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Meet Melissa Parkinson!

Greetings and hello all fellow artists!

Melissa Parkinson here - your new Communications Convenor

(and Vice Pres) for 2025!

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Melissa Parkinson, 2025

Reaching out and wishing you all a wonderful creative season ahead. I hope you find this newsletter’s new look and feel inviting and inspiring following Mary Lewin’s huge and wonderful contribution to the former newsletter in previous years. I have big shoes to fill!

This “blog-style” newsletter you now see, will be constantly developed to serve you all, so if you have any ideas, would like to collaborate, or even provide some friendly feedback, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

What I work on and collaborate with:

  • Social Media Content

  • Short and long-form videos

  • Design Layout - social media and promotional material

  • Articles and Stories

  • Image library

  • GEAS Newsletter sendout

A little about me…past to present

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Melissa performing with her originals band Finding Alice - playing for Battle of the Bands Semi Finals at the Espy, January 2013

Melissa and her first entries (mixed media) into GEAS annual Exhibition, 2022

I never saw myself as an arty kid growing up. I coloured outside the lines. So, my creative journey began by discovering my voice while singing ‘Silent Night’ with my cousin one Christmas when I was just three. Music was always something I resonated with and I worked on my craft as a singer when no one was watching. And from there on in came the ‘contagious' enthusiasm’ which seemed to guide my path as a ‘creative’.

I discovered a passion and love for writing at a young age. Hence I am now introducing myself as the “voice” behind the stories shared in this season's edition of GEAS newsletter in 2025. I enjoyed sharing my stories with other kids in my class, just the way I now enjoy sharing stories with each one of you artists through this blog and newsletter.

A weekend fan of watching movie-making documentaries as a kid, with a love for capturing the heart of communities and people’s stories as an adult, you will now see me filming and posting videos and reels from time to time on our social media pages.

So from these childhood curiosities, came this eventual embrace for artistic and creative expression in so many forms.

As a result, I studied Professional Writing and Editing and a Bachelor of Multimedia during a time the media industry was truly changing. So much of my initial learning was like a baptism of fire. As a result, you might find me excited to try out new, exciting, and meaningful ways to deliver what we now elusively call ‘content’...as opposed to the traditional media channels of yesteryear.

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Melissa working on illustrations for a children's picture book concept, 2019

In between this, I also dabbled in community radio and TV, wrote for various publications, did a lot of learning, and eventually completed a Master of Media where I flew out to Mumbai and New Delhi on a field trip to India for a Bollywood study tour! During my Masters I also focussed on less traditional, and conventional styles of narrative and included elements like scent into a word-of-mouth, history-based exhibition concept. 

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Melissa at the Taj Mahal in Agra, 2016

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Melissa with RMIT Master of Media students and veteran Bollywood actor Prem Chopra in his home, 2016

Not one to forget my dreams, as an adult I’ve also further explored songwriting and gigging, music projects, and I have explored different dance styles, and performed in showcases and a community production in a principal role. I have even returned back to my childhood love of writing children’s stories, this time with illustrations I’m a little more encouraged by. I have also enjoyed revamping furniture and have had a bit of a play with surface pattern design for fabrics.

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Reupholstered and revamped chair by Melissa with original surface pattern print in "Gumnuts of Glen Eira", 2023

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Revamped chest of drawers by Melissa catered for music storage, 2022

To make sense of it all…

As a developing artist,  I love welding and stitching “my creative worlds” together so they dance and sing together to tell a story. In essence, I still colour outside the lines.  I find art fascinating when it makes me think, feel, wonder, and ponder. So that’s always been my goal no matter what I do with it.

Professionally, I have dedicated much of my time to community and charity non-profit work, and apart from volunteering with Glen Eira Artists Society, I work for a major charity’s Research Team as a Communications and Engagement Advisor, assisting them with showcasing data outcomes through various forms of storytelling in the digital space.

To conclude…

I know so many of you already, and if we haven’t chatted before please feel welcome to say hello. And know you are very welcome to collaborate with us to make our communication tools helpful so all of us as a society can be engaged, inspired, delighted, and celebrated in our creative endeavours. Hopefully telling you a bit about my journey will encourage you to come share a part of yours with us, too.

Together as an art community, we can, like many hands, make light work.

Wishing you all a wonderful creative season ahead,

Melissa

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© 2017 All artwork on this website is copyrighted by the individual members of the Glen Eira Artists Society Inc - ABN 72 436 357 743

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