We were really pleased to welcome the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) as a new client a few months ago. We’ve been working with DELWP on the Geelong Citizens' Jury, which took place across three weekends in October and November. This is the second Citizens' Jury project for Yarn, the first being VicHealth's Victorian Citizens' Jury on Obesity in 2015. 

For this Citizens' Jury we produced a series of short vignettes on three jury members as they moved through the jury process. Our jury members Meryl, Antonia and Tim were an absolute delight to work with, as were our clients at DELWP - Lou Curry, Kim Sullivan and Salyana Williams. It was great to again work alongside Iain Walker and Kyle Redman of newDemocracy foundation as well as working with the facilitators, MosaicLab: Nicole Hunter, Keith Greaves, Kimbra White and Jane Lovejoy.

The background to this Jury is as follows: Following the dismissal of the Greater Geelong City Council in April 2016, the Victorian government committed to consult the Greater Geelong community about the structure of its future elected council.  A citizens' jury of 100 randomly selected but representative Geelong residents considered the question: Our council was dismissed. How do we want to be democratically represented by a future council?

We've just returned from 10 amazing days in North East Arnhem Land shooting our film 'Milly'. The brief was to create two films to be used as resources in women's health education, primarily for the Yolngu women living in North East Arnhem Land. We're producing these films in partnership with ARDS Aboriginal Corporation and have been working closely with our lovely clients Bulkanhawuy and Emma Murphy for the last few months. Most of the time at Yarn we work in documentary so it's been a real thrill to work on a narrative client project and such a privilege and pleasure to help Bulkanhawuy realise her concept for this beautiful story. We're rapt to be working with Noni Eather as Co-Producer and Director of Photography Sky Davies, along with our fabulous cast of Yolngu women who delivered incredible performances over long days and absolutely mad end-of-wet-season-weather. A big thank you to everyone on the team - we're looking forward to getting into the edit! In the meantime, see below for some pics from the shoot.

- Bridget O'Shea | Producer, Yarn

Director of Photography Sky Davies

Sky, Bridget O'Shea and cast member Caitlin

Cast member Roberta, Katrina Channells and Latrell

Cast member Zowie with Co-Producer Noni Eather

Katrina Channells and Bridget O'Shea (Yarn)

Katrina Channells, Bulkanhawuy, Bridget O'Shea, Emma Murphy, Sky Davies

As part of our latest documentary Leaving Allen Street, we recently took some portraits of the subjects of the documentary, the residents, in their lovely new homes. It was a really fun shoot and we're so pleased to share these beautiful photos with the residents, their families and staff members. All photos by our friend and colleague John O'Rourke.

Katrina Channells and Bridget O'Shea of Yarn with resident Greg

In March I was really thrilled to attend Australia's peak conference for documentary, the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) held here in Melbourne at Federation Square. I was selected as one of six for ACCESS @ AIDC, a mentor program for early career documentary filmmakers. The mentors were particularly good this year - John Battsek (UK), Amy Hobby (USA), Ezra Edelman (USA), Jen Peedom (AUS), Donovan Chan (SGP) and Kelrick Martin (AUS). As part of the program the mentees had one hour group sessions with each mentor over the course of the conference. Everyone was so generous with their time and it was great to connect with directors and producers who are really at the top of their game (the majority were Academy Award nominees or winners). The conference itself had really fascinating sessions with a lot of local and international delegates from the whole spectrum of documentary. I met some fantastic people - including my five fellow mentees - and it was a really productive time. Thanks for having me AIDC!

Bridget O'Shea | Producer, Yarn

For something a bit different, Yarn held a panel discussion recently at the inaugural ThinkWest Festival - a festival of philosophy and culture across Melbourne's inner west, which is where Yarn is based. Produced by the School of Life, the festival featured more than 40 workshops, tours, classes and special events.

We were chosen by the festival as one of the local grant recipients and our panel was titled "Storytelling: The Moving Image and Social Impact". Bridget moderated the conversation, and along with Katrina, we invited our friends and colleagues Producer Mary Minas and Editor Robert Fearon to join the panel. Held at Back Alley Sally's in Footscray we discussed how to tell challenging stories in film and documentary while also creating a sustainable career. Many thanks to program producer Anna Schoo - it was a really fun night. Onwards to ThinkWest 2017!

We are thrilled to continue to work with the Victorian College of the Arts on our series In The Making, profiling recent VCA graduates. The subject of the final video in the series is Sarah Hopper, a graduate of the Master of Production Design for Screen. Since graduating Sarah has been busy working on a number of fantastic productions here in Victoria - The Leftovers, Jack Irish, Lion and The Dressmaker. You can find the trailer for the video below.

Bridget O'Shea | Producer, Yarn

We were so thrilled to work on a third video with our ongoing client The Bridge, a disability support service based in Melbourne's Eastern suburbs. Previously we've produced videos for their supported employment division The Bridge Works and also a video story on one of their employees, Jono, who works at The Bridge Works.

Now we're producing a video for their day service The Bridge Connects focusing on the story of one of their participants, Matt. It was such a pleasure working again with our clients at The Bridge Phillip Toovey and Clover Laurier and also getting to know Matt's lovely parents and siblings. You'll find the trailer for the video below.

For the last few months we've enjoyed working again with the Advancement team at the University of Melbourne. We previously produced a video about three of their scholarship students as part of the "Educating Tomorrow's Leaders" campaign which won Gold at the peak global industry body event, the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards.

We're really pleased to share the second instalment of "Educating Tomorrow's Leaders", a video on Michelle Kerrin, a young Indigenous woman and beneficiary of the Ann Miller Scholarship. It was such a pleasure to get to know Michelle over the last few months and to work again with Corrina Langelaan, the head of Advancement Communications at University of Melbourne. We can't wait to see what Michelle does next!

- Bridget O'Shea | Producer, Yarn

Yarn teamed up with Wantok Musik to create a beautiful music video for Emily Wurramara's song 'Black Smoke'. West End in Brisbane was the perfect backdrop for this clip, capturing the colour of Emily's hometown. Yarn produced and directed 'Black Smoke' which premiered on ABC's program Rage.