Activity: With Griffith University and SAE Brisbane’s support, sound recordist Alicia Butterworth and sound designer Tfer Newsome will oversee a series of training workshops for under-represented emerging female and non-binary screen-sound professionals to teach critical skills and encourage career development and longevity. The workshops will focus on sound for drama, location sound for documentary and unscripted TV, future sound, post-sound, and the sound business. Each workshop will be delivered to 15-20 attendees to allow hands-on access to equipment. In conjunction with these workshops, a kit of equipment will be made available to emerging sound practitioners on low to no budget projects so that they can access industry-standard equipment as they learn the craft and establish their networks.

Listen to Alicia Butterworth discuss the project with Annie McLoughlin for 3CR’s Showreel program here.

Outcome: The originally proposed a series of 5 workshops was able to expand to a series of 8 after Screenrights grant funding was followed by additional sponsorship and in-kind support. These were run in January and February of 2024 with 91 attendees and excellent feedback from participants. A kit of professional sound gear was created and has been heavily borrowed by emerging sound practitioners over the past two years. The ‘Lyrebirds’ group of female, gender non-conforming and transgender soundos is still growing with 53 current members (as at December 2025) and an active community which provides job-sharing, trouble-shooting and camaraderie. “Our members love Lyrebirds and are very grateful to have support, access to equipment and training. I can say that there are many more gender-diverse sound practitioners because of Lyrebirds.” – Alicia Butterworth