Darwin Emerging Creatives
be ambitious, be courageous, be passionate, and grow!
Who are we?
Darwin Emerging Creatives aims to promote and raise awareness of our vibrant young artist community. We want to create a supportive space to pursue artistic passions and keep young creatives in touch with the latest opportunities and events in our local art scene.The colours selected for DEC reflect the collective's motto to be ambitious, be courageous, be passionate, and grow!
Follow us on Instagram @darwinemergingcreatives to stay in the loop!
Who are the masterminds behind DEC?
Annahloustudios
_ultractive
eskrimko
Dippity
Kezia Michela
Skye Lavelle
Tisha Tejaya
Want to showcase your creative work?
Use our awesome application form to tell us a little about yourself and your creative practice and get featured on our Instagram account! As a bonus, you'll be offered a temporary space in our website's gallery to display some of your workRead more about DEC's Creative Feature requirements and options in the application forms below.CREATIVE FEATURE APPLICATION FORMUse this form if you'd like to NOMINATE a creative to be featured!If you have any questions or suggestions for the forms let us know via Instagram or email.
Featured Creative Gallery
Yooiinnk
Yooiink is an emerging artist who works predominantly in digital space, but also enjoys drawing with pens and ink on paper. She started drawing in primary/middle school, but only began taking her art seriously after high school. Her works were mainly inspired by cartoons such as Adventure Time and anime like Madoka Magica - all of which she saw on free-to-air TV before and after school.
Yooiink has been involved in many creative events around Darwin, including spray-painting jams and running digital art workshops at City of Darwin Libraries and LAUNCH youth program’s monthly Geek Up events. She has also tabled stalls at numerous artist markets such as Geektacular’s Mini-Market and MAGNIFY’s Makers Market.
In 2024, her work was featured in You Matter: a Collection by Young Darwin Artists, a mental well-being colouring book project by LAUNCH Darwin. In 2025, Yooiinnk designed the logo for the Darwin Fringe Festival’s annual Secret Art exhibition.
Springtrap BBQ, August 2024, digital
‘I think I had a dream about this and went to draw it… that’s it really.’
Minigame, January 2025, digital illustration
‘I think it’s weird how artworks with such random/odd subject matter (my Roblox avatar), can lead to the most effort I’ve put into an artwork in months.’
Untitled, November 2024, digital illustration
‘1/31 pieces of work for my huevemebr art challenge.’
Untitled, January 2025, digital illustration
‘A redraw of old art, showing both my change in skill and change in opinion of Pokémon when compared to the previous one.’
Projects, Events & Activities
We want to create fun opportunities for emerging creatives to meet, connect, and develop their creative practices. As DEC grows, we plan to broaden the types of projects and events we organise. Here's what we aim to run this year!❁ Creative Features ❁
❁ Casual creative meet-ups ❁
❁ Collaborative projects ❁
❁ Visual art workshops ❁
Geek Up 2025
Presented in partnership with City of Darwin Libraries and
City of Darwin's LAUNCH Youth Program
Geek Up is a FREE event for young people held on the last Sunday of the month at Casuarina Library. We facilitate art workshops with a different guest artist each month for this event.
Fresh Yarns
Presented in partnership with Darwin Fringe
Proudly supported by the Northern Territory Government
Fresh Yarns Wrap
Fresh Yarns Wrap
Fresh Yarns Wrap
Tap this image to read!
Fresh Yarns was a series of workshops we presented in partnership with Darwin Fringe during the 2025 NT Youth Week for emerging storytellers to create their own short stories and comics that now feature in a zine anthology.
Darwin Emerging Creatives Mascots
Darwin Emerging Creatives was designed to promote and support young people practising any creative discipline, not only the visual arts. To emphasise this, the DEC Team created mascots that can represent the various artistic disciplines we aim to feature on our socials and website and involve in our future projects. Visual and performance artists (actors, dancers), musicians (and composers) and writers/authors.
Kezia Michela D., DEC Mascots, February 2024, Digital illustration: Robin; enthusiastic writer and theatre kid; Wren; bubbly multi-disciplinary visual artist; Avery; super smug musician and composer.
Kezia Michela D., Floral Flow, February 2024, Digital illustration: I wanted Darwin Emerging Creatives’ banner to be organic and continuous and to link to the kurrajong flowers in the logo. And this is how our first mascot, Wren, was created.
Kezia Michela D., Robin, February 2024, Digital illustration: Robin was first created from the idea of fairy floss, a soft and sweet character with festival energy levels.
