By Afraa Kori
Western suburbs musicians took centre stage at Fitzroy’s The Evelyn Hotel recently as of a showcase for emerging culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations musicians.
Sunshine West’s Chantelle Afatasi, Wyndham Vale’s Urlik Mageza and Hillside’s Itunu Akin Ojelabi performed in The Boite’s portfoilo program showcase, alongside four other artists from across Melbourne on July 28.
The portfolio project is a professional development program designed to empower and give creative and networking opportunities, resources, skills and assets for artists.
The Boite’s project manager and marketing officer, Ellen Chan said FLIGHT is a personal triumph and a source of local pride.
“We have held FLIGHT for the past three years as a celebration of the end of the annual portfolio emerging artists-creative development project. It’s also considered a showcase as we try our hardest to entice music industry professionals into the room to witness our brilliant artists and hopefully foster future working opportunities and connections.”
“The artists all really exceeded expectations with the calibre of their performances too, with several artists stepping up their stage performance to a new level as a result of the work they did in the program.”
The audience witnessed multi-genre performances featuring live-looping, neo-soul, folk-pop, psych-funk, soul, Latin rhythms, and cultural instruments and special headline act, Chikchika.
“The long-standing mature age Boite audience members attended and loved all of it,” Ms Chan said.
“The overall attendance was fantastic. We had over 150 people come through in the audience including friends, family, funding bodies, existing Boite audiences and people who happened to walk past.”
“Through this event we brought a lot of audiences from diverse backgrounds who wouldn’t normally attend venues in Fitzroy like The Evelyn. FLIGHT was also an intercultural and multi-genre event which brought a lot of audiences from different artist communities, including Persian, African, First Nations, Samoan and more to the event. Having different audiences in the same space as each other fosters cultural understanding and awareness which is really important. It’s also symbolic of how programming an event/festival that is full of cultural diversity isn’t difficult! Artists just need performance opportunities and the support given to them.”
