HOTA Home Company Everybody NOW! wins national impact award for Roller Coaster
HOTA Home Company Everybody NOW! was last night presented with Performing Arts Connections Australia’s Impact Award for their extraordinary community engagement work undertaken as part of their large-scale participatory arts production, Roller Coaster.
This annual national awards program celebrates excellence in performing arts leadership, new thinking and best practice, with a focus on lasting impact in communities.
Roller Coaster premiered at the HOTA Outdoor Stage in 2023 through a commissioning partnership between Bleach Festival and HOTA, Home of the Arts, where Everybody NOW! are based as a resident home company.
Created over two years, with over 70 free community creative workshops, performances and rehearsals, this innovative arts project brought together an award-winning artistic team, alongside hundreds of roller skaters from across South-East Queensland.
The outcome was a fierce, tender and explosive production with humour, heart, and a propulsive live soundtrack based on real community stories exploring the roller coaster of contemporary life.
The legacy and impacts of Roller Coaster continue with Everybody NOW! publishing a full Impact Report and Research paper documenting the projects outcomes for the community as well as recently filming a music video clip to a hero track from the show, ‘Gonna Fit’.
Images courtesy of Everybody NOW!
Roller Coaster is a production by Everybody NOW! commissioned by Bleach Festival and HOTA, Home of the Arts, with support from: the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative; the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, part of the Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy; the City of Gold Coast, Community Bank Tugun, Cocobella and Chuffed Skates.