Female Futures is a VicHealth funded Signal project that empowers and upskills young women and non-binary young people as arts leaders in their community. Signal is the City of Melbourne’s creative studio for young people 14 to 25 years. In 2019 Signal received a grant from VicHealth’s Gender Equality through the Arts program to work with young women and non-binary people and professional artists to explore gender equality through the making of short films and sound works.

Summer Shorts are short films that young people made with filmmakers Kate Lefoe and Hannah Moore as part of Signal Summer, a ten day intensive program. Watch the short films now here and learn more about the young people who made them here.

The Female Futures Creative Collective was a continuation of the Signal Summer group. Young people worked with Hannah Moore to make a film about female creatives. Just after the project started Covid-19 restrictions began, so the production was adapted to be about making creative work during isolation. You can watch the Collective film as well as the individual interviews here and learn more about the young people who made them here.

Female Futures also worked with African-Australian young women at the Drum in Carlton running podcasting and filmmaking workshops with artists Ayan Shirwa and Elizabeth Langslow. And as part of Signal Summer, Sound School ran a week long workshop called Technofeminist Futures imagining what a Gender Equal Future could sound like. In June Signal was joined by Bittersweet to host three video conversations between women of colour around hair, colourism and creative women of colour.

The Female Futures project culminated in an online Creative Futures Forum in June 2020. The forum aimed to give young women and non-binary creatives the opportunity to get tips and advice around breaking into the arts industry. The forum featured creative producers  Areej Nur , Mel Pose, Naomi Velaphi and filmmaker Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore and was facilitated by Female Futures’ Associate Producer Samira Farah. The panel session of the Creatives Futures Forum can be viewed here.