Awesome Black

Founded by Travis De Vries, a Gamilaroi and Darug multidisciplinary artist and arts leader, Awesome Black works across storytelling, music, publishing, and cultural production, centring First Nations decision-making from concept to delivery.

In our latest Platform Series, we speak with Travis about how Awesome Black has grown from a community-led network into a Foundation and Studio working in tandem. We discuss collaboration as shared responsibility, the move from representation to authorship, and the launch of the Voices Rising Fund, a new model that invests directly in First Nations publishing and music projects to build long-term cultural and financial impact.

What sparked Awesome Black? How did it begin?

Awesome Black started a couple of years after I had quit my job at the Opera House and began pursuing my creative practice full time. As part of that, I was working on a couple of podcast projects and getting more involved in online communities supporting audience and creative growth. I found that there were a lot of communities based around genre, and many ‘community-style’ podcast networks. 

I found that there were a lot of communities based around genre, and many ‘community-style’ podcast networks. I took inspiration from that for the original version of Awesome Black, an online network for First Nations creatives, sharing resources, growing audiences, collective bargaining and supporting each other.

Over a few years, we’ve changed and refocused quite a bit, but a lot of the same passion still drives what we do and why we do it. We now have two sides of Awesome Black: the Foundation, which continues the mission of supporting First Nations creatives, and Awesome Black Studio, where we do our curation, production work, consulting, and original IP development projects.

How would you describe the mission or driving ethos behind the studio?

Awesome Black Studio exists to shape contemporary culture through a First Nations lens; not as a filter or aesthetic, but as a framework for truth, sovereignty, and creative excellence.

We build, curate, and create work that moves beyond representation toward authorship, where Blak voices define their own narratives, aesthetics, and industries. The Studio sits at the intersection of art, music, design, and storytelling, bringing a bold, intelligent, and culturally sovereign approach to every project.

Our ethos is simple: make powerful work that shifts culture. 

Image: Awesome Black Rising Voices Launch, The Ideas Dome, Tumbalong Park, Oct 2025 | Photo by Teresa Tan.

How has your own multidisciplinary art practice influenced its direction and methods?

It’s a pretty direct line. I’ve always approached my creative practice as a concept artist - the idea leads, everything else follows. The concept determines the medium, genre, and audience; I choose whatever form best serves the idea, branching out and collaborating as needed.

Awesome Black operates in much the same way - concept is the driver. The key difference is that collaboration sits beside it as an equal force. The studio has become a vehicle for larger ideas, where the creative power of collaboration allows me to realise concepts far beyond what I could achieve alone. In that sense, I’ve learned to give up control in order to build something bigger than myself.

Awesome Black works across art, sound, publishing and live experiences. What have been some of your favourite projects so far?

We’ve had an incredibly busy few years since starting in 2020, with lots of ups and quite a few downs. My favourite work is always the one I’m working on at the moment. I get energy from creating and thinking creatively, bringing all of my previous learnings into something new. A few highlights: 

Echoes of the Block: This is probably the project I’m most proud of creatively. It all kicked off when a bunch of young hip hop artists wanted to jump on stage and rap over backing tracks at a showcase we were putting on at SXSW Sydney 2024. They couldn’t because our venue licence only went till 10pm, so I came up with an idea we pitched to Carriageworks. We pulled together all of those artists along with a bunch of local heavy hitters and session musicians to play all of the backing tracks live and created a conceptual live show that looked like a house party/radio show in two days. I painted sets, DJ’d, danced, and even spat some bars with the artists. It was a blast and I’m thrilled that it’s coming back again in 2026.

Petroglyph: Our deep-dive creative podcast where artists delve into their own creative process and where their ideas come from. I love learning about what moves other creatives to make.

Yarn Quest — Podcast & Book Series: This piece of work is really special and had a hand in from so many of Awesome Black’s extended creative community, including my family. My nephew Tane and nibling P feature as characters in the book, and my partner Jade is the illustrator. It’s the project that inspired the model for the Voices Rising Fund, and one of the few Awesome Black projects where my creative hand wasn’t used at all.

Image: Echos of the Block. 

Collaboration is central to your work. What makes a partnership authentic and culturally aligned?

