Established 1988 in Sydney, Australia
Based in Sydney

arts@STARTTS is the arts and cultural wing of STARTTS (NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors). It develops, produces, curates and enables arts practice with refugee communities and artists in partnership with mainstream venues and organisations in Australia.

Jiva Parthipan is a curator, director and community artist based in Sydney and working internationally. Trained in Classical Indian dance, gaining his Masters in Performance from Goldsmith College, London, Jiva was the first male dancer to perform with Shobana Jeyasingh, pioneering British Indian contemporary dance company. Jiva’s multidisciplinary performance works have been seen at Tate Modern; ICA London; International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts, Paris / Dublin; National Review of Live Arts, Glasgow; Performance Space, Sydney; Bone Festival Switzerland; Jomba Festival South Africa to name a few. Since migrating to Australia, credits as creative producer include Handfed, MCA; Little Baghdad with Powerhouse Youth Theatre and the Australian Museum; Dance Africa Dance, Riverside, Parramatta. As cultural development officer at STARTTS in Western Sydney, Jiva‘s work mediates artists from diverse emerging communities. As an advocate for cultural diversity in arts in Australia, Jiva was recently a panellist at the APAC conference and on Radio National’s Big Ideas. He is an alumni of Australia Council’s leadership programme and in 2020 curated PARAI YAH! for the Biennale of Sydney, and co-curated with Nina Miall OLDER THAN LANGUAGE at Salamanca Arts Centre. Stories of Kannagi, a video work creatively produced by Jiva and directed by Zanny Begg won the residency prize of the 2020 Blake Prize. Previously Jiva was an associate lecturer in performance at Central St Martin’s College, London. Essays about him appear in A Country Too Far published by Penguin Australia and Fiona Kelly McGregor’s essay collection Buried not dead.

Director-Dramaturge-Theatre-maker-Creative Producer Sally Sussman has been making intercultural performance work for over 30 years and is Artistic Director of Australian Performance Exchange, which creates multimedia performances responding to current and historic concerns of social justice, diplomacy, the climate emergency and the politics of representation.She trained as a performer for 3 years in traditional Chinese theatre and directed her first works in Mandarin at The Central Academy of Drama, Beijing and the Shanghai Conservatorium of Music.In 1991, Sally created the large outdoor/indoor event, Botanica ’91 The Chinese Teahouse for the Melbourne International Arts Festival.  In 1995 she created the ground-breaking work, Orientalia with Chinese opera artists and Australian contemporary performers at the Performance Space. In 1997 she received the Rex Cramphorn Theatre Scholarship to develop her piece, Mutations in China, Moscow and New York as Resident Artist with Mabou Mines. She has made work with artists from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan and First Nations and settler Australia at venues like the Sydney Opera House, Adelaide Festival Centre and sites around Western Sydney, Newcastle and Shanghai. In 2001 Sally was awarded an Asialink Arts Management Residency at Shanghai International Arts Festival. She was Performing Arts Manager at Perth International Arts Festival from 1999 – 2002, where she was responsible for programming work from Asia, Africa and Australia and producing work from USA, UK and Europe. In 2004 she created and directed SPEEDCITY a large-scale automotive event, for This Is Not Art Festival, Newcastle for cars, video and auto sound systems . In 2007 she co-directed Julie Janson’s The Eyes of Marege with Teater Kita Makassar (Indonesia) and Aboriginal artists for the OZAsia Festival and the Sydney Opera House. In 2010 she was awarded an Asialink residency in Sulawesi to develop a work with asylum seeker-artists from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Origin-Transit-Destination became a mobile performance event travelling across Sydney between Auburn and Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre. In 2016, she was director/dramaturge for Mother’s Spice at ICE Parramatta, a participatory multimedia work devised with four migrant/refugee women. In 2019, Sally was awarded an Asialink Global Arts Exchange residency in Taipei, where she met over 30 artists and formed a partnership to develop her latest participatory performance work, Game of I-Lands. In 2021 she was invited by SSI to mentor Iranian director, Mahnaz Giahparvar for her work at Blacktown Arts Centre as part of the Future Proof.