Show & Tell, Sydney

Photography: Anna Hay

MADE IN KIN brings the childhood ritual of Show & Tell back for grown-ups, handing Sydney creatives the floor to share what they’ve been making, exploring and figuring out.

Show and tell was a pretty great deal.

You brought something into the classroom that mattered to you, stood in front of everyone and, for a few minutes, had the floor. Maybe it was something you had made, collected, discovered or become completely obsessed with. It didn’t have to be impressive. You just had to think it was worth sharing.

Somewhere along the way, adults made this sort of thing much more complicated.

So MADE IN KIN decided to bring it back – only this time, the classroom was Reddie’s furniture studio in Surry Hills and the people up front were artists, photographers, designers, writers and creative practitioners.

For our first Sydney edition, we invited five sets of presenters to show us something they’d been making, working on, thinking about or figuring out. No overarching theme. No requirement for a polished TED Talk. Just interesting people, ten-ish minutes and a room willing to pay attention.

First up was the evening’s host Ayeesha Ash, whose background in acting and performance showed from the get-go in her effervescent presence. Joining her was friend and collaborator Gianna Christella Hayes, a multidisciplinary artist working across textiles, film and immersive installation, and founder of Hilum Earth – a living archive exploring connections between plants, people and memory.

Together, they explored the idea of water holding memory – and, particularly for people of African ancestry, trauma and pain. Moving between personal reflection, cultural memory and their creative practices, the pair gave us plenty to sit with, opening up conversations about the things we inherit, carry and come to understand about our heritage over time.

Next came creative producer, writer and community organiser Mariam Ella Arcilla, who took us inside Magenta House, the multi-modal space she runs from her Gadigal home. Part workshop space, communal table, library, shop and creative experiment, its roots stretch all the way back to Mariam’s childhood in Quezon City, growing up around artists and cooks.

Mariam pulled up a chair, got comfortable and proceeded to make a furniture showroom full of people feel a little like they were sitting in her living room. As photographs appeared on screen, she pointed out people in the audience who had attended a workshop, class or exhibition at Magenta House. The community she was talking about was, quite literally, sitting in front of her.

Then came Oliver Reyes and Phoebe McIlwraith, the creative duo behind SPEAKINGTRUTH and their newly opened Studio WAYWAY, which brings SPEAKINGTRUTH, SYD City Zines and Oliver’s illustration practice together under one roof.

They gave us an early look inside the studio – what’s already happening there, what they want to build next and the politics and ideas underpinning it all. I admire that they weren’t afraid to be political, but never at the expense of playfulness – in fact, they probably got the biggest laughs of the night. Proof that conviction and creativity can comfortably occupy the same space. Something that came naturally as they bounced off each other with the shorthand and affection of two people accustomed to making things side by side.

Sisters Lauren and Kass Hernandez of Crossing Threads took the room somewhere else again, sharing the evolution of their fibre art and design practice – one built around texture, material experimentation and finding possibilities in things other people might discard.

Then came the reveal. Their Vestige Chair emerged as the hero of the presentation: a one-of-a-kind piece marking an ambitious expansion of their practice. But instead of only showing us the glossy finished object, Lauren and Kass unpacked what it actually took to get there – the vision, the execution, the problem-solving and the inevitable complications that arrive when a big idea has to become a real thing.

Film photographer Richmond Kobla Dido had the final slot, closing the night with a visual journey through a practice spanning portraiture, documentary work and creative collaboration.

Among the work was a behind-the-scenes piece captured by Ibrahim Intwari and a deeply personal project in collaboration with Chidiebube Uba that has been six years in the making. Richmond gave us the story, the images and almost the ending. Almost. We’ll have to wait for that one – which, frankly, is very on-theme for a night designed to leave people curious.

Reddie itself became part of the story. Founder Caroline Olah handed over her Surry Hills furniture studio for the evening, while her mum, Niniek, fed the room with Indonesian bites. Culture, creativity, family, food and the things we inherit kept finding their way into the presentations, so being fed by someone’s mum felt exactly right.

When I started MADE IN KIN, I knew I wanted our events to give people an actual reason to gather beyond the usual networking routine. Show & Tell is one experiment in what that can look like.

Maybe eight-year-olds had networking figured out all along. Bring the thing you care about. Get up and tell us why. Ask questions. Get curious. Make a new friend. The end.