Wild at Heart Community Arts

Wild At Heart (WAH) is a revolutionary creative community empowering artists with visible and invisible disabilities, mental illness, and neuro and gender diversity.

They don't just make music - they make change!

In their safe, welcoming spaces, artists forge friendships, develop skills, and perform as equals in an industry that has historically excluded them.

Their artist-led approach ensures authentic representation at every level—from board members to program directors to participating creators.

By placing artists in charge of their creative journeys, Wild At Heart dismantles barriers to artistic expression. Their carefully selected mentors guide without dictating, allowing for truly self-determined music making.

The impact extends far beyond art. WAH community fosters improved mental wellbeing, meaningful connections, and cultural representation—transforming individual lives while reshaping society's understanding of disability and creativity.

Help us create a world where every voice deserves to be heard, every story matters, and every artist thrives.

The Bluestone Club at Angliss Neighbourhood House  - Art Exhibition

WWGF is proud to partner with Artists for Kids Culture (AKC) and donate to The Bluestone Club at Angliss Neighbourhood House (ANH), located in Footscray.

The Bluestone Club Art Exhibition will provide up to 40 primary-aged children from ANH the opportunity to showcase their artwork.

This inaugural exhibition will involve workshops with guest artists, high-quality art supplies, and exhibition materials.

The project will foster creativity, confidence, and community connections, allowing children to display their creations to families and the local community. This project will especially benefit children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds by creating an inclusive and supportive environment where they can thrive.

An Exhibition will take place at ANH in August 2025

Where Is Joy? A play by actor/writer/producer Emma Louise Pursey.

Building on extensive creative developments, WHERE IS JOY? will be the first full-length solo theatre work to centre the life and work of Melbourne modernist pioneer Joy Hester, the only major woman artist of the Heide Circle curated by Sunday and John Reed.

This new work uses direct storytelling balanced with experimental, interdisciplinary elements to amplify Hester’s underacknowledged legacy and address the gender bias that has historically marginalised women and artists living with disability.

Actor, writer, and producer Emma Louise Pursey leads a diverse creative team of established and emerging artists: Susie Dee (director), Ahmarnya Price (designer), Amelia Lever- Davidson (lighting designer), Sarah Mary Chadwick (composer), Caitie Murphy (stage manager) and Zadie Kennedy Mccracken (co-producer/production manager). Funding will cover four weeks pre-production, four weeks rehearsal and the inaugural two-week season at fortyfivedownstairs in November 2025.

Where Is Joy? - photo still from 2004 creative development, funded by Arts Queensland Metro Arts, Sue Benner Theatre. Emma Louise Pursey as Joy Hester. Photo credit: Phil Hargreaves

Threadbare Theatre Production

Threadbare is a new play empowering LGBTQIA+ voices, and raising awareness for the impact of dementia. 

This play is made by and for the queer community, however the themes of conditional love, loss, self discovery and queer euphoria are universal and resonate with a wider demographic.

Connecting with both queer and dementia focused groups such as Minus18, The Victorian Pride Centre, Transgender Victoria, Dementia Australia, local libraries, Umbrella Dementia Cafes and Australian Multicultural Community Services are just some of the groups this group of performers are slowly forming bonds with to ensure that they aren't just in their own arts-echo-chamber. 

Threadbare will debut in July 2025 at St Martin's Theatre in Melbourne.

Sparks in the Dark: 208 weeks of resilience.

Sparks in the Dark: 208 weeks of resilience is the 1st exhibition of Afghan women’s embroidery at Next Wave and showing at the Brunswick Mechanic Institute this August.

The project brings together Afghan women’s embroidered artworks with new works by Mursal Azizi and Kat Rae, emerging Australian artists also touched by the ongoing effects of the Afghanistan war.

Embodying resilience, creativity and humanity in the face of adversity, the installation will be a powerful fusion of traditional and contemporary art; representing Afghan women’s struggles, resistance and hope for a better future.

By August 2025 it will be four years (208 weeks) since the Taliban started working to erase women from Afghan society. In defiance, this exhibition will showcase 208 pieces of embroidered handkerchiefs by Afghan women, sharing their message to the world: that they refuse to be silenced, erased or oppressed.