This year we celebrated 40 years since Next Wave emerged as ‘Victoria’s festival for young people and the arts’.

And what a year it was.

We want to give a huge shoutout to the incredible people and organisations who worked with us in 2024—* deep inhale *:

• Our Artistic Directorate: Bruno Booth, Libby Harward, Lucy Bleach, Marian Abboud, Rosealee Pearson, Sally Golding, Yuhui Ng-Rodriguez and Yusuf Hayat.
• Our Kickstart artists: An.Other Collective, Ellamay Fitzgerald, Georgia Lucy, Jayda Wilson, Jen Datu, Rachel Morley, Rarriwuy Hick and Sophie Dumaresq.
• Kickstart program facilitator Lana Nguyen.
• Our Young Artistic Directorate, Ant Banda, MaggZ, Matisse Laida and Lydia Tesema and all of their collaborators, as well as program faciliator Ananth Gopal.
• M@ Cornell, Tiyan Baker and their collaborators, who visited Melbourne for an ALL School exchange and curated our ‘剉冰 + equatorial fruit-opening party’.
• Bethany Fellows, Deep Soulful Sweats, Erica McCalman, Nat Randall, Luke D King and Ravi Vasavan, who contributed to our 2024 ALL School Lab.
• Our programming resident, [programming at Brunswick Mechanics Institute](https://composite.org.au/ text: Composite), as well as Bronwyn Pringle, Brunswick Music Festival and Blak Dot Gallery, CAST at RMIT, Daz Chandler and Edwin Montgomery, DVAN, Emily Simek, Jessica Tanto and Bus Projects, Liv Satchell and New North, who contributed to our https://nextwave.org.au/whats-on.
• The many artists and organisations who undertook creative developments in our space, including Alternative Facts, Ari Tampubolon, Aseel Tayah, Deafferent Theatre, Emily Simek, Govin Rueben, ILBIJERRI, Judith Walton, Jungle City Projects, Lemony S, Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim, Persona Collective, Pot Kettle Black Productions, Starlight Children’s Foundation THAT Production Company and Tilman Robinson.
• Tibi Access, who worked with us on our video venue tour and setting up a low-sensory space for our 40 years party, during:next.
• Fiona Murphy who worked with us in our Visual Stories and provided some great guidance on accessible communications.
• Kate Sulan for working with our team to plan for the future.
• Banalarama, Mae Hartrick, Moesha Pina, Sam Morton and Tom Noble, who helped document this year.
• Paul at Public Office for keeping our websites running.
• Noisy Ritual, Mountain Goat and Hawkers, who supply the Brunswick Mechanics Institute bar.

And, importantly, the funding partners we couldn’t do it without:

• Creative Victoria
• Merri-bek City Council
• VicHealth (A Rising Tide supporter)
• City of Melbourne (ALL School Lab supporter)
• Creative Australia (Kickstart supporter)
• City of Gold Coast (Kickstart supporter)
• City of Wyndham (Kickstart supporter)
• Deakin (Access supporter)

As well as our donors, including:

• Dominic Taranto
• Jamie Lewis
• Annie Robinson
• Chelsea Lang
• Julia Gregg
• Tom McKinnon
• Hannah Grey
• Dan Koop

Your support means the world to us.

Last but not least, our Board—Amrit Gill, Bec Cole, Hannah Jensen, Jodee Mundy, Kate Robinson and Nicole Smith—our alumni staff, casuals and Next Wave team.

We’re so excited for another year of creating, collaborating and learning in 2025.