We are Blacktown

Leanne Redpath is a Dharug artist, educator and book illustrator. She is also connected to the Burubiranggal, Warmuli and many other family groups across Sydney and NSW. Leanne started painting with her mother as a young child. She is the author of Cooee Mittigar and Sharing, children’s books created to share Dharug knowledge and culture. Leanne is a long-serving director of the Dharug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation. She is a mother and grandmother, and she loves spending time with her family and on Country.

Mayor Chagai is the founder and head coach of Savannah Pride, a basketball club that mentors and connects young people through sport. Savannah Pride is a grassroots youth organisation that draws on the South Sudanese community’s passion for basketball to foster community harmony.  At six years old, war forced Mayor to leave his South Sudanese village. He made his way via Ethiopia to a Kenyan refugee camp, where he discovered he had a gift for basketball. A true community leader, Mayor’s work with Savannah Pride creates a supportive place where young people in the Blacktown LGA can channel their energy and grow.

Kim Loo is a doctor who has worked in the Blacktown LGA for 35 years. She is committed to highlighting the evidence around social, environmental and commercial determinants of health. She is a tireless advocate for climate justice.

Kim is a fourth-generation Australian with a Malaysian Chinese cultural background. She is the mother of two adult children.

Kim is passionate about permaculture and cooking and she uses these activities and values to grow her community.

She contributes to many public health and wellbeing organisations including NSW Doctors for the Environment, Asian Australians for Climate Solutions, the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Hills Doctors Association and the Western Sydney Primary Health Network.

Hemanta Acharya has worked as a clinical nurse specialist and mentor to graduate nurses. She is also a talented football player who played for Australia in FIFA’s Football for Hope Festival, held during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Hemanta was born in a refugee camp in Nepal after her family was forced to leave Bhutan. She spent 15 years in Nepal and was one of the first to arrive in Australia as part of a program to settle Bhutanese refugees, one of the most successful refugee initiatives in Australia’s history.

Kelly Anderson is a Dhungatti and Gumbaynggirr woman who lives on Dharug land. Participating in the Too Deadly for Diabetes lifestyle program, Kelly overcame type 2 pre-diabetes, high cholesterol and blood pressure, bursitis, chronic pain and mental ill-health. She’s shared her success with her family who have also joined the program and are experiencing health benefits.

Kaz Therese is an interdisciplinary artist working across theatre, visual arts and dance, with a practice grounded in performance, activism and community building. They are an award-winning theatre director, programmer and cultural leader.

Kaz’s work has often involved the activation of new spaces, connecting communities and artists to broaden the experience of contemporary art and its audience. They founded FUNPARK in Mount Druitt in 2014. FUNPARK has repeated its success as part of the Sydney Biennale in 2020 and Sydney Festival in 2022.

Working with major arts organisations in Australia and around the world, Kaz’s art explores urgent topics including Australia’s refugee and First Nations policies, gender and intersectional feminism and youth issues.

Kaz grew up on Chestnut Crescent in Bidwill and spent their childhood exploring what was once farmland and is now suburbs.

Esky Escandor is a multidisciplinary artist and community worker. He is the rapper in Worlds Collide, a seven-piece Western Sydney band with a wild, polyphonic sound. Esky is a renowned comedian whose talent shines in the documentary film In Search of the White Deer, written and directed in collaboration with Reg Azwar.

Esky believes that art and music have the power to change people: to connect and to feel that they belong. For over a decade he has worked at the Mount Druitt Street University, part of a movement that helps young people develop creative skills, overcome drug and behaviour problems and find community. He is also the director of opnsrc.co, a creative community based in Western Sydney.

Esky uses his experience growing up with Filipino migrant parents to consult and engage on multiculturalism and migrant communities. We are Blacktown is a UTS Impact Studios production.

Maryam Zahid is an award-wining Afghan-Australian human rights champion, diversity and inclusion practitioner, self-taught artist and social commentator.

Maryam Zahid is the founder of Afghan Women on the Move, an organisation that supports the health, mental wellbeing, individual growth and development of Afghan and other women of diverse migrant backgrounds. Maryam’s work aims to help women reach their full potential in all aspects of life: employment, study, art, financial literacy, swimming and more.

Maryam grew up in Afghanistan and arrived in Australia just before her twentieth birthday. Having missed out on the opportunity to go to school as a child, Maryam convinced the principal of Blacktown’s Mitchell High to allow her to enrol, despite being several years older than the other senior students.

Maryam has over twenty years’ experience in the community sector, working in domestic violence, refugee resettlement and with newly arrived migrants.

