I moved to Bris­bane from Too­woomba after grow­ing up in the ‘Garden City’.  For many young people, it was the next trans­ition, the next stage in life.  I remem­ber com­ing home from an over­seas hol­i­day think­ing to myself that there is no way I was going to stay a month and 2 to 3 weeks later, I have moved out to Bris­bane liv­ing in the CBD and amongst French and Brazilian backpackers!

Han­nah Suarez, Bris­bane Cre­at­ive Industries

I ori­gin­ally did design and digital art since ’99 and I was incred­ibly focused on it. In 2007 after doing a series of inter­views for a full-time graphic design pos­i­tion, I thought to myself “Is this it?” I decided to do some­thing else. Being open to new oppor­tun­it­ies have led me to be doing work in areas I never thought I would be involved in but have some­how man­aged to obtain due to pas­sion, enthu­si­asm and hard work.

One of them was BCI (Bris­bane Cre­at­ive Indus­tries), estab­lished in April 2008 as a start-up resource which focused on pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment events by offer­ing a dir­ect­ory list­ing of these events. In the past 3–4 months BCI has been focus­ing on cre­at­ive indus­tries prac­ti­tion­ers and pro­jects primar­ily through the Blog.

Bris­bane is a very inter­est­ing city in that it is easy to engage with many people from vari­ous fields and to build that rap­port due to the small degree of sep­ar­a­tion.  Through BCI, I am work­ing on Bris­bane rather than just work­ing in it.  One of the best rewards for this is when people from other cities/states/countries take an interest in the Bris­bane cre­at­ive indus­tries, what it offers, the oppor­tun­it­ies and the growth.