman artists,” Ms O’Keefe said.
“COVID-19 also had a plan—at least that’s the way it sometimes feels—to devastate the performing arts industry and ruin every opportunity to bring people together,” she said.
“Well, COVID, we are not daunted!” she declared.
“We are putting our Festival in-to-the-box and into the mail.”
Ms O’Keefe said the artworks included in the box were interactive, tactile, experiential and surprising.
She said there were three boxes to choose from: the Family Box, designed to be suitable for all ages and eligible for purchase with Service NSW’s Creative Kids Vouchers; the Sample Box, a lucky dip of artworks; and the Mega Box, containing everything the artists had created – an “entire arts festival, without the crowds”.
“Our boxes will be full of things to see, hear, smell, taste, touch and do, and they will come to you, wherever you are in Australia, in the post,” Ms O’Keefe said.
PS News’s Ysabel is contributing 100 limited-edition signed prints (pictured) of her painting Stronger Than to the boxes, which are to be mailed out later this month.
Further information on Whispers and Roars: Festival in a Box can be accessed at this PS News link.
