Levitate Mentorship (2025)

LEVITATE is a mentorship program for emerging artists from Western Sydney aged 16-27 living with disability, chronic illness or mental ill-health.

In 2025, we had four mentees who were each mentored by professional artists from these communities over seven weeks to develop a piece of work. The mentorship culminated in a work-in-progress showing held at Bankstown Arts Centre.

This project gratefully received funding through the Canterbury Bankstown ClubGRANTS scheme, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation through the Eldon & Anne Foote Trust, and the NSW Government.

2025 Mentors and Mentees

Meet our 2025 Mentees & hear about what they worked on!

Defne Huzmeli

DEFNE is a queer Turkish-Australian multidisciplinary artist with a style that’s definitely hers. She is the Creative Director & Host of West Side Poetry, a monthly hybrid slam based in Parramatta and formerly Creative Producer at Word Travels. DEFNE graduated with distinction in a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing & Theatre) & Fine Arts (Photography & Graphic Design) from UNSW in 2023.

She has been published in UNSWeetend & Tharunka and featured across Story Week, ‘23 Adelaide Writers’ Week, State Library NSW, Art Gallery NSW, UNSW, Enough Said, Bread & Butter Poetry Slam, Poetry Sydney and more. Her team’s performance at the Bankstown Grand Slam at the Sydney Opera House won bronze. She performed her own show of poetry & song, DEFNE Opens Up, at Flight Path Theatre.

At the heart of DEFNE’s work is heart. She explores relationships in all their forms, be it romantic, familial, platonic, or with ourselves and mental health, abuse, and culture.

At the LEVITATE Showcase, DEFNE presented her work, ‘Stomach It,’ a poetic and musical autobiographical solo play about a girl’s high school experience, exploring what can be stomached.

Airlie Benson

Airlie is an actor and writer from Dharug Land (Western Sydney), with a passion for storytelling on both stage and screen. She holds a Diploma of Theatre & Screen (Acting) and a Bachelor of Film and has trained at a plethora of institutions including Stella Adler Studio NYC, Lisa Robertson Studio LA and NIDA. Her acting credits include ‘Living With It’ (dir. Mobina Rowhani) which premiered at Flickerfest, and on stage in 3 x sold-out seasons of the feminist comedy play, ‘Tough Titties’ at KXT and Factory Theatre. Her credits also include ‘Laura Wingfield’ in The Glass Menagerie, ‘Lady Macbeth’ in ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Ms Linde’ in ‘A Doll’s House’.

She is currently developing her play Operation Mountjoy under the mentorship of award-winning playwright Donna Abela through her writing mentorship with NIDA & NToP, and was shortlisted for the Katie Lees Fellowship for this work. This year, she was selected for Accessible Arts’ Next Level Playwriting Mentorship, where she is developing her play 040733.

Airile is working on her play Intrusive Thoughts, which was previously selected for the RAW TREATS development program presented by Subtle Nuance Theatre, an in progeess reading was performed at the LEVITATE Showcase.

“A teenage girl must overcome the-not-so-little voice in her head in order to mend her relationship with her mother.”

Alysson Zamora

Alysson Zamora is a photographer and filmmaker living and working on darug land. Her practice is a search for moments of connection and an invitation to reflect, both for herself and others. She is drawn to the layered stories carried in diasporic bodies, especially those tied to her Peruvian heritage, stories that live in place, memory and sharing.

The intersection of her Peruvian roots and her life in Australia informs her approach to storytelling, where she often finds herself shifting between the memories that form her identity and the unspoken traumas that ripple through bloodlines, demanding to be felt and understood.

At the LEVITATE Showcase, Alysson presented her work, ‘Qué recuerdas?’, a project that blends photography and documentary.

