A possible Creative Learning Partnership with Memetica
Australia is shaped by people who move between languages, places, memories and cultural worlds. Memetica is seeking to partner with one Victorian school on a substantial participatory art project exploring this transcultural reality through language and playful artistic exploration.
:: A project shaped with the school ::
Memetica is proposing a direction, not a predetermined artwork. The school and creative team would first identify the students, languages, questions, curriculum connections and community relationships that matter most.
From that shared enquiry, the project could take the form of a visual or inflatable installation, multimedia work, performance, or a combination of these forms, shaped around the school’s particular interests, priorities and community.
:: Why language and transcultural Australia? ::
Students already move between different forms of language: home and school, family histories and contemporary Australian life, formal learning and the changing codes of friendship, media and online culture. Even students who speak one language encounter words, images and identities formed through many cultural influences.
Language offers a direct way into these complex questions because students already navigate it every day. The distinction between langue—the shared system—and parole—the ways individuals use and reshape it—provides a simple model for understanding how cultural forms are inherited, adapted, combined and reinvented. Language thus becomes a key for exploring wider questions of identity, belonging and cultural exchange through art.
:: A previous Creative Learning Partnership ::
Footscray Primary School, 2025
In 2025, Memetica undertook a month-long Creative Learning Partnerships residency at Footscray Primary School, a bilingual Italian-English school. Students selected subjects they cared about and transformed their ideas into large inflatable message sculptures connected to a circle of tents.
The final installation invited students, families and visitors into a public conversation. The project crossed visual art, writing, inquiry, science and presentation, while allowing the students’ own questions to determine the content and shape of the work.
:: Language, community and artistic range ::
The Naming with Janggaburru
In The Naming, created with Dulgubarra Yidinji Traditional Owners in Yungaburra, Far North Queensland, the four-metre Elder character Janggaburru helped make local language, erased history and meanings visible in public space. Cultural knowledge and language were led by the Traditional Owners; Memetica helped give that knowledge a large-scale visual and performative form.
The project demonstrates how language can become a shared public encounter, while also showing the importance of beginning with local knowledge, authority and relationships.
:: Other possible forms ::
Memetica has also developed projects in which children’s ideas become inflatable conversation spaces, student drawings become giant public characters, and participants learn to animate large-scale inflatable creatures. These works show a flexible practice spanning installation, design, construction, multimedia, performance and public participation.
Children turn subjects they care about into inflatable message sculptures and a public structure for conversation.
'Children's imagined monsters are translated into giant three-dimensional characters retaining the young artists' drawings authorship.
Participants learn to inhabit and perform with large inflatable characters through teamwork, movement and shared responsibility.
Memetica is the artistic practice led by Daniele Poidomani. Daniele has more than 20 years’ experience developing participatory work with schools, festivals and communities in Australia and internationally. His academic background in linguistics, semiotics and cultural studies informs a practice concerned with how meanings, symbols and identities are made, exchanged and changed.
For this partnership, Memetica can assemble a small team of artists, many from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, with skills selected in response to the school and the agreed project direction. The team might combine visual art, design, performance, film, sound, animation, construction and community engagement.
:: A funded opportunity for the school ::
Creative Learning Partnerships is a Victorian Government program that funds schools to work with professional artists on substantial, tailored and curriculum-aligned residency projects.
$10,000 | for a school to engage an individual creative professional for approximately 15-20 days |
$35,000 | for a school to engage a collective or organisation involving two to five creative professionals for at least 20 days |
The school applies | and develops the project jointly with the chosen creative partner |
The program enables a school to undertake a sustained professional arts project that would often be difficult to realise within ordinary teaching resources. Students and teachers work alongside artists to develop a project specific to the school, rather than purchasing a ready-made activity.
Applications close at 3 pm on Thursday 13 August 2026, for projects beginning from Term 1, 2027. Because a creative partner can participate in only one application in the funding round, Memetica is currently speaking with a small number of schools and will soon select one partnership to develop.
Official Creative Victoria information and links
The school is responsible for submitting the Creative Learning Partnerships funding application. The proposed project and application would be developed collaboratively by the school and Memetica.
Creative Learning Partnerships 2027 — program information
Full program overview, funding amounts, eligibility, key dates, application requirements, guidelines and supporting tools.
https://creative.vic.gov.au/funding-opportunities/find-a-funding-opportunity/creative-learning-partnerships
Creative Learning Partnerships — frequently asked questions
Further information about eligibility, project requirements, budgets, responsibilities and the application process.
https://creative.vic.gov.au/funding-opportunities/find-a-funding-opportunity/creative-learning-partnerships/faqs
Begin a 2027 General Stream application
The application form for Victorian schools applying through the General Stream.
https://grants.business.vic.gov.au/PublicForm?id=clp2027gen
Program enquiries
creativelearningpartnerships@creative.vic.gov.au
:: Start with a conversation ::
A particular artwork does not need to be decided at the outset. An initial conversation can identify the students, languages, curriculum areas, community relationships and practical possibilities that might support a strong partnership.
