Amani Haydar is an award-winning author, visual artist, advocate for women’s health and safety and a former lawyer, based in western Sydney on Dharug land. In 2018 Amani’s self-portrait titled Insert Headline Here was a finalist in the Archibald Prize. As an active visual artist and former Archibald Prize finalist, Amani collaborates with organisations like Settlement Services International (SSI) and the Older Women’s Network to deliver visual arts and storytelling workshops for people from migrant communities. Her illustrations have been featured in publications such as Admissions: Voices within Mental Health, The Very Best Doughnut by Randa Abdel-Fattah, Safar by Sarah Malik and The Racial Politics of Australian Multiculturalism by Ghassan Hage.

Amani’s ground-breaking feminist memoir The Mother Wound (Pan Macmillan, 2021) explores the effects of domestic abuse and state-sanctioned violence on women and has received several awards including the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2022 Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and it was also long-listed for The Walkley Book Award in 2021. The Mother Wound has recently been translated into Arabic, allowing Arabic readers worldwide to engage with the Arab-Australian experience. Amani’s writing has also been featured in collections such as Racism, Arab Australian Other, Sweatshop Women Volume Two, and anthology After Australia.

Amani was the recipient of the 2021 UTS Faculty of Law Alumni Award and was named Local Woman of the Year for Bankstown at the 2020 NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year Awards in recognition of her advocacy against domestic violence. Drawing on her lived experiences and legal background, Amani has served on the boards of Bankstown Women’s Health Centre and the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights.

You can find Amani on Instagram here

The Older Women’s Network (OWN) has been a vital, strong and consistent voice for older women in NSW for more than 37 years.

OWN have been at the forefront of progressive change, activism and advocacy since their humble beginnings when a group of women from the NSW Combined Pensioners Association decided to do something for older women in 1985.

OWN have gone from strength to strength as a dynamic members-led organisation expanding throughout NSW with around 18 groups.

Over the years, OWN has developed services and resources for older women and has written and contributed to numerous influential reports on key issues for older women such as income security, homelessness, ageism, wellbeing, abuse of older people and domestic violence. OWN have played a big part in putting these issues at the forefront of public policy debates. Equally important is OWN’s history of friendship, mutual support and, of course, fun!

Venessa is a Dharug-Muringong custodian, early-career academic, and established Indigenous artist based in Gulamada, the Blue Mountains. Her interdisciplinary research is grounded in a Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts and Indigenous Studies. She is passionate about teaching on behalf of Ngurra (Country). My approach reflects a commitment to honouring and enhancing relationships between art, culture, and land.

I acknowledge Ngurra Bayali (Country Speaking) to uphold a continuity of powerful and meaningful connections.  As I walk with the footsteps of Indigenous truth-speakers, my cultural paradigms include promoting my muru (a path) of immersive regional curatorial practices. My projects encompass the promotion of experiential visual arts, innovative Indigenous community arts and theory and expressive storytelling, all of which reveal a commitment to preserving a continuity of ancestral knowledges and values, footsteps and voices honouring Dharug Homelands. A further assertion to ignite Dhalang, a language of the Dharug Yiyura (Peoples), is inspired by intuitive relational approaches to academic research.

I strive to share a legacy of Indigenous-led approaches that strengthen cultural identity and belonging.

The steps of Parliament House in Canberra formed the first stage for the Older Women’s Network Theatre Group. In 1987, a group of activist women with plenty to sing about travelled from Sydney to take their message of age discrimination and disadvantage to the nation’s capital and the ears of politicians. They caused quite a stir, and inspired by the positive reception to their messages, they formed a group that has gone from strength to strength reaching audiences around Australia, and overseas.

Since it formed, the OWN Theatre Group has been promoting the rights, dignity and wellbeing of older women through the power of engaging, entertaining and challenging theatre. Their vision is to enlighten and move audiences through songs and sketches about the many issues facing older women today. These include homelessness, abuse, discrimination and societal invisibility. They do this through positive messages showing audiences the joy that comes from belonging to a theatre group, finding humour in adversity as well as passion and poignancy.

In 2023, they performed as Crones In Cabaret at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, one of the biggest in the world, with their one hour show, Not Dead Yet! The show won an award for best cabaret and sold out three shows at the Warehouse Theatre. Since then, they have performed for Mission Australia, for International Day Against Elder Abuse for the Inner West Council, and at the Older Women’s Network National Conference as well as smaller shows in Sydney.

Not Dead Yet! follows the success of the group’s long running production, Don’t Knock Your Granny, a show highlighting elder abuse. The group performed Don’t Knock Your Granny at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2018 to rave reviews. In 2020, it won critical acclaim at the Adelaide Fringe just days before the Covid lockdown. The group has done important work on violence against older women through Granny which has been used as an educational tool through a campaign and video and has now been seen by thousands, live or on video. It has been performed at conferences, community and council events and for Seniors Week events.

The group’s ethos is to include all women in every aspect of the production including research, writing and workshopping material, choreography and costumes. Confidence is built by reassuring performers that physical disabilities or mental health issues will never impact on their ability to be a valued part of the group. The Theatre Group is a safe and welcoming space for older women, and an inclusive place to build self-esteem, friendship and importantly, enhance their own status in society. Its members come to weekly rehearsals in Newtown from surrounding suburbs but also as far away as Wollongong, the Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands.