Gold Coast Magic

Events: 2000 to Present

On this page you will be able to find all information on the events which took place in our organisation throughout the past years.

Please select options above to view the events which happened during that period.

Events in 2000

Gold Coast MAGIC was established to prove the way for multicultural artists to share their music, dance and visual art. The group also aims to keep alive all ethnic traditional art forms.

After a series of research and community/government consultations, Gold Coast MAGIC was officially opened with a message from the Minister for Arts, Matt Foley & Mayor, Garry Baildon on the 10^th November 2000 in the foyer of the Gold Coast city council's offices in Bundall. The event was supported by cultural development until of the local council and benefited from the participation of 9 local councillors, representatives of multicultural affairs Queensland & Art Queensland as well as a great number of the general public.

One of the innovating pieces of art in the event combined 3 forms of art: creative writing, public reading and spontaneous painting related to be writing and reading and a solo Accordion. A group of young artists spontaneously painted a related to a story which was written and read by migrant artists. There was also a Spanish Flamenco dance by local artist, Ana-Isabel Arroyo.

Events in 2001

The workshop consisted of introduction to oil painting, gold making work & introduction to Chinese brush painting. In Entertainment some of the Gold Coast finest musicians, dancers and emerging artists performed. The performance varied from meditative and relaxing to lively and danceable. Amongst them a four-piece band playing traditional Persian music and recited poems by Rumi, smooth rock ballads as well as a hip hop performer and the south pacific Island Dance Group whose show included a fire dancer and Polynesian dancer in exquisite costumes from their native homeland.

The exhibition entitled "A Window to Diversity in the Art" was held at the Robina art Gallery. The artists, from diverse backgrounds including India, Iraq, Czechoslovakia, China, Iran, Egypt and Italy, displayed their works including ceramic and mixed media sculpture, traditional and contemporary oil painting, digital media and photography. The exhibition was opened by Griffith University's Street Theatre Group.

In August 2001, GC MAGIC staged Monsieur Camembert, a six-piece band that performs stirring eastern European music that fuses Gypsy-Swing, Klazmer, Hungarian & Russian Gypsy, Tango, French Musette, Greek & Israeli music, with their original composition.

Events in 2002

Cultural fiesta:

"An International Easter" which attracted a good number of audiences, including music from Wales, Ireland, Indonesia and the former Czechoslovakia as well as Easter eggs and a raffle.

Latino Cultural Fiesta was done by a professional local Latin dancer and teacher, Alejandro Barriga and his partner produce Leung. The events featured hot Latino dances and a session of dance lessons for the audience. The dances for the night included the Salsa, Cha Cha and Tango from Columbia, Argentina and Chile.

"Visual Art Exhibition", provided for local visual artists to put their works on show. The main aim of the exhibition was to break down age, gender and cultural barriers by displaying a range of different art works by diverts artists with various proficiencies. The spectacular exhibition included 30 creations by 12 artists in watercolour, oil color, acrylic, pastel, ink drawing and mixed media covering traditional, modern and post-modern styles.

"Candles in the Night" covered two events, the idea of "Candles in the Night" was innovated and provided and opportunity for people to read poems to audiences in their native language, including English. The main aims of holding these events were to break the language barriers and develop confidence among Non-English Speaking background poets.

"Multicultural Arts Seminar" was the first of its type which discussed problem facing cross-cultural and linguistically divert artists working in mainstream cultural environment. How artists can collaborate better outcomes on the Gold Coast and the keys of success for the similar organization with GC MAGIC were covered in the seminar. The guest speaker for the seminar was the director of Brisbane Ethic Music & Art center, Libby Sara. The seminar was held at Robina Community Center Meeting Room.

Multicultural Women's Voices:

The project was a series of free creative writing workshops aimed to help women from diverse cultural background to explore their creativity and imagination. Nasrin Vaziri (Sadegh Vaziri), a cultural development officer, designed and coordinated the project and Nina Woodrow, a part time teacher and writer for the Open Learning Institute of TAFE, facilitated the workshops.

The Workshops had a strong multicultural theme.

The extraordinary response received from local women whishing to participate in the project, resulted in the creation of 3 groups. Therefore, instead of the planned 10 workshops, Nasrin and Nina collaboratively held 20 workshops on a voluntary basis. More than 55 local women were assisted toward developing a short story during the projects. Among them 12 women were from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The force of the project was to help those women who had stories but because of cultural and language barriers are deprived, these 12 women remained for the next projects. The stories of these women were published in a self-published book called "Horizon".

Events in 2003

Artists' cultural workers and community organizations demonstrated their artistic ability and cultural richness through "Cultural Fiesta 2003". The Fiesta consisted of the following events:

World Music Cafe which included Indian Classical and world music. The night included music by professional Tabla (Claypot), and percussion player David Fernandez and professional Sitar, Flute and Flamenco guitar player Peter Davitian.

Persian Night was performed by one of the most popular Persian bands, Darvak Music Group. The group was visiting the Gold Coast and their concert allowed for local musicians, especially those far from home, to engage with a professional band from Iran which rarely happens on the Gold Coast. Local audience also enjoyed real Persian classical music.

The MAGIC and mystique of the Mediterranean was brought to the Gold Coast with Daly and his top-class musician friends. It was a great opportunity for GC MAGIC and Gold Coast audiences to view the fantastic music from Ross Daly – a musician originally from Ireland who visited Greece more than 20 years ago and never went home. The events were very received by the wider community.

Two seminars were held by GC MAGIC during the fiesta, artists/government, and artists/community. In the former, 3 government organisations related to the arts (Arts Queensland, Multicultural Affairs and Cultural Development Unit) met the local artists and explained about their facilities for the artists. Three poetry nights took place and original poetry was recited in their native language as well as translated into English. The main aim of this activity was breaking language barriers through art. All activities were held at Robina Community Center, Robina.

Bitter Sweet publication was the result of 10 advances creative writing workshops particularly for women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In the project 14 women from Iran, Chile, New Zealand, El Salvador, France, Turkey, Russia, Australia, Germany and England were assisted in the workshops.

Bitter Sweet is a unique production about the experiences of women mainly before migration to Australia. The stories are a combination of fiction and reality. The book was launched in November 2003 at Southport TAFE and has received a good number of reviews to this date.

Events in 2004

Festival of Diversity was a one-off community event consisting of the following workshops including Belly dance, Colombian dance, Hungarian Embroidery, Creative Art, Photography and Tableh (Indian percussion). The workshops were extremely well received by the public specially the dances, which were held in the main room.

Entertainment: World Music was provided by different communities, and audiences enjoyed dance to music from different parts of the world.

Community information: The major multicultural service providers had an opportunity to introduce their services to the participants.

Craft Table: Individuals from diverse backgrounds displayed their beautiful handcrafts at the events.

The festival was held at the Bicentennial Community Hall at the Gold Coast City Council buildings. Entry was free and the written feedbacks from the audiences and participants on the workshops indicate a great success of the events.

A window to the diversity was a 10 advanced painting workshops with an exhibition. The project was designed by Nasrin Vaziri (Sadegh-Vaziri), a professional community arts project designer and the workshops were led by max Muhlberger, a professional local artist with German/Australian background. The 10 emerging local artists, from diverse backgrounds including Finland, Australia, Aboriginal, Afghanistan, Iran, Poland, Austria, New Zealand, Czechoslovakia, Hollang and Korea, developed a theme for the exhibition. Each artist produced one artwork towards the theme which was "The People". All 10 paintings were the same size and being placed side-by-side as one piece of reflect harmony in diversity and displayed them at Robina Arts Gallery from September 19^th for two weeks. The exhibition enjoyed a spectacular opening with a variety of food and music from different cultures.

Self-Expression through Arts was a combination of creative writing and drawing especially for people who have experienced trauma in their lives and 4 cross cultural events.

Events in 2005

Midge Johansen, a local professional sculpture and ceramist, facilitated 10 people toward making mosaic titles. The participants in the workshops designed their own piece and created a variety of mosaics as well as a few piece of sculptures.

Events in 2006

A good number of community members expressed their interest for involvement with the 2005 project and people from a number of different cultural backgrounds were selected and attended to the workshops.

Events in 2007

Fiesta of Diversity highlighted the exciting local cultural richness by showcasing the arts and entertainments of different cultural groups and individual artists.

The Fiesta consisted of Performances from Polynesian, Arabic, Colombian and African dancers. European Fiesta in collaboration with Baltic society, Persian youth with individual young musicians and Bollywood with Shanti Yoga, and Maori Fiesta with Wahine Maori Cultural Group.