In her words, “This work traces the quiet weight of generational memory that lives in the people who remain. It is an intimate reflection on grief and love, the guiding forces that move us to remember, to speak and to hold close what time and violence have tried to erase. My Tía, Leonor Zamora Concha, was one of nearly 70,000 lives taken during Peru’s 20-year internal conflict. “

Safa Al-Bekaa

Safa Al-bekaa is an Iraqi-Australian multidisciplinary artist whose creative practice spans visual arts, dance, writing, acting, and advocacy. Passionate about storytelling and community, she has collaborated with Outloud Arts on Stories From Here: An Audio Tour of Bankstown and serves on their Youth Advisory Group, fostering arts accessibility for young people.

Beyond her artistic work, Safa is a dedicated volunteer and advocate in health and arts initiatives, driven by a commitment to empowering her community. She is currently pursuing a degree in Occupational Therapy, aiming to merge creativity and care in meaningful, collaborative work. When not drawing, dancing, or volunteering, Safa can be found brainstorming her next project, always with a community-centered vision.

At the LEVITATE Showcase Safa presented her work, Childhood Friend, a large-scale, mixed-media work exploring the grief of losing a childhood pet. Using ink, pencil, and collage, including personal photos and found imagery, the piece captures the sudden absence left behind and the attempt to adapt to loss with pre-existing depression, anxiety and burnout.

Our mentors

Mohammad Awad (3wadi): Poetry/Music

Mohammad Awad (AKA 3AWADI) is an award-winning Writer/Director/Poet/Playwright/Musician who’s running out of ways to express himself. Writing and directing short films such as ‘The Flower’, ‘The Messenger’ and ‘Beauty Marks’, published in many acclaimed books such as the anthology series ‘Arab, Australian, Other’, they are also one of the proud editors and authors of the award-winning poetry collection- ‘Admissions’. A development and reading of Mohammads play ‘Harami’ debuted at Sydney Theatre Company in 2023, alongside award-winning director Tasnim Hossain.

Christopher Bryant: Theatre/Writing

Dr. Christopher Bryant is an award-winning playwright, performer, and author. He has worked with a range of companies including Griffin Theatre, Merrigong Theatre, Accessible Arts, fortyfivedownstairs, Malthouse Theatre, the State Library of Victoria, and La Mama. Recent work includes his “rich & textured” play The Other Place (Flora Georgiou) written his SLV Creative Fellowship, which debuted at Theatre Works in 2019, and his “coup of pop culture [and] social satire” Home Invasion at Old 505 in 2018 (The Buzz from Sydney). He’s been a two-time finalist for the Griffin Award (Parallel Play, 2024, and Home Invasion, 2015), been mentored by Nicola Gunn and Amelia Roper, and been developed through the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha (Disinhibition, 2018).

Chloe Debrito: Film

Chloe de Brito is an Australian Directors Guild-award winning director who crafts visually hypnotic, visceral worlds that unite the imaginary with the real. Chloe works across commercial, art, music videos and narrative short form.

Chloe’s expressionist short Pink Reef premiered at the Oscar-Qualifying 70th Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), has exhibited at the Powerhouse Museum and has been curated by ACMI at the BFI Southbank in London, as part of the You Beauties: New Australian Cinema programme in February 2023. Pink Reef has screened in festivals internationally including Oscar-Qualifying St Kilda Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, Morbido Fest and Fantaspoa.

Chloe has directed music videos for an international slate of artists, which have gained international features, Best Video by Rolling Stone and Made In The West Film Festival, and ‘Best Direction’ from the ADG and the Clipped Music Video Awards.

Emmanuel Asante: Visual Arts

Emmanuel Asante is a young Western Sydney artist from Ghana in West Africa, arriving in Australia in 2015. Emmanuel is highly influenced by his culture, Frida Kahlo and his artist-mentor Abdul Abdullah. Self-taught, Emmanuel commenced painting and drawing to deal with depression and personal experiences. He is a recent recipient of the 2024 Kirk Robson Award for Creative Arts & Cultural Development (Creative Australia), and was featured in the story ‘Behind every number is a student’, published in the The Age newspaper. Emmanuel is an artist and board member at We Are Studios.