Make it Happen – Skills Development Program

Make It Happen is a 9-week program of weekly 2-hour sessions for creative practitioners and producers to refine their skills in making project or program ideas happen. Delivered through a project-based learning methodology, participants in the program are encouraged (though not required) to come with an idea at the ready and will utilise the skills developed throughout the 9-week program to consolidate a working project plan around their project idea.

The areas the program covers include:

• Entrepreneurship and innovation: design thinking and lean methodologies
• Contextual analysis: positioning your idea as part of a series of systems
• Stakeholder management: how to conduct stakeholder analysis to develop and manage relationships
• Understanding your ‘customer’: motivation and market research
• Strategic marketing: dynamic and targeted approaches to marketing
• Project planning: using the iron triangle principle to scaffold project plans
• Project management: budgeting, risk assessment and timelines
• Making a case: fundraising and partnership development
• The impact of learning: evaluation as an embedded process

The program will be delivered in-person across Western Sydney from 2022-2024, and will also be made available to participate online for those in the region who cannot travel to in-person sessions.

Participants will need to bring a laptop to access resources and templates used throughout the program, and will be provided with access to a secure folder with these resources prior to each session.

About your facilitator:

‍Carl Sciberras is a producer, choreographer, performer, teacher and arts advocate from Western Sydney. Carl has co-founded two successful creative enterprises: Dance Makers Collective, a not-for-profit company that produces performance works, skills development and education programs with a focus on community-led practice – and Flatline, a visual art and dance collaboration that creates performance, installation and art works that have been presented internationally.

Having worked in management and marketing positions for a range of performing arts organisations, and having produced the work of independent artists, Carl is adept at helping people navigate a range of creative business challenges. He has extensive experience in writing and assessing grant applications (as a peer at the Australia Council and an assessor for Create NSW and others), as well as in complex project management with a wide range of stakeholders. Carl effortlessly blends the ‘business’ side of company management, administration, planning and development and the ‘creative’ side as a maker and performer.

Carl is currently employed by Creative Plus Business as a Business Advisor, is on the Artform Advisory Board for Dance & Physical Theatre at Create NSW and has held various positions on boards and committees for local, state and federal government arts bodies and independent arts companies. In 2017, Carl was a participant in the Australia Council’s Future Leaders Program and in 2016 was awarded the City of Parramatta’s Creative Fellowship.

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