Inspired by Her
Regional women making new work from the stories that deserve to be carried forward.
Inspired by Her grew from a question at the heart of the Festival: how do we put women's stories inside the cultural program itself, instead of leaving them in the conversation around it?
The answer was not another panel about creativity. It was to ask women to make something.
The idea
Inspired by Her is a recurring creative program of the Orana Every Woman Festival and The Orana Woman.
It gives regional women creative practitioners a reason, a brief and a public platform to respond to women's stories, histories, silences, identity, resilience and belonging. The work can take different forms — writing, visual art, photography, performance, sound or combinations of them — because the point is not to force a single medium. The point is to make space for regional women to interpret what matters to them.
The program sits exactly where Social Gain's pillars overlap. It is a Festival project under Better Together, a creative-development opportunity under Creative Courage, and a permanent storytelling collection within The Orana Woman's Human and Local world.
The first collection — 2026
The inaugural 2026 collection brought together eight works: Tin Town Tess; Something New; COVID Lockdown; Homecoming; Nonna. Mother. Daughter.; A Bouquet of Flowers; Wambuul: Echoes of the Turning Tide; and ICON.
They moved across memory, motherhood, place, migration, intergenerational identity, belonging, survival and the women whose lives have shaped this region.
The public presentation also brought different creative forms together. Erifili Davies held a central creative and curatorial role. Writer Eleanor Limprecht connected the program to the craft of turning real women and history into story. Rachael Beck brought performance and voice into the live event. Regional work was not treated as the warm-up to national talent; it sat beside it.
Why the archive matters
A one-night exhibition can disappear frighteningly quickly.
So the permanent home matters as much as the live presentation. Each 2026 work now has its own editorial Portfolio page within The Orana Woman, with the artwork, writing, artist context, credits and available media preserved as part of the collection.
That changes the value of participation. The work is not only experienced by the people who happened to be in the room. It becomes searchable, shareable evidence of a regional creative practice, something an artist can point to later and something the community can return to.
What the project is really building
Inspired by Her is not simply an exhibition brand. It is slowly building a regional archive of women interpreting women.
Each annual round can add another layer: new practitioners, new source stories, new collaborations, new media and new pathways between established and emerging creatives.
The ambition is not quantity for its own sake. It is to keep the standard high enough that the work feels worthy of the woman, the artist and the archive.
Creativity is not the decoration around the story. Sometimes it is the only way to tell it.
The Festival creates the deadline and the room. The Orana Woman makes sure the work does not vanish when the room is packed away.
Scenes from the room.
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