She was Blacktown City Woman of the Year in 2019 and is currently a Westpac Social Change Fellow for 2024. She studied Values and Public Policy at Oxford University and graduated from Stanford University Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders.

Alongside her community work, Maryam is an emerging playwright and exhibition producer.

Angelica is a global youth affairs leader, advocate, researcher and speaker. She served as the Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations in 2022 and is the current Oceania Youth Advisory Representative to the World Federation of United Nations Associations.

Her work as a Convenor of the African Australian Youth Suicide Prevention Committee has helped her explore what wellbeing looks like for her own community in Western Sydney. She is the host of Impact Studios’ exciting new podcast, Sink or Swim, which comes out in September.

When not immersed in advocacy and research or learning to swim, Angelica can be found teaching her puppy to roll over and high-five in Blacktown’s local parks.

Stephen Gapps is an award-winning public historian whose work investigates the Frontier Wars and seeks their recognition as Australia’s first wars. He is the author of The Sydney Wars 1788-1817 and Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War – The Bathurst War, 1822-4.

Stephen grew up on Kastelan Street, on one of the few hills in Blacktown. As a kid, he would play cricket in the cul-de-sac, splash around in Eastern Creek, and build cubbies in the bush. He was one of the first students at Evans High, a high school that opened in 1974. Evans High now hosts an Intensive English Centre that provides language teaching to over 150 students who have recently arrived in Australia.

Stephen’s dad was a history teacher, inspiring Stephen’s interest in the stories behind the names of the places around him: Bungaribee Road, Nurragingy Reserve. He joined his local history society and learned about Aboriginal histories he hadn’t been taught in school.

Om Dhungel is a consultant, mentor, trainer and speaker who helps people and organisations explore and unleash their full potential using a strength-based approach. He is the author of Bhutan to Blacktown – Losing everything and finding Australia, a memoir about how being forced from his home country shaped his life and character.

Om, his wife Saroja and daughter Smriti have lived in Blacktown for twenty years. Smriti’s new baby has brought a third generation into their Blacktown homes.

Om is a renowned community leader in Western Sydney who serves on several committees and boards including the NSW Health Ministry, NSW Police, Multicultural NSW and Blacktown City Council.  He has been instrumental in the settlement of more than 5000 Bhutanese refugees, one of the most successful refugee initiatives in Australia’s history.

He is an Honorary Adjunct Fellow at UTS and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Daisy Montalvo is a director and creative producer who has worked for key Western Sydney arts organisations including FUNPARK, PYT Fairfield and Blacktown Arts Centre.

Her telenovela-inspired web series, Las Rosas, tells the story of one family’s conflict around a quinceañera (a 15th birthday coming-of-age celebration marked in many Latin American families). The story was inspired by her own experience growing up in Western Sydney as a first-generation Australian whose parents migrated from El Salvador, and it was filmed in the childhood bedroom of her family home.

Daisy’s art and filmmaking shines a light on young people from the Blacktown area and the incredible things they are doing.

Geetha has lived in Toongabbie since the early ‘80s, after migrating with her young family from Karnataka, South India. She has been involved in community service and charitable organisations in her local area for over 35 years, balancing this work alongside her 36-year career at the ATO, Metcash and Mission Australia.

Geetha is a respected elder in her Havyaka community. She gave full-time retirement a try but has recently taken up a part-time role with NSW Healthshare to stay active and be involved with her local hospitals.

She is actively involved with Healthy Living Toongabbie Inc a group of health-conscious business and community leaders in Toongabbie urging local residents to join in the fight against type 2 diabetes. When at home, Geetha likes to spend time in her garden, cook delicious meals for family and friends and catch up on the latest business and investing news.

We are Blacktown is a UTS Impact Studios production.
Producers: Britta Jorgensen, Jane Curtis, Celine Teo-Blockey
Executive Producer: Olivia Rosenman
Sound design: Melissa May
Research: Jackie May
Podcast artwork: Alexandra Morris
Theme music: Beaming by FRIDAY

Leanne Tobin is a multidisciplinary artist of Irish, English and Aboriginal heritage, descending from the Buruburong and Wumali clans of the Dharug, the traditional owners of the Greater Sydney region. She grew up in Western Sydney.

Leanne is a descendant of Maria Locke, one of the first students at the Blacktown Native Institution, a residential school for Aboriginal students who were often forcibly removed from their families. Maria Locke was a high-achieving student and went on to be the first Aboriginal woman to receive a colonial land grant.  When she died, the government revoked the land. Leanne has created several major works for a series of arts programs at the site of the Blacktown Native Institution.

Leanne believes in the power of art to raise awareness and to heal. Her work is driven by a strong sense of truth-telling about the past and the present, and about what happened here on Aboriginal land.