Reclaiming the narrative

In the spiral pattern that is my working journey, this is the one thread that connects it all.

In 2025, my modes are screen based storytelling and learning experience design – I keep coming back to these and I can’t seem to escape them, as they both bring many of my skills into the one space.

Film storytelling came about through classical music. By the time I was 19, I had been a concert pianist, taught at a piano school, and then started my own. I had parents driving 3 hours so their kids could learn from me, and I spiced up end of year concerts with surprising duos and fun kids pieces. Classical piano taught me discipline, grit, and that the nuance of detail matters the most.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Producing community music events forced me to create show programs, posters and cards. The Adobe suite is much easier to learn than music software, and this evolved into freelance design work as Aural Illusions, with clients such as Precedent, City Live Fox Studios and Faan Magazine.

But it was when I decided to do a soundtrack for a short film, that the spark truly came. Through fortuitous circumstances I ended up making the film as well, hustling for free gear and a linear edit in an SVHS suite, and working many 12–6am slots in the music studio. I was hooked. The nuances of detail in each mode of expression contributing to a new meaning. And who knew this would turn into short film festival success, a stint at Matchbox Pictures, developing features at the Binger Filmlab and Aurora Scriptwriting program, doing the AFM, EFM, Berlin and Rotterdam IFFR circuit

Life took a turn in 2017 and I pivoted my focus to Learning Experience Design, joining my teaching path with screen production as the technology converged. As Strike a Chord, my team quickly grew to keep up with incoming business, and I’m proud to have served Australian clients such as government departments DCJ, Planning, Treasury, WaterNSW and Harvey Norman, and even more prouder to co-own and steer the learning ship empowering my team for RETSNSW.

Now, I'm reclaiming my personal narrative through developing screen stories and images about being a Filipina-Australian through the lens of ancestral, pre and post colonial roots. I can see how all these seemingly disparate dots of my life are connected. And as I write the stories and express through arts and learning, I discover they are both experiences that can transform you, the audience, and in creating them, they transform me.