Talks
Dingo is not just a music festival. It’s a community-based arts and culture event. The aim is to conduct an ongoing investigation into the culture of the Northern Rivers Region to understand what it is that makes this place such a fertile ground for grassroots creative and cultural activity. DINGO aims to be a part of this terrain and make a contribution to the cultural life of the area. To this end we are staging a series of talks and cultural events at NOWE Studios.
With coffee cart provided by Kwila Coffee, lounge area featuring suggested reading by the Blackfulla Book Club, a weaving workshop, exhibition and Q&A with the Returning, and a series of talks on themes of culture and creativity, NOWE@DINGO is a place to take a step back from the hubbub of the festival. To think, to talk, to read, to listen, and to take a breath.
Culture Is Not An Industry
Facilitator: Stuart Grant
Speakers: Ineke Dane, Joe Muller, Rosie Dennis, Jacq Driscoll, Marisa Snow
Since the 1990s, the idea of the cultural industries and the creative economy have dominated funding and policy regarding the arts and cultural practice in Australia. This has led to a situation where limited funding sources and support mechanisms have become even more limited, and cultural and creative practices have become regarded even more as a luxury item, a commodity, and the domain of a gifted few and those who can afford to purchase their products.
The Northern Rivers preserves an older idea of culture and creative practice as the part of social life where a group of people determine, establish, and communicate the meanings and values which make them the group they are. This is a particularly fertile region for grassroots cultural and creative practice. This panel aims to draw together key participants in supporting and promoting this part of the life of the region to discuss possible futures.
This is not so much a practical session about how limited resources might be made available and distributed, but a blue-sky thinking session about the biggest picture: How might we rethink the place of the arts and culture in society as a necessary social good? What if we could move towards a world where we think cultural and creative life in the same way we think schools and hospitals? We are all aware of the current obstacles, but how might we think and move beyond them.
The Panel
Stuart Grant
Arts Programmer, Dingo Festival
Stuart is a musician, site-specific performer, and philosopher. He has worked as a singer and composer for over 50 years in a variety of ensembles including legendary punk/noise group, the Primitive Calculators. He is a founding director of site-specific performance company, The Environmental Performance Authority and has been a director/performer in all their performances. He is the author of Performance and Temporalisation: Time Happens and Performance Phenomenology: To the Thing Itself, as well as more than 40 academic articles on the philosophy of performance and music. He was Director of Postgraduate Studies in Theatre, Performance and Music at Monash University for over 10 years.
Ineke Dane
Curator, Lismore Regional Gallery
Ineke’s multidisciplinary curatorial practice is grounded in contemporary art theory, law, and policy. In 2024 she was appointed Curator at Lismore Regional Gallery. Ineke previously held the roles Associate Curator, International Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art; Associate | Senior Curator at Urban Art Projects | UAP; and Curatorial Assistant at Kaldor Public Art Projects. In parallel she has curated numerous independent exhibitions with preeminent artists, including a major city-wide public art commission for MONA’s Mona Foma summer festival.
Rosie Dennis
Executive Director, Arts Northern Rivers
Rosie Dennis is an Australian director and artist who creates ambitious, site-responsive work, with a focus on connecting people and place through shared experiences. She has held senior artistic and executive roles within companies and festivals including Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Bleach* Festival, Performance Space, Campbelltown Arts Centre and Urban Theatre Projects. Recognised for her collaborative leadership style, strategic nous and ability to bring artists, partners and communities together, Rosie has been influential in initiating some of Australia’s most innovative cultural programs.
Jacq Driscoll
Associate Producer, NORPA
The pathway to working in the arts is not always linear and Jacq’s CV proves that. For 15 years her career has moved through wildlife conservation and sustainability to the intersection of arts and mental health. Somehow travelling Australia in a vehicle that runs off veggie oil, rehabilitating Koalas, leading large-scale community dance works, curating sculpture festivals in old gaols and refurbishing 100-year-old music venues — has led her to speak on this panel. Jacq recently joined the team at NORPA as the organisation prepares to open The Joinery, a flood-resilient arts hub in the heart of Lismore.
Joe Muller
Managing Director, MusicNSW
Joe Muller is Managing Director of MusicNSW, the state’s peak body for contemporary music. He is also Chair of Green Music Australia and sits on the NSW Government’s Sound NSW Advisory Board and 24-Hour Economy Advisory Council. Joe’s twenty-plus years in music span work as an artist, manager, venue and festival curator, label owner, and government advisor. He leads a statewide team of fifteen music champions across regional, remote and metro areas, working alongside artists, in service of culture, from the ground up. He is also a musician himself, living on Dharug and working on Gadigal country.
