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?

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

DEC Masterminds Gallery

<sup>Skye is a freelance digital artist and game developer born and raised in Darwin. Skye sells her art at local art events and has recently released Diets & Deities, a proudly NT-made video game. In 2024 and 2025, she taught digital art courses at The Array, a local tech hub and aspires to continue empowering the community in both digital and creative spaces.

Dippity is a young traditional and digital visual artist who likes to draw, paint, make comics, and table at artist alleys. She has been sporadically working on writing and illustrating her own webcomic “Birdy” for five years and plans to start releasing pages this year. She has made three comic zines and is currently drawing pages for the fourth one, the second volume of “Quotes” (Stove Fire). Dippity’s artwork has featured in numerous young artist exhibitions in Darwin, and she has experience running art skills workshops as part of the LAUNCH Darwin and City of Darwin Libraries Geek Up program.

Esse (Eskrimko) is a digital artist with a distinct passion for character design and local stories. She is regularly engaged in the youth arts community through local events and programs where she’s been involved as a workshop facilitator, emerging producer and artist stallholder. In her spare time, Esse obsesses over her original characters who are the Aussie towns personified. Esse debut comic, Zest for Life, a collection of short heartwarming stories, was released in 2025.

Kezia is a multidisciplinary artist, amateur writer, cultural worker and emerging producer dedicated to advocating for and supporting emerging creatives. She has been active in the local arts scene for over four years, working towards revealing and creating more opportunities for young artists to showcase their incredible skill and creativity. She has held roles as an art workshop facilitator, art exhibition curator, event producer and project coordinator.</sup>

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 ❁

Secret Art 2026
^{Curated by Ifa Shiddiq}
Darwin Fringe Festival

<sup>An annual showcase of new unreleased works by visual artists aged 12-25, Secret Art reflects the incredible talent brewing around Darwin and beyond.

OFFICIAL OPENING ON FRIDAY, 5:30PM
→No registration required, this event is free to attend.

This event is made possible thanks to the support of The Department of Youth, Darwin Emerging Creatives, LAUNCH Darwin and Darwin Community Arts.</sup>

2026 Drawing Challenge

^{To celebrate the end-of-year and Raven, we're issuing a challenge to DRAW ONE OF DEC'S MASCOTS by the end of July 2026!}!! CHALLENGE DETAILS !!^{❁ Deadline: Friday, 31 July at 11:59pm
❁ Send submissions to [email protected]
❁ Open to Australian artists aged 12-30
❁ There will be two winners who receive the prize pack shown on tile 5 plus 1x extra DEC merch depending on the mascot you draw; it could be a mug, keychain or extra print!
❁ The winners will be announced through an Instagram post! All additional entries will be included in a separate post to the winning works.Note: that we will not use your art for anything outside of what
is already stated without obtaining your prior permission to do so.DM on Instagram or flick us an email if you have any questions!}

Geek Up 2026

^{Geek Up is a FREE event for young people held on the last Sunday of the month at Casuarina Library since 2022. We're facilitating digital art workshops with a different guest artist from March to November in 2026.
Want more info? Check out our Instagram account for more info!
Interested in running an art workshop? Flick us a DM or send an email.
Presented in partnership with City of Darwin Libraries and City of Darwin's LAUNCH Youth Program}

Geek Up 2025

^{Check out our Instagram account for detailed wraps of each workshop or keep scrolling for the highlights!
Presented in partnership with City of Darwin Libraries and City of Darwin's LAUNCH Youth Program}

Fresh Yarns

^{Presented in partnership with Darwin Fringe
Proudly supported by the Northern Territory Government}

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.