Concrete Playground is an online weather vane pointing you to the cultural tornadoes that are just about to hit.
Updated daily, and with a weekly newsletter that maps out your seven day schedule, it is the work of a collective of writers and social secretaries who have a constant ear to the under and above (but never middle) ground of Sydney's creative world.
You can email us at hello@concreteplayground.com.au or send real things to Level 2, 21 Oxford St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010.
If you have any enquiries about partnering with Concrete Playground or would like us to send you a media kit please contact john@concreteplayground.com.au.
To stay up to speed with what's happening in our world, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Founder and Publisher
Rich Fogarty /// Email
Editor
Anna Harrison /// Email
Media and Advertising Director
John Buchan /// Email
Deputy Editor
Lucinda Hearn /// Email
Associate Editor
Rima Sabina Aouf /// Email
Contributors
Rich Fogarty / Founder
Rich started Concrete Playground in 2009, and is the director of the business. Previously, Rich looked after marketing and strategy for brands like Converse, Virgin and Volkswagen, most recently at Anomaly New York - one of Fast Company’s 25 Most Innovative Companies in the World. He rarely wears goggles on formal occasions, despite how it looks.
Anna Harrison / Editor
When she isn't meandering along multi-limbed career channels, dabbling in dabbling and collecting job titles like baseball cards, Anna can be found absorbed in one of the following:
googling random rubbish such as "excessive consumption of almond butter resulting in death", Inhaling almond butter, cultivating her relationship with the beach or forcing a reluctant friend with a real job to take a 2 hour lunch break & listen to her grandiloquent plans of moving to Paris and planting herself in an absurdly kitsch boho apartment in Le Marais where she will make documentary films, pen her first novel and consume inordinate amounts of goats cheese.
Lucinda Hearn / Deputy Editor
Gadabout. Hedonist. Town Planner. Plays in a band called The Understudy (formerly, Lucinda Hearn and The Pants). Works for a dotcom megalith, oft referred to as "the old dame of the internet". Knows how to use a semi-colon properly. Will tweet you to within an inch of your life.
Rima Sabina Aouf / Associate Editor
Rima’s parents did not think it was important to tell her first grade teacher that their daughter was a new migrant who did not speak English, and she instead laboured under the assumption that the child was afflicted by a grave and mysterious learning disability. Along with setting the general tone for social interaction in Rima’s life, this incident made Rima focus very hard on improving her English. She has since been an editor for Sydney Uni’s Honi Soit, arts and culture editor for FBi Magazine, reviewer and general hanger-on at FBi, and has read Gravity’s Rainbow.
Alexandra Meagher / Contributor
Alexandra is Concrete Playground's intern and sometime contributor. When not helping out around here, you can find her pining after Mad Men costumes, gallivanting around Sydney's inner east and plotting ways to move to Paris.
Alice Tynan / Contributor
Alice Tynan is a committed cinephile, relishing in everything from Armageddon to Antonioni. Her love of film, history and languages makes her dream up ideas which she likes to wrestle into screenplays.
Amelia Groom / Contributor
A freelance writer, editor and vegetable thief, Amelia recently experienced a minor catastrophe in the form of a stationary, celery and cabbage avalanche across her desk, but it's all under control now. Amelia is also the executive producer for arts & culture at FBi 94.5 and edits Big In Japan.
Angela Bennetts / Contributor
Angela is a writer, illustrator and long-time fan of Shawn Corey Carter.
Ant at Wickedpaedia.com / Contributor
Ant is an advertising creative and runs wickedpaedia.com, as well as cockshadows.blogspot with his copywriting partner. He contributes various wickidities to Concrete Playground and believes there's nothing better than shaving your day in half by finding inspiration.
Bethany Small / Contributor
Bethany spends most of her time with her head tilted to one side, making opinions in lieu of anything else. She is otherwise, or simultaneously, wearing a tiny dress, using narrative theory to explain everything, or at an art show.
Bree Pickering / Contributor
Bree is a writer (or so she says). She likes kicking taxis when they drive too close to her bicycle. She usually misses. Allergies include magnolias, gluten (there goes all the fun stuff) and elastoplast.
Danielle Hairs / Contributor
Danielle once wrote an incredibly helpful book entitled "TURPS: The unsung hero of the cupboard underneath your kitchen sink" after discovering that turps can clean everything when moving out of a not-very-well-looked-after rental in Melbourne. Despite its promise, Danielle had to abandon literary success when she learnt that turps is in fact, carcinogenic.
Dominik Krupinski / Contributor
Dominik is a liar, neurosurgeon, particle physicist and guitarist in New Jersey's favourite bar band.
Eddie Sharp / Contributor
Eddie Sharp is a writer, director and curator. He co-produces The Imperial Panda Festival, founded Erotic Fan Fiction Readings and creates theatre shows with his friends such as Wonka! and The Mad Max Remix. He is the resident art critic on FBi radio and president of The Noah Taylor Appreciation Society on Facebook.
Emma Waters Freeman / Contributor
Emma Waters is contributing editor to arts and lifestyle magazine Kilimanjaro and writes for Dazed Digital, Urban Junkies, Pages Online and NYLON. She recently worked as a copywriter for Sony Europe, and has just moved back to Sydney from London.