This is something that gets brought up a lot, particularly in our consulting work. We help a lot of organisations create authentic collaborations and partnerships with artists and communities. For us, it’s about coming together around a shared idea and acknowledging what each person or entity is bringing to the project, as well as making sure that while everyone is remunerated properly, the collaboration itself is not transactional.

Awesome Black operates as both a studio and a foundation. How do these two arms strengthen each other?

A lot of the work we do on the Studio side of Awesome Black is driven by working on specific projects and making really cool moments happen in culture. This helps us develop and build our playbook and our processes, making sure they’re tight, as well as helping us build a public and commercial profile. This, in turn, supports the Foundation because we donate a lot of the profit from the Studio into the Foundation, and we also all do volunteer hours for the Foundation. It’s not a requirement of working at Awesome Black, but everyone who does work here understands the importance of why we’re doing what we do.

The Foundation is where we are able to really support individual First Nations artists to have agency over their work. It’s where we champion projects and artists that we believe in and that will contribute to the cultural fabric of our society for the long-term benefit of First Nations people. Obviously, this is a good thing, and it reflects on the Studio through the positive impact we have.

 Image: Echos of the Block.

We’re excited about the recent launch of the Voices Rising Fund. What inspired it, and how does it differ from traditional arts funding?

The Voices Rising Fund came about during a time when Awesome Black Studio and the Awesome Black Foundation weren’t doing so well financially. The Studio had grown too quickly, and we had our focus spread across too many projects, not really knowing who we were or where we were headed.

I was personally spread really thin, both creatively and with my time.

In the Foundation, we had been trying to focus on heaps of different artists all at once. We’d been running a closed First Nations Patreon service (The AB Club) but weren’t getting the financial support needed to sustain any of the creatives properly, nor were we bringing in new donors. We’d tried to branch out into offering agency and artist management services to help bring in more work for the artists and cover some of our costs. Long story short, it was too much. So we had to put the Foundation on ice for a little while (I thought about closing both sides of the organisation quite a few times).

During the hiatus period, I sat down and came up with a plan (a design thinking session), working from the problems with the previous model. We were trying to help everyone to our own detriment. We didn’t have the resources needed to support the people we were trying to help, and the Studio work was essentially propping up the Foundation financially and taking all of the capital the Studio needed to grow sustainably.

The plan became: let’s try working with far fewer artists at any one time (one or two max). Let’s prioritise getting the resources to work with them properly through larger donations that could make a bigger impact and come from a self-sustaining investment. And let’s use the Studio in a different way to support the Foundation, rather than bleeding the Studio dry, let’s draw on the Studio’s ability to activate some really big-name partners and cool projects to get them on board to partner with the Foundation in an authentic way.

This design thinking session became the Voices Rising Fund. We built it into a pitch deck and started approaching some partners and potential donors and we’re very lucky to receive a one-off large donation from an anonymous donor.

The Voices Rising Fund differs from traditional arts funding because it’s not a grant, it’s an investment in artists’ projects, specifically in work that can be published and reproduced. We call out for pitches (open all year round) and select two applications from artists, writers, or musicians, with publishing projects (music and books) that we believe in and want to support.

We then take those projects to our publishing partners. We have a pool of willing partners across the book and music industries and a Principal Partner in Allen & Unwin. The project needs to go through the regular acquisitions process with the publishers, and then the Awesome Black Foundation invests in the project, taking on the financial part of the traditional ‘advance’ from the publisher as well as helping with promotion and other expenses.

The artist then doesn’t have to pay back the advance (as they normally would), so they start receiving royalties immediately from the sales of their book. They get all the benefits of working with major publishers and receive additional financial impact. The Awesome Black Foundation takes a 2% royalty stake in the final work, with the proceeds going back into the pot to support new Voices Rising Fund projects.

So it’s kind of an investment deal where it becomes a win for everyone involved. Publishers get to see new and interesting First Nations work. Artists get to build a better financial base for their creativity and contribute to  The Awesome Black Foundations ongoing legacy of First Nations creativity and physical artefacts of culture. 

Homesick is the first recipient. Can you tell us more about them and what stood out about their project?