The school does not need to arrive with a finished idea; the purpose of the conversation is to explore whether a suitable project can be developed together.
:: Further introduction to Memetica’s practice ::
The partnership proposal ends here. The following section offers an optional, broader introduction to Memetica’s work across participatory installation, inflatable sculpture, giant puppetry, performance and community-led creation.
These projects are not proposed templates for the school residency. They are included to introduce the range of forms, processes and collaborative approaches across Memetica’s broader practice, which may inform the development of a project specific to the school.
:: AIR CAMP ::
An other-worldly installation for conversation between adults and children.
A circle of colourful interconnected tents sits in a large open space. Each tent is filled with air and has a strange inflatable message sculpture sprouting from its roof, like placards, conversation starters. You are invited into the otherworldly inner circle and, if you are a child, your job is to decide on a subject you care about, choose a message sculpture to represent it, zip the sculpture onto a tent of your choice, watch it inflate, and then crawl inside. If you are on the outside, your job is to be the ‘conversationalist’ – to talk to the tents, ask questions and begin a dialogue of any length. The child inside has a microphone and a whole lot of uninhibited stuff to say.
Air Camp is a new way to create a public ‘conversation circle’ where children are unseen and empowered to speak their mind to strangers from the comfort of their own tent. As visitors walk through the camp of tents, with their magically lit-up ideas attached, they can literally see what kids’ thought are. The project is both installation and live workshop designed for festivals, large gallery foyers and public spaces.
:: Giant puppets Community Workshops ::
:: The Naming
Memetica’s cultural intervention by means of giant puppetry is epitomized by The Naming, a collaboration with Australian First Nation Elder Laurie Padmore of the Dulgubarra Ydinji clan. This project seamlessly blends visually striking performance, linguistic proficiency, and cultural wisdom.
The Naming Project has effectively raised awareness about traditional culture and its importance to Yungaburra and beyond. This demonstrates how large-scale spectacles with meaningful content can attract significant attention through the playful, non-confrontational presence of giants. In this instance, the project has garnered national attention through television broadcasting.
:: Deadly Totems
The following video clip illustrates the process of Memetica’s community-based workshops. Deadly Totems has been realized in collaboration with the Willum Warrain Aboriginal Association in Hastings, Victoria. The show portrays the inspiring tale of how the association rescued their land from industrial destruction, transforming it into a revitalized natural area that now thrives with native plants and animals.
:: Street Roving and Performance Training ::
Memetica’s roving street performances bring surrealism and unexpected laughter to outdoor events, entertaining and amazing people of all ages. With mischievous Wild Birds and snooping Street Skeeters, these performances offer a delightful experience. Festivals and events can also opt for training workshops, providing a life-changing opportunity for their audience and community. Memetica can conduct training sessions for individuals selected by the festival, teaching them how to operate its giant creatures. These trainees will then enjoy the thrilling experience to perform in roving gigs at the festival.
Such experience is also available for manual wheelchair users with the uniquely designed Street Skeeters, and for children 9yo+ with the inflatable puppet Reeflings.
:: Wild Birds
:: Street Skeeters
Created in collaboration with Wheelchair Rugby Paralympic Champion Matt Lewis, the Street Skeeters have been designed for full and comfortable access for manual wheelchair user. The Skeeters are also available for the training and perform session with community members.
Find out more about Street Skeeters
:: The Reeflings
The Reeflings emerge as a mutated species, originating from reefs across the world’s oceans. Among them are those who are newly acquainted with land, while others are born here, carrying on their legacy in the wake of the reefs’ decline. These resilient creatures embody optimism as they navigate a life devoid of a familiar home or seek refuge from their original habitats. Their ultimate quest is to find a place to call home, establish thriving communities, and coexist harmoniously with other living organisms. Their narrative weaves a tale of escape, survival, arrival, transformation, joy, hope, and the remarkable ability to adapt to new environments.
:: The Reeflings Explorations!
Children can enjoy the excitement of performing in public spaces with the Reeflings puppets. Under Memetica’s guidance, they can train for one hour, don the costumes, and mingle among the festival crowd, bringing joy to the the onlooking audience and more importantly to the young first time performers of giant puppets.
Age 9-12 years old
:: Participatory Inflatable Installations ::
Participatory
:: Lac Long Quan
:: Tendon
An abstract installation that transformed the iconic Edinburgh Garden Rotunda into an immersive, kaleidoscopic experience. Visitors can enter the installation and experience it from within.
The Tendon is made with camping tent discarded at music festival and collected by Daniele to repurpose them into art projects.
:: The Elders of Woodfordia
The Elders are a group of 12 characters who roam the streets of Woodford Folk Festival each year. They don’t belong to any specific ethnicity, culture, or gender; instead, they embody the archetypal figure of elders—a universal anthropological and social construct found in most pre-modern societies and cultures.
The Elders mingle with the crowd, enjoying shows and hanging around like anyone’s grandparents might. However, at certain moments, they step into their role as keepers of ancient knowledge and arcane mysteries, performing rituals that no one in the audience fully understands but can trust are for the benefit of the temporary community gathered for the week-long festival.