Evin Donohoe / Contributor
I love everything. I stay up late. I trained at acting school but have since forgotten all the classes and retained only the memories of good times and good people. It's better this way. My chief interests are these: standup comedy; plays and theatre and nonsense; writing; fun times; acting; drinking; drinking Dr Pepper; hair; novels. I enjoy films but my attention span and fidgetiness prevent me from digesting as many as I'd like. I exercise only semi-regularly. Despite some incredibly focused knowledge in a few areas of interest (and a faux-science-y mind of the type that retains everything that comes out of Dr. Karl's mouth, but nothing of high school chemistry), there are some significant gaps in my general pop culture knowledge (which means there is always more to discover).
Genevieve O'Callaghan / Contributor
Genevieve wants you to enjoy art in Sydney as much as she does. Her experience is in managing exhibitions, and while she continues to do that, Genevieve will take the time to see the shows that you should take the time to too.
Irina Belova / Contributor
Irina Belova left her home in sunny Siberia some time ago to pursue a career in studying. She loved to write rants throughout her media degree but is now only ranting part-time while retraining as a graphic designer. Ask her about typography and grid layouts.
Jai Pyne / Contributor
Jai Pyne likes long walks on the beach (really). After dropping out of art school twice - call it distraction, lack of commitment, youth and an increasing amount of time spent making music in his bedroom - he eventually started a band called The Paper Scissors: he is the main songwriter for the band and has devoted most of his life to for the past 5 years to producing, writing, singing, playing guitar, managing, and making two EPs and a full length album (he'd like to think of himself as a bit like Prince but much taller, less talented, and with less dubious a sexuality). In between TPS duties he has managed to occasionally freelance as a music and culture journalist for Lost At E Minor, Riot Magazine and others, make a solo acoustic EP as Pork Pies, and travel around the US and Asia.
Jimmy Dalton / Contributor
James is the new Vetruvian Man, but only if Vetruvian means "does a few different things with mixed levels of success". He has stage-managed musicals, directed short plays about dead babies and chalk circles (not by Brecht), performed as an amorphous singing human for a UK theatre company, manipulated chairs and blobs as a puppeteer in Sydney, pushed carts of rubbish around Penrith while dressed in Sydney Festival banners and, currently, he is contributing to the future of YOUR children as the co-author of multiple literacy educational aids.
Joel Draper / Contributor
Joel works in retail. And Hospitality. And is studying. So feel pity for him. He hates return plane flights. At the moment he likes the colour purple, and is just learning how great tea is. He hates that at 23 he would almost be considered a veteran in many sports and he loves rags to riches stories.
Kate Jinx / Contributor
A freelance designer/writer/editor/etc based between Sydney and Brooklyn, Kate spends most of her life in darkened cinemas, which explains her rather pale complexion. She has designed maps for the government, albums for musicians and written about all manner of deadbeat/upbeats. The cat in her photograph is, sadly, not real.
Michaella Solar-March / Contributor
After hosting the breakfast program on FBi Radio for 3 years, Michaella worked as a music journalist, magazine editor, publicist and more until finding a home at Spunk Records. She was also one of the founding residents of the BJB Artists' Collective, and since leaving has had a printer named in her absence. She's never used it, but people have assured her it is a good printer. Things that she loves include roasted chestnuts, red wine, family dinners, 19th century literature, magazines, and long power-walks with her housemate Katherine.
Millie Stein / Contributor
Millie moved to Sydney from Perth in 2004 and since then has attempted to write about, or at least think about writing about, almost everything she sees. Recently, Millie went to see WWE live and realised that working two jobs and going to uni is nothing compared to the amount of work that goes into winning the World Heavyweight Championship.
Nell Greco / Contributor
Nell wears many hats (not pictured) and has been known to be called a ‘Jack of all trades’ despite the fact that Jack is a boy’s name and she is a lady. When she’s not solving jig-saw puzzles, changing light-bulbs and committing many a fashion-crime, Nell enjoys cycling without a helmet (tisk tisk), making The Radio and putting words on a page in an orderly manner. She often freaks out about scary films and the dawning of a deadline.
Rhiannon Sawyer / Contributor
Rhiannon has been writing ever since she can remember, carrying a notebook everywhere she goes just like Harriet the Spy. An inner-westie (and proud of it), Rhiannon is also a passionate theatre goer, and having worked on many plays, she understands the 'fun' of late night set painting. She is currently working on a children's book, which she hopes will launch her career as a multi-millionaire.
Sophie Tarr / Contributor
Sophie is a writer, editor and all-around media whore. Raised by an ex-hippy and a mild-mannered IT consultant, she's a closeted consumerist and enjoys political chit-chat, nanna's teacups, playing board games, and art rock from the late 90s. She's less fond of potatoes, cats (and, let's face it, many cat-owners), tactlessness and using smileys in written correspondence. If she were a boy, she wouldn't mind being called Toby.
Tom Melick / Contributor
Similar to many people Tom was born without a biography, and probably still doesn't have the material to justify an exciting one. To avoid this awkwardness he prefers to reiterate the futurist and inventor Buckminster Fuller, who wisely articulated: 'I know I am not a category, a hybrid specialization, I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb - an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe, and so are you.'
Similar to many people Tom was born without a biography, and probably still doesn't have the material to justify an exciting one.
Trish Roberts / Contributor
Trischelle is a writer, musician and resident of Brethren Just Below studios, a Sydney-based artists' collective. She is inspired by grey rabbits, anime creatures, crochet, ponchos, magic, Nina Simone, the idea of Morocco and uncomfortable gaps in communication.
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