Marisa Snow
Arts and Culture Officer, Byron Shire Council
Marisa is a Creative Producer and Placemaker who has spent the past 20 years bringing artists, communities and places together. Working across regional NSW and national festivals, she has delivered public art, cultural programs and large-scale creative projects, with a particular focus on site-specific work, First Nations commissions and community-led placemaking. She is passionate about creating cultural experiences that connect people with place and strengthen community identity.
Rhythm and Spirit
Facilitator: Mike Gurrieri
Speakers: Barney McAll, Perrin Moss, Greg Sheehan, Ebs Daramola
A conversation about rhythm, and the endless searching for spirit in sound and the space in-between. Featuring 3 x Grammy-nominated drummer / producer Perrin Moss from Hiatus Kaiyote, ARIA winner and jazz prodigy Barney McAll, master percussionist and inventor of rhythm diamonds Greg Sheehan, and Nigerian-Australian rising star Ebs Daramola, a graduate of the prestigious Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz.
The Panel
Mike Gurrieri
DJ & Owner, Equinox Recordings
Mike Gurrieri is one of Melbourne’s most respected and beloved DJs — a permanent fixture in the city’s music landscape for over two decades. Whether behind the counter at the iconic Northside Records in Fitzroy, behind the decks at clubs and festivals across Australia, or behind the microphone on his weekly radio show, Gurrieri has an uncanny ability to connect people with music they didn’t know they needed.
His show Mystic Brew — broadcast every Tuesday morning on Melbourne community radio PBS 106.7FM — is a melting pot of jazz, soul, electronica, hip-hop and everything in between from all over the world, joining the dots between past, present and future. In recent years he has also curated events at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival and the Eighty Six Festival, bridging club culture and jazz with characteristic ease.
As the owner and A&R of Equinox Recordings — the label responsible for the first ever vinyl pressing of Hiatus Kaiyote’s debut album Tawk Tomahawk in 2013 — Gurrieri’s role in the Australian music ecosystem runs deep. His DJ sets are always full of surprises.
Barney McAll
Pianist, Composer & Producer
Barney McAll is a Melbourne-born pianist, composer, producer and writer whose work bridges spiritual jazz, improvisation, electronic experimentation and contemporary composition. A GRAMMY-nominated, ARIA Award-winning artist, he has released nearly 30 albums and performed on over 100 recordings, collaborating with Gary Bartz, Dewey Redman, Billy Harper, Maceo Parker, Roy Ayers, Sia and Daniel Merriweather. His music draws from jazz lineage, soul, hip-hop, Cuban traditions and avant-garde exploration, creating a distinctive voice that resists easy categorisation.
After studying at the Victorian College of the Arts, McAll spent two decades in New York, where he co-founded the influential Groove Collective and developed his singular approach to composition and improvisation. His acclaimed catalogue includes the spiritual jazz works Mother of Dreams and Secrets and Precious Energy, the electronic explorations of his TQX project, and the ARIA-winning Mooroolbark. Since returning to Australia, McAll has continued his work as an educator, mentor and independent artist, exploring creativity, consciousness and the future of improvised music.
Ebs Daramola
Drummer, Composer & Bandleader
Ebs Daramola is a Nigerian-born, Dutch-raised, Melbourne-based drummer, composer and bandleader whose playing seamlessly blends Afrocentric rhythms with contemporary jazz. A graduate of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance, where he studied under Ambrose Akinmusire, he has performed with artists including Herbie Hancock, David Binney, Logan Richardson and Harish Raghavan. Since returning to Australia, he has emerged as one of the country’s most exciting young drummers, leading his own ensembles while collaborating widely with leading Australian improvisers, including Barney McAll and Julien Wilson. His drumming is distinguished by its deep groove, rhythmic sophistication and expansive musicality.
Perrin Moss
Drummer & Producer, Hiatus Kaiyote
Perrin Moss is a drummer, percussionist, producer and multi-instrumentalist best known as a founding member of Hiatus Kaiyote. A self-taught musician who came to drums through hip-hop production, sampling and beat-making, his playing is defined by intricate, off-kilter rhythms and a producer’s approach to texture and groove.
