Inaugural ABC TOP 5 Arts announced

The ABC has announced the recipients of the inaugural ABC TOP 5 Arts media residencies, which will enable some of Australia’s brightest minds to share their skills with the nation.

The inaugural ABC TOP 5 Arts recipients for 2020 are:

  • Rose Montgomery – Freelance stage & costume designer
  • Jacqui Alexander – Intersection of architecture with art, media, politics and economics
  • Kerri Ann Foweraker – Independent screen writer & director
  • Beau de Belle – Architecture
  • Joanne Choueiri – Visual arts and architecture

The recipients will undertake a two-week residency at ABC Radio National in November, learning the craft of communicating with a wide audience from some of Australia’s best broadcasters and developing content across radio and digital platforms.

The ABC TOP 5 Arts, in partnership with the University of Melbourne and Australia Council for the Arts, is available to early-career graduate PhD arts scholars and graduate arts practitioners across the visual arts, performance, design, architecture and screen.

Richard Buckham, ABC Manager Arts, said the recipients were chosen from an exceptional field of more than 160 applicants. “The ABC and our project partners were hugely impressed with the applicants’ extraordinary quality of work and the commitment they have for sharing their ideas,” he said. “The choice of the final five recipients was very difficult to make. We look forward to engaging with these leading arts thinkers and practitioners in bringing new stories and ideas to our audience, as part of the ABC’s ongoing commitment to Australia’s arts industry.”

This year’s ABC TOP 5 Arts residency was pushed back from August to November due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ABC will announce this year’s ABC TOP 5 Science and ABC TOP 5 Humanities recipients later this month.

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