This online treatment outlines Only Human’s unique and multi-award winning, multi-sensory approach to immersive storytelling for exhibition, gallery and museum presentation. We are a uniquely modeled production company providing full service investigative research, concept development, curation, production, installation and launch of new works for large cultural institutions, site specific works, public art spaces around the world, alongside creating factual series and original content for broadcast television, digital platforms and global streaming services.

The collaborative research and discovery model we have meticulously planned for Phase 1 of the redevelopment of the The Press Gallery [TNPG] at MoAD, encompasses our ethos of creating innovative heart driven storytelling work that compels, engages and challenges audiences. Whether it’s an 8-part investigative true crime series for Amazon, a podcast for the ABC, an interactive immersive installation for the Biennale of Sydney in an abandoned hangar or tunnel on Cockatoo Island, an immersive sculptural film for MoAD or a large scale sensor based interactive AV installation for the Powerhouse Museum, our multi-layered development work for any given project is always rigorously researched, technically infallible and we leave no corner unturned to uncover stories visitors never knew existed. The initial research phase of this project is crucial to identifying the themes, experiences, nuances in the evolution of Australia’s most influential, irreverent, sometimes invisible, journalists and media makers. 

The project needs are addressed throughout this online treatment.

At the core of what we want to achieve with the redevelopment of [TNPG] is to build a circular narrative that does not simply guide visitors through the ‘era’s’, but allows all visitors from students to seniors to actively ‘choose their own adventure’. We aim to shape the visitors' experience of the dissent, changes and decisions made in this historic building between 1927 - 1988 through the unique lens of journalists and staff of the old press gallery. The walls in the entire area are imbued with stories and secrets we will work to unravel.

There’s a plethora of themes and ideas to unpack and explore through the rich existing MoAD archive. But there’s also much more that has not yet been unearthed. We can tell you this now because we’ve already started an initial discovery process (via ABC archives, the NFSA, the State Library and several others), and have uncovered new records, dossiers and files that tell many a fascinating story of the Old Press Gallery at the Old Parliament House, particularly during the 1950’s - late 70’s. 

Only Human has already begun scoping out external oral histories, photographs and peripheral imagery, collateral materials, physical objects and ephemera, audio and video recordings that help tell parts of a big story that we want to tell in a big way. We’re excited about the exhibition possibilities that will come from profiling key characters we’ve identified - namely journalists and media advisors who some might say were ‘the movers and shakers’ of their time, while others would say more ‘the troublemakers’, in an era where rules were not made to be broken. It’s as provocative and fascinating as it sounds! 

While thinking about the infinite potential with this redevelopment project, our Founder/ Director Patrick Abboud reached out in confidence to some of his own personal connections - former and current political / press gallery journalists - to sense check our initial ideas around how we would develop material for this project. We were met with an overwhelming willingness to share and crack open the vault of their memories connected to the old press gallery.

While preserving the beauty and character of the heritage elements, we’d like to encourage the evaluation committee and the MoAD team to think of this new space as the Old Press Gallery no more. Like the Only Human team has, let’s start to collectively envisage it as a multi sensory experience, an adventure, a journey, a connector of ideas, stories and nostalgia that we will imprint in the zeitgeist for all time. 

Ultimately the creative vision we’ve already started storyboarding and building for the redevelopment is a reflection of our own company mission. What we hope is that the new press gallery unlocks hidden histories, taps into unique archives and discovers artifacts that would never otherwise come to light - all while challenging, surprising and delighting audiences to help us understand one another better and more openly in a contemporary context. 

From U85 to H East Pg - we see a series of spaces communicating, provocating, inspiring and opening up possibilities for dialogue on the media’s role in democracy for decades to come.

The redevelopment of the Press Gallery has great potential to speak to the core of Australia’s evolution as a democratic nation, to both the failures of poor journalism and pillars of outstanding reportage, and to unpack in ways never before experienced - the role media, politics and the national discourse play in strengthening our connection to one another as everyday people. 

We all have a right to feel engaged in how our country evolves and how we grow through that evolution.

The Only Human family would relish the opportunity to collaborate with the team at MoAD and other external providers to create an transformative multi-dimensional, multi-room, multi-media series of works that actively inform and inspire all audiences not just to think about their relationship to what happened inside the ‘house Australia grew up in’ - but to FEEL it.

After all - we are Only Human.