Confessions of The Brutally Blessed – 2025 Achievement Award Winner
And the winner is......
Kim
‘Busty Beatz’ Bowers
Confessions of The Brutally Blessed – 2025 Achievement Award Winner
Access Arts is proud to announce that Kim “Busty Beatz” Bowers has been awarded the Access Arts Achievement Award 2025, receiving $10,000 to support the development of her new theatre work Confessions of The Brutally Blessed.
Kim “Busty Beatz” Bowers is a Music Director, Composer, Sound Designer, Writer, Poet and Performance Maker who has been creating fearless work for more than 30 years. Of Xhosa, Chinese and Indonesian heritage and based on Yuggera Country in Brisbane, Kim creates powerful sonic worlds that sit at the intersection of music, theatre, activism and community
As the Queen Bee and Music Director of the internationally acclaimed production Hot Brown Honey, Kim has toured to major festivals and venues across Australia and overseas, receiving multiple awards including a Helpmann Award, Green Room Awards and the UK Total Theatre Award for Innovation. Her compositions and sound designs have featured with companies such as Queensland Theatre, La Boite, Malthouse Theatre, State Theatre Company South Australia, Brisbane Festival and many independent companies.
Confessions of The Brutally Blessed
The Award will support a key creative development phase of Confessions of The Brutally Blessed, a new theatre work that explores disability, neurodivergence, Black Femmehood, body sovereignty and ancestral memory through poetry, sound and live performance. The project will bring together a team of collaborators, including long term creative partners and community organisations, to develop script, music, access design and sensory elements from the outset.
Working with partners such as Inala Wangarra, Polytoxic and Quiet Riot Creative, Kim will use the Award to create time and space to write, compose and experiment in a way that supports her access needs, while building a framework for future presentation and touring.
The judging panel noted that Kim’s application demonstrated an exceptional level of artistic vibrancy, disability-led practice and sector impact. The Award arrives at a timely moment in her career, recognising her long-standing contribution to community-engaged, cross-cultural arts practice and supporting the development of a new work with strong artistic and community outcomes.
We cannot wait to see how Kim will use the Award to undertake key creative development, that integrates access design and sensory storytelling.
The Access Arts Achievement Award, supported by CPL – Choice, Passion, Life, provides a Queensland artist with disability with up to $10,000 to create, develop or present new work. The Award supports projects that strengthen artistic careers, expand professional networks and increase the visibility of artists with disability in Queensland and beyond.