Under his Clever Austin moniker, Moss pushes further into beat production, electronic music and experimental percussion, while his broader credits span production, drums and instrumentation for artists including Sampa the Great.
Greg Sheehan
Percussionist
A leading figure in Australian percussion, Greg Sheehan is a performer, teacher and recording artist who is significantly represented in Australian music over the last 50 years. He has been a major influence on generations of musicians and has literally reshaped the map of rhythm.
A passionate visionary, Greg created a unique system known as ‘Rhythm Diamonds’ and his original body percussion style and reinvention of tambourine technique have become legendary!
The Returning
RSVPThe Returning Indigenous Corporation is an Indigenous women-led organisation that creates opportunities for connection to Country, culture, and community through art, creativity, and cultural practice. Based in Bundjalung Country, The Returning supports artists and community members through programs that encourage cultural learning, creative development and knowledge sharing.
The Bulaan Dalang Galii Naa Gan Ngaa Leen Duu Artist Residency supports First Nations artists in developing their creative cultural practices. The program is supported by Kylie Caldwell, Curator and Artist Mentor, who works closely with artists and on the development of exhibitions, and Bindimu Currie, Project Manager, a multidisciplinary artist and cultural practitioner with a strong connection to weaving, fibre arts and Indigenous cultural practices.
The Returning Indigenous Corporation will present a pop-up exhibition featuring work by artists who have participated in the Bulaan Dalang Galii Naa Gan Ngaa Leen Duu residency over the past two years. The exhibition offers an opportunity to explore the diverse creative practices and perspectives emerging from Bundjalung, and to connect with artists and community members.
Alongside the exhibition, a weaving workshop will offer an opportunity to slow down, connect, and try your hand at Bundjalung woven practices with local weavers. The experience will provide a relaxed space for creativity, conversation, and knowledge sharing.
Musik Blok
Facilitator: Leanne de Souza
Speakers: Ngaiire, Nai Palm, Cazeaux O.S.L.O, Setwun
Musik Blok is a music and cultural exchange platform rooted in Papua New Guinea, committed to elevating the next generation of PNG artists and creating new pathways for their work. Creativity has existed here for thousands of years — we’re not here to create something new, but to connect what has always been here with new people, ideas and possibilities.
PNG has always had something to say. Now, the world can come here and listen.
Musik Blok is heading to the NSW Northern Rivers for the inaugural Dingo Festival, 9–11 October, where we’ll be part of the festival’s Public Talk Series.
Founder NGAIIRE will be joined by Musik Blok mentors Nai Palm, Cazeaux O.S.L.O and Setwun, alongside artists from the program, to share the story behind Musik Blok, what unfolded during our first Haus Kuk in Goroka, and where we’re heading next.
We’ll also be sharing some of the music created during the program, with PNG’s Kwila Coffee being served throughout the session — bringing a little taste and sound of home to the Northern Rivers.
Come have a coffee, hear the music and meet the people behind Musik Blok.
The Panel
Leanne de Souza
Strategist, Curator & Producer
A respected strategist, program designer, facilitator, curator and producer in the Australian cultural sector with 30+ years’ experience managing creative projects, people & processes.
Ngaiire
Founder & Program Director, Musik Blok
“This project brings together tradition and innovation. It’s about honouring who we are while building the future we want.”
Founder and program director Ngaiire (rhymes with fiery) always knew she’d come back to Papua New Guinea to give back to her community after building an impressive 20 year long career in the Australian music industry. Ngaiire has performed at Glastonbury in the UK, Splendour In the Grass as well as opening and performing with Sampha, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Sufjan Stevens, and Flume.
Now based between Sydney and Goroka, Ngaiire is committed to building sustainable pathways for the next generation of PNG artists and creators.
Nai Palm
Frontwoman, Hiatus Kaiyote
Nai Palm is a 3 x Grammy-nominated artist and frontwoman of Hiatus Kaiyote, renowned globally for her genre-defying songwriting, production and vocal artistry.
Her work has influenced and been sampled by artists like Drake, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, cementing her as one of the most respected and innovative voices in contemporary music.
Setwun
Artist
Setwun is a Solomon Islander-Australian artist known for a fluid sound shaped by soul, jazz and electronic influences.
Eora-based, with credits including Ronnie Scott’s and support for Kokoroko, Nubya Garcia, DJ Shadow and Chaka Khan.
