Esem Projects – Media and Design

Esem Projects create experiential storytelling and digital arts platforms in public spaces. Drop us a line

MoreLess

Esem Projects is a creative place-making practice driven by public purpose.

We design and deliver activations, strategies and events that bring communities together and celebrate the stories and histories that make them unique.

Led by Dr. Sarah Barns and Michael Killalea, Esem Projects draws on a wide network of creative and technical specialists to deliver highly curated place-based programs, reflecting our expertise as digital producers, urban strategists, storytellers and designers.

These streets are our interfaces, these building are our canvas.

Thanks for stopping by.

Our story

Esem Projects is a public art & design practice offering specialised services across public art curation and production, visual & communication design, interpretation research & placemaking strategy.

We create innovative storytelling and interpretation projects for the built environment, working across the mediums of large scale digital projection, public murals, permanent interpretation design and installation media.

Every one of our projects offers unique ways of engaging with the stories, the historical collections, and the people that shape a place and its identity over time.

Our services

Curatorial

We work with artists and creatives to deliver site-specific public art platforms and place-making events. See Rutherford’s Den, Bathurst Winter Festival, and Stockland Wetherill Park.

Design & Branding

We deliver design services across print, digital and experiential media. We also collaborate with a network of freelancers and collaborators to deliver bespoke branding and visual communications services for museums, universities and other corporate clients.

Community Engagement & Place-Making

Many of our projects involve intensive community engagement using a mix of digital media platforms and personal collaborative workshops. See Portraits of Memory and Barangaroo Welcome Festival.

In 2015 we developed the ‘Storybox‘ container as a vehicle that combines place activation with community storytelling and interpretation.

Technical Solutions & Audio-visual Services

We specify technical solutions for interpretation projects and project manage permanent and temporary audio-visual installations. See Rutherford’s Den, City Evolutions, and ANU Mt Stromlo Observatory.

We also maintain a small inventory that allows us to produce bespoke outdoor installations, and have good relationships with external technical media companies that allow us to deliver large-scale events and installations.

Research and digital storytelling

All of our projects are research intensive, and we’re always exploring new formats and techniques for storytelling, spanning mobile media and augmented reality platforms, soundscape and installation design.

Why we do what we do

Ever wished a building could talk? A street could whisper its hidden mysteries to you? Digital technologies are opening up all kinds of new ways of interacting with each other, with our environments and, not least, the stories of our past. Museums and libraries continue to invest significant resources digitising our cultural heritage. And meanwhile, while we may be drawn to social media, we still love to gather in places. Places, their stories, and the people that have shaped them, still matter. Drawing from the photographs, sound recordings, films and stories of our institutions and the community, we like to trace stories and people across time, and across the built and recorded geographies of a city. Doing so, we hope we can enliven not only our knowledge of the past, but our connection to places today.

The Team

Esem Projects is led by Sarah Barns and Michael Killalea. We work with a network of regular collaborators that allow us to program, curate and produce multi-platform projects from conception to delivery.

Dr. Sarah Barns is a strategist, digital creative producer and researcher with close to two decades’ worth of varied experience working across digital & creative media, public policy and urban research fields. Sarah’s former roles span strategy, research, consulting and production for organisations such as the ABC, UTS Creative Industries Innovation Centre, National ICT Australia (now Data61 / CSIRO), the Australia Council for the Arts, and Arup. She is proud to have created the ABC’s first location-based mobile service in 2008 with Sydney Sidetracks, and continues to explore the potentials (and pitfalls) of digital disruption in cities through Cities Plus Data.

Sarah was awarded her PhD in urban informatics & digital storytelling in 2010 and holds an Urban Studies Foundation Research Fellowship at the University of Western Sydney. Her archive blog from an earlier era of her digital storytelling is at Sites&Sounds. On Twitter she’s at @_sarahbarns, and you can also find her on LinkedIn.

Michael Killalea has been a designer & illustrator for over 20 years. He is a former Art Director for The Bulletin Magazine and Director at creative agency killanoodle, where his clients spanned key fashion, retail and media clients including Herringbone, Ginger & Smart, Creative Magazine, the City of Sydney, Marina Mirage and more. Find Michael on LinkedIn.

Our network of collaborators

Leif Wilson: Technical A/V Manager and Events
Gary Sinclair (Tactile Music)
Elin Matilda Andersson: Design and Illustration
Anna Fraser: Visual FX
Mike Daly: Visual FX
Naomi Russo: Writing & Research
Rebecca Hawcroft: Cultural heritage interpretation
Orlando Norrish: Props and installation design

Projects

View our Projects here.

Selected Clients

GOVERNMENT

Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
Enterprise Connect / The Creative Industries Innovation Centre
The City of Sydney
The City of Newcastle
Inner West Council
The City of Kiama
Bathurst Regional Council
Port Macquarie-Hastings Council

CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS
Sydney Opera House
Surry Hills Neighbourhood Centre
Transmission Films
Museum of Contemporary Arts
ABC
SBS
The Arts Centre of Christchurch

CORPORATE
Stockland
Lend Lease
MLC Centre (QIC / GPT)
Tanner Kibble Denton Architects
Paul Kelly Designs
Heffer Station Winery
Westfield
Arup

UNIVERSITIES
Australian National University
The University of Newcastle
The University of Technology Sydney
Western Sydney University
University of New South Wales

PARTNERS & PROJECT SUPPORTERS
National Film and Sound Archive
State Library of NSW
Sydney Living Museums
Digital NZ / National Digital Forum
Powerhouse Museum
ABC Archives
TDC

and more…

Contact

Address

Precinct 75
75 Mary St
St. Peters NSW 2044

Email Us