INTENSIVE MENTORSHIP
The 3-month Intensive Mentorship is designed for artists to work as part of a team to nurture their concepts into tangible immersive artwork prototypes. The artist’s idea leads the project, supported by an industry mentor and the technical expertise of a creative team.
Where needed, participating artists can be paired by PICA with developers, technologists and/or programmers to form a team suitable to their proposal. Alternatively, artists may already have a preferred team they’d like to include in their application.
Over a three-month period, each team engages in self-directed and collaborative research and production towards their prototype’s development. Participants have the opportunity to test and iterate their concepts and receive feedback from a variety of guest mentors through regular cohort meetings.
This program acts as a laboratory-style development period for artists looking to work in an interdisciplinary way to design, test, prototype and evaluate an idea and expand their practice.
Participants meet in person and online throughout the three months to share their progress. At the conclusion of the program, an Open Studio event is held at PICA where participants share their work with industry representatives and the general public.
2026 INTENSIVE MENTORSHIP
From April-July, the 2026 Intensive Mentorship program paired selected lead artists with industry mentors and technologists to experiment, test ideas and share progress through monthly peer-led sessions, culminating in an Open Studio. The 2026 selected lead artists were: Emerald Lay, a Perth/Boorloo-based artist of Burmese heritage whose multidisciplinary practice explores diasporic identity through visual art and immersive media; James McMillan, a WA‑based performance maker and WAAPA PhD candidate examining the socio‑spatial dynamics of cruising through performance and locative audio AR and; Ken Meyer, an artist of German/Japanese descent who creates immersive digital and physical installations that explore inner worlds through light, sound and sculpture.
The 2026 mentor cohort brought together leading practitioners working across immersive and emerging technologies, including creative coder Steve Berrick, creative technologist and XR producer Natalie Marinho and virtual reality and mixed-media artist Poppy van Oorde-Grainger. Each mentor worked closely with the lead artist and technical team, offering tailored critical, conceptual and technical guidance to ensure the development of an immersive arts prototype that responded directly to the artist’s project.
2025 INTENSIVE MENTORSHIP
Selected through a state-wide call-out, artists teams were paired with industry mentors and creative technologists to develop an artwork prototype. Over the course of three-months, each team experimented with new technological mediums to explore how technology can transform the ways audiences encounter ideas. Additionally, they gained hands-on experience with tools such as photogrammetry, Unity, FMOD and audio software, and were introduced to production workflows that they could carry forward into their own practices.
At the end of Mentorship, PICA presented the boorda yeyi Intensive Mentorship Open Studio where audiences were able to experience each team’s work-in-progress for the first time, gaining rare insight into the interplay of technology, creativity and human labour that shaped each artwork prototype. Each team presented on their project and discussed the collaborative processes involved and learning outcomes. Various industry representatives attended the Open Studio event, providing an important interface for critical feedback and networking.
The three prototypes included Nagula Girradiny / Oceans of the Moon by Michael Jalaru Torres, a Djugun–Yawuru man with connections to the Gooniyandi, Jabbir Jabbir and Ngarluma peoples, which examined First Nations lunar creation narratives through mixed reality; ARia: Song Unseen by Cassandra Tytler, Catherine Gough-Brady and W. Sze Tsang, which addressed environmental impact through augmented reality and spatial sound; and The Machine Needs a Heart by Colin Smith and Jen Datu, which investigated dystopian narratives through a virtual reality karaoke environment. These works were presented at the boorda yeyi Open Studio on 26 July, 2025.
