Alia Gabres

Alia Gabres is a Melbourne based creative producer, cultural broker and storyteller.

She has worked with diverse and creative communities in Melbourne in various roles such as Lead Creative Producer for Industry and Creative Initiatives at the Footscray Community Arts Centre, and Lead Youth Arts and Events Producer for the City of Brimbank.

She has recently completed a residency at the New Jersey Performing Arts Centre in the USA, exploring new frameworks for broader and more diverse engagement in the arts.

She has designed and delivered innovative programming such as the ‘West Writers’ programme in Melbourne's Western suburbs, and worked as Lead Producer on the innovative the ‘Creatively Ageing’ programme and the international Women of the World Festival in 2017.

In 2016 she was invited to attend the Makassar International Writers Festival in Indonesia and 2015 saw Alia awarded as one of Melbourne Writers Festivals ’30 Under 30’, attend the Africa Writes Festival in the UK and complete a residency at the School for Social Sciences in Eritrea.

In 2014 Alia was in residence in Indonesia with Kunci Cultural Institute delivering a project that mapped traditional stories and recipes. In the same year she was program coordinator on the Global Express program that launched ‘Dialect’ a multi-lingual publication for emerging writers.

In 2013 Alia was invited as teaching artist with the Minor Disturbance Youth Slam team in Denver Colorado and co-produced an intergenerational narrative project in California. 2013 also saw Alia’s poetry video ‘Cotton Summer Dresses’ selected as a finalist of the National Blake Prize.

Alia has a Masters in Community and Cultural development at the Victorian College of the Arts. Alia is also currently a member of the Program Advisory Committee for the Creative Writing Degree at RMIT University. She has sat on Literature, Community Arts and Cultural Development and Multi-Art Form assessment panels for Creative Victoria and the national funding body for the arts, the Australia Council.