It’s the ultimate housewarming party and you’re invited. QUT is celebrating the public opening of the $88 million expansion of its Creative Industries Precinct at Kelvin Grove with CreateX, a free festival on Sunday 28 August.
Along with live performances, talks, virtual reality, interactive games, robotics, films, visual art exhibitions, dance and music, festival-goers can sign up for a number of workshops.
These include one hosted by the world-acclaimed Dead Puppet Society, a puppet-based visual theatre company run by two QUT Creative Industries alumni out of both Brisbane and New York.
Since 2009 Nicholas Paine, David Morton and their talented team have created knock-out large scale visual theatre works; the latest being for the Queensland Theatre Company’s production The Wider Earth, puppets from which will be on display at CreateX.
Their workshop will introduce participants to skills that form the core of the Society’s work; the techniques they use to bring a puppet so effectively to life in performance. With a focus on poetic illusion, they’ll introduce the elements of focus, breath and gravity in a series of training exercises using brown paper.
Another workshop expected to be a crowd-pleaser involves the use of ‘vegan leather’ kombucha from which participants can create fashion accessories including jewellery.
QUT fashion students have been experimenting with the bio-textile in a project with The Edge, State Library of Queensland and their creations made from fermented kombucha curds will be on display.
QUT fashion academic Dr Alice Payne said participants in the free Shared Harvest: a vegan bio-textile fashion future workshops will also be able to take home live cultures from which to grow their own natural, biodegradable material.
“We hope people will spread the love of vegan leather and share their own discoveries and experiments on social media with the hashtag #QUTcreatex,” said Dr Payne, adding the workshops highlighted the growing intersection between fashion and biotechnology.
Other workshops include a Kiddies Movin' & Groovin' dance workshop as well as hip hop, Latin and Ethiopian dance.
Families, students, industry professionals and anyone else interested in creativity and technology are invited to CreateX which starts at 10am and culminates in a concert featuring singers Kate Miller-Heidke, Carita Farrer Spencer and Naomi Price along with dancer Michelle Ryan and the Deep Blue Orchestra.
For more information and to book into a workshop visit the website, telephone 07 3138 3922 or email createx@qut.edu.au.
#QUTcreatex
Media contact:
Amanda Weaver, QUT Media, 07 3138 1841, amanda.weaver@qut.edu.au
After hours: Rose Trapnell, 0407 585 901, media@qut.edu.au