While Homesick is the first recipient of the Voices Rising Fund, they didn’t come through the now-open, regular call-out for projects. As part of the Voices Rising Fund, we’re also strategically able to support artists and projects that we identify should be invested in - similar to the way a label or publisher would. Homesick are a local Sydney-based First Nations punk/hardcore band that have had a long connection with Awesome Black.

I met Peter (Pete) a few years ago at a hardcore event called Back on the Map, where the band No Apologies were playing before Speed. Pete’s band, Homesick, were opening the day in another room, and I did the Acknowledgement of Country before they played. I didn’t realise how many other Blakfullas were part of the scene, and it opened my eyes to what was possible. Watching Homesick play for the first time kinda ripped through me - their sound and lyrics really smash a part of you. Awesome Black put them on the same SXSW Sydney showcase bill that inspired Echoes of the Block.

They recently played BIGSOUND 2025 in Brissy and were a standout for their realness and the way they connect with audiences. I know a lot of the right people saw them play, and I know they’ve got an audience waiting for a project from them.

They’ve released two EPs previously, and the Voices Rising Fund is supporting them to create their first album. It’s a project they’ve already started working on, and they have a lot of good, solid people backing them to make an incredible piece of new First Nations music. We’re partnering with Bad Apples Music to invest in the project through the Voices Rising Fund.

Image: Homesick. 

How can artists apply to the Voices Rising Fund, and what kinds of projects are you hoping to see come through?

We’ve tried to make it as simple as possible. The Awesome Black website has all the information artists will need to apply. They can fill in a form on the website and essentially pitch their project. Again, it’s not like a traditional grant fund. We want to see why we should invest in the project. Pitches should be creative and move the assessment team emotionally. We’re asking people to think about the audience for their work and where it sits in the creative landscape.

We’re hoping to see projects that have contemporary cultural impact, that speak to the now, and that have the reach to impact audiences in the future. We’re hoping that artists step up to the challenge of the Voices Rising Fund and blow us away. That doesn’t mean projects need to be huge or grand in scale, the smallest, most intimate pieces of writing and music are often the most powerful. We’re hoping for music and writing that blend genre; works can be photography books or poetry. The scope is broad, and what gets funded will depend on the artists who pitch, as well as on the assessment panel and publishing partners.

The assessment panel will be made up of Awesome Black Foundation staff, board members, and connected artists, as well as representatives from our publishing partners. We want to make sure everyone has buy-in on a project so we can champion it and ensure both the projects and the artists are successful.

What impact do you hope the Voices Rising Fund will have moving forward for both artists and audiences?

We’re hoping that the Voices Rising Fund becomes part of bringing new work into the world that has a cultural impact, that we shift the needle on what audiences can expect to see. I’ve personally always felt that First Nations culture can never stagnate, that we as artists and makers need to continue to grow, and that we need to bring audiences along with us.

For artists, we hope to build a stronger financial base for First Nations creatives. We know that every dollar given to First Nations artists has a huge impact, both personally and within their wider communities. Artists will turn the impact of the Voices Rising Fund into something greater than I could ever imagine.

Image: Luke de Zilva & Travis De Vries | Photo by Traianos Pakioufakis

THE VOICES RISING FUND

The Voices Rising Fund is a major new initiative from the Awesome Black Foundation, designed to elevate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices by supporting the creation of publishable works across literature and music of all styles and genres. A maximum of $60,000 is available each year to be distributed to selected projects.

How It Works

The Voices Rising Fund invests directly in the development of artists' projects, providing resources and support to bring them to fruition. Awesome Black acts as a cultural and creative intermediary, working with record labels and book publishers, including our Principal Publishing Partner (Books) Allen & Unwin, to help find the right home for your project.

Key Dates

There is no closing date for the Voices Rising Fund. Artists should pay close attention to the eligibility and submission guidelines, and apply with as much information as possible about their project or idea including the audience of the project and its position in the market.

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Platform is an interview series by ArtSupport Australia, where founder Sophia D'Urso chats to great people doing important, innovative, and impactful work in the arts. From independent artists to cultural leaders and creative entrepreneurs, these conversations spotlight those shaping a stronger, more sustainable arts sector.