For our final Northern Rivers Creative feature of 2025, we are speaking with Kate McDowell about Golden Thursdays. Golden Thursdays is a bold contemporary dance Ensemble led by Alice Boscheinen, Bryn James, Max McAuley, supported by Creative Catalysts Kate McDowell and Stuart Shugg. The company centres and elevates the choreographic voices of neuro-divergent artists, and you may recognise their work from recent performances such as the Tropical Fruits Recovery Day Cabaret and Hidden in the Hinterland’s Halloween Cabaret at the Drill Hall Theatre. Get to know Golden Thursdays from up close!

This month, we’re shining a light on Natalie Wilkin, a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the thresholds between the human body, the natural world, and the unseen forces that shape consciousness. Working across photography, film and sculptural textiles, Natalie creates immersive works where material, spirit and landscape intertwine. Her practice has been showcased across Australia and the United States, and later this month you’ll have the chance to experience it locally when her solo exhibition Moon Pool opens at Lone Goat Gallery in Byron Bay at the end of November. Read on to learn more about her creative process, inspirations and the journey that shaped her distinctive practice.

Public art has the power to transform how we experience everyday spaces, and few understand this better than Rebecca Townsend, founding Director of Creative Road, a Byron Bay–based organisation connecting artists with communities, businesses and places. We spoke with Rebecca about the heart of Creative Road’s work, the importance of collaboration, and what it takes to keep an artist’s vision at the centre of complex projects.

This month, we have the privilege of speaking with Bindimu—a multi-disciplinary artist and curator whose expansive practice spans fibre art, sand painting, DJing, soundscapes, cultural dance, and works on canvas and bark. Grounded in the preservation and continuation of Indigenous creative practices, her work speaks to survival, resistance, and deep connection to Country.

This month we’re featuring Naima Brown, a writer whose creative and professional life has spanned continents, cultures, and mediums. Now based in Ballina on Bundjalung Country, Naima draws on a rich tapestry of experience—from growing up in Northern California to living in Yemen and Afghanistan, and working across news, current affairs, and documentary.