Diversity In Action

We collaborate with communities and transform people’s lived experiences into performance and film. Our creative process enables a space that connects people to their own story, each other, and the wider community. We facilitate and curate stories that nurture empathy and help us move beyond prejudice, enabling safe spaces to hold complex narratives.

SIC was founded in 2020 to build upon the successful engagement with international students through theatre. The pandemic opened a creative challenge and SIC flexed to produce a body of work online. Now we expand the lens on diversity and intercultural richness to tell other stories.

  • Catherine Simmonds OAM

    ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

    Catherine is one of Australia’s leading community cultural development theatre makers. As an artistic director, her focus is the space between the ‘lived experiences’ of communities and the language of art.

    She was a lead actress with the IRAA theatre for ten years, displacement, identity and cultural minorities, were central performance themes.

    As the founding director of the Brunswick Women’s Theatre, cultural diversity was integral to her ‘modus operandi’. For more almost three decades she’s provided marginalized people with a creative space in which to ‘discover the need to speak and to speak the unspoken’. The community, become the actors, the devisors, the consultants and protagonists of their own and each other’s stories.

    Her work has powerfully addressed some of most pressing issues of our time including, intercultural and cross-generational relationships, identity and changing values, changing futures for indigenous people, public and private violence, trafficked women and the asylum seeker story, mental health and addiction. Her work has attracted the collaboration NGOs, local government, health and community organsiation and invloved some outstanding Australian artists.

    Her contemporary theatrical productions have inspired and touched the hearts of audiences regardless of class or culture.

  • Farhat Firdious

    PROJECT DIRECTOR

    Farhat Firdous is a cross-cultural communication and engagement specialist with experience of issue-based and sector-wide engagement in Pakistan and regional Victoria.

    Over the last 20 years, she has worked in diverse roles including media and communication, service design and delivery, stakeholder engagement, regional planning, tertiary education, public service governance and not-for-profit sectors.

    Currently, Farhat is a Councillor at Baw Baw Shire and actively advocates for social inclusion and social cohesion. She has established herself as a voice for communities within communities and facilitates critical conversations on difficult issues with a curious and open mindset. She is the co-founder and chair of Intercultural Exchange Inc., a community-minded organisation that aims to create safe spaces to strengthen a sense of belonging by reducing potential miscommunications, assumptions, and discrimination.

    Farhat is a life-long learner with an academic background in social work, development studies, and counseling. Farhat has learned the classical dance form ‘Kathak’.

    Farhat strongly believes in the power of storytelling to build bridges between diverse groups of people.

  • Irene Metter

    MEDIA DIRECTOR

    Irene is a filmmaker and designer. She creates our videos and media so that community and personal stories have a life beyond the workshops and performances, and can radiate out into the world.

    Irene also brings her skills and sensitivity to SIC projects having worked as a counsellor in Rape Crisis Centres in South Africa and in Boston USA.

    As a filmmaker Irene’s vision is to capture journeys of profound transformation in people’s lives, to provide a platform for advocacy, and to ensure the films land where they have most impact.

    For Irene, Story Is Connection is a vibrant intersection of culture and community, and she has great satisfaction on many levels being part of the creative team.