Cazeaux O.S.L.O
MC, Vocalist & Poet
Cazeaux O.S.L.O is an Adelaide-born, Melbourne-based MC, vocalist and poet whose career spans hip-hop, jazz, funk, spoken word and electronic music. Over a career stretching back to the mid-2000s, O.S.L.O has become one of the most versatile and in-demand collaborators in Australian music, appearing on records by Prequel, Digital Afrika, Tim Shiel, Amin Payne, Alexander Flood and countless others.
His solo Bandcamp output — from the 20-track cosmos of Inflatable Fables Vol.1 to the 2024 cassette Sonic Tacos Vol.2 (SP-303, SP-404 SX, DX7, GAIA SH-01, MPC 1000, Friends — recorded straight to tape) — documents a restless creative mind that moves between smooth and staunch, between ancient hip-hop cosmology and forward-thinking electronics.
His 2024 collaboration with Australian drummer Alexander Flood, Life Is A Rhythm, featuring Finn Rees on Rhodes, was one of the year’s most joyous dancefloor moments.
For the Love of Art
Facilitator: Yasmin Palermo
Speakers: Caitlin Reilly, Tayah Mikah, Katie Barbarie Stewart, Jeff Kessel
How community-centred visions are important for artist-led grassroots organisations. This panel comprises artists who create opportunities for other artists. They tell stories of their own experience of the trials, triumphs, and tribulations they have witnessed in their practice. They speak from across disciplines and age groups to compare notes on what it’s like to be an advocate and facilitator for fellow artists in the Northern Rivers Region.
The Panel
Yasmin Palermo
Artist, Curator & Community Builder
Yasmin Palermo is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and community builder who has spent the past five years cultivating and supporting grassroots creative communities across the east coast of Australia. Throughout this time, Palermo has documented, connected, and championed creative movements and individual artists, with a particular focus on the journalistic nature of archiving and the importance of preserving creative histories and curating events offering artistic opportunities over a multitude of mediums. As an artist and innovator, Palermo strives in creating intimate and intentional spaces for artistry, seeking to amplify the voices of others and illuminate the transformative power of creativity within the community using her own practice of mark making, installation paintings and mixed media as an effort to comment on the changing of the times.
Jeff Kessel
Creative Producer & Lecturer, SAE
Jeff Kessel is a multidisciplinary creative producer and Design and Creative Industries lecturer at SAE University College in Byron Bay. He’s the president of the BayFM Management Committee and hosts a weekly radio show called the Instrumental Health Show.
Caitlin Reilly
Multidisciplinary Artist
Caitlin Reilly is an Australian-born multidisciplinary artist based on Bundjalung Country in Byron Bay, Northern New South Wales. Her practice spans drawing, painting, and collaborative projects, and she has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions across Australia, China and Europe.
Reilly’s work has been shown at major institutions and art fairs including the MAXXI Museum in Rome, the Shanghai Museum of Art, Xuhui Art Museum, Asia Contemporary Art Hong Kong, the Singapore Art Fair, and the Faces & Traces retrospective at The Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai. In 2024, her collaborative exhibition Huo Gui, developed during a residency in Guangzhou, marked a return to China.
Most recently, Reilly was awarded the Winner of the Brunswick Street Gallery Small Works Art Prize in Melbourne and has been selected as a finalist in the Arte Laguna Art Prize, with an exhibition in Venice scheduled for November 2026.
Katie Barbarie Stewart
Multidisciplinary Artist
Katie Barbarie Stewart is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersection of sculpture, painting, and site-responsive installation. Born in Hammersmith, London (1995) and from Lennox Head, NSW, Australia, Stewart holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sculpture) from the National Art School, Sydney. Her work spans community engagement, large-scale environmental structures, international residencies, and collaborative public installations. Stewart blends traditional craftsmanship with sustainable methods, focusing on themes of trace, transformation, and the Anthropocene. Stewart’s site-specific sculptures reflect on human interaction with nature, utilising a unique Impression Installation approach that documents presence through casting, drawing, and ephemeral forms. Her ongoing project, Imprint Feat, uses a portable furnace and recycled aluminium to capture footprints from coastal environments, a meditation on transience, ecology, and identity.
Tayah Mikah
Interdisciplinary Artist
Taya is an interdisciplinary artist from the Northern Rivers, Bundjalung Country. She graduated from the Sculpture and Spatial Practice department at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2020 and has since worked full-time across a range of roles within the arts industry.
Her circus background is a consistent thread throughout her practice, informing an ongoing enquiry into the relationship between body and object. Through material investigations, she challenges conventional understandings of form and function, with a particular interest in how materials perform, respond and behave.
Taya is fascinated by community-engaged practice and collaborative approaches, often facilitating co-research projects in rural environments. Her practice spans performance installations, absurdist theatre, workshops and soft sculpture, with community engagement forming an underlying thread across these mediums.
Recent works transform discarded teabags into kites, reflecting on material disregard, transformation and ecological care. Through playful and often unexpected material processes, Taya explores how objects can carry stories, generate connections and invite new ways of thinking about our relationships with materials, bodies and places.
How To Not Finish A Song
Speakers: Merryn Jeann, Allysha Joy, Mylee Grace, Danika Smith
When four songwriters come together sharing the stripped-back process of ‘how to write a song’ and, in the same breath, how to NOT finish one. Together these women will be sharing audio recordings of different tracks at different stages of the creation process, followed by an open-ended dialogue between panellists and audience Q&A discussing and sharing their personal experience of songwriting.
The Panel
Merryn Jeann
Songwriter & Artist
Merryn Jeann is a multi-faceted songwriter and artist creating an alt pop world of magnetic sensitivity. A triple diamond-accredited artist, she has collaborated with acclaimed producers and shared stages with acts like The Jesus & Mary Chain and John Maus, performing at festivals including Glastonbury and Falls Festival.
Allysha Joy
Singer, Songwriter & Keys
Allysha Joy is a deeply-expressive singer, songwriter, producer & keys player hailing from Naarm/Melbourne, known for her solo work, as front woman for 30/70 and her expanding catalogue of collaborations over the years. A uniquely-talented artist, her husky soulful voice, formidable Fender Rhodes prowess and raw poeticism has garnered legions of attentive fans the world over.
Mylee Grace
Singer-Songwriter
Described as “music that makes you feel like you’re on holidays with friends,” Mylee Grace’s solo project is collaborative and ever evolving. Sydney born and Northern Rivers based, her sound is sunshine warm and wooly, beatdown heartache all at once. A sound shaped by the mystique of everyday life, moving between meaning and mayhem. Off the back of her debut album, Whiplash In The Moshpit (Love Police Records And Tapes), Grace and her ever evolving band of friends and family have played at festivals such as Splendour In The Grass, Nine Lives, and Boogie and shared the stage with the likes of Warpaint and Jen Cloher.
Danika Smith
Singer-Songwriter & Multi-instrumentalist
Danika, Melbourne based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, creates music rooted in an eclectic blend of folk, jazz, country & indie. A self-taught musician from a wandering childhood in the Northern Rivers, Danika moved to Melbourne at 18 years old & found herself deep in the vibrant music scene, as a member of Tomgirl, Emma Donovan & the Putbacks, 30/70 & Allysha Joy. In 2021, Danika released her solo debut EP When Love Comes, recorded in collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer Nick Herrera, and has since had the honour and joy of bringing her original sound to festivals including Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Strawberry Fields, Camp A Low Hum (NZ), Wonder Mountain, Boogie, Town Folk Festival, Phoenix Central Park, and PBS’s Drive Live, as well as touring internationally in 2023 and 2024.
BayFM Multicultural Broadcast
Bay FM’s Multicultural Presenters Team will be broadcasting live from Dingo Festival on Sunday 11 October from 2pm to 6pm, bringing the music, stories and atmosphere of the festival to Bay FM listeners across the Northern Rivers and beyond. Radio Latina and Afriquencies will broadcast live from the festival, featuring interviews with some of the performing artists, local multicultural artists and community leaders, as well as conversations with festival goers throughout the afternoon.
The Presenters
Yolanda Santiago
Radio Latina
Originally from Mexico, Yolanda hosts Radio Latina, Bay FM’s bilingual Sunday afternoon show celebrating Latin music, culture and community.
Jonny Simons aka DJ iKâpa
Afriquencies
Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, Jonny hosts Afriquencies, a Sunday afternoon show exploring music from across the African continent and the African diaspora.
Catch the Bay FM Multicultural Presenters Team live from Dingo Festival on Sunday 11 October from 2pm to 6pm, sharing the music, voices and multicultural spirit of the festival.