Ghosts of Abbotsford Convent exorcised by poetic and musical collaboration

Poet Nam Le and former ANAM resident artist, pianist Anna Goldsworthy, join ANAM students to explore the Convent’s ‘fraught history’.
ANAM students performing at Abbotsford Convent. The atmospheric photograph, taken in a historic venue with picturesque windows and a stage visible in the background, shows a seated audience listening to a group of six musicians, including strings, woodwind and a piano; one of the students stands behind a computer screen, suggesting the presence of electronics in the score being performed.

Despite being based in Adelaide, where she is currently the Director of the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, the award-winning pianist, curator, festival director and writer Anna Goldsworthy has spent many an hour at Melbourne’s arts, culture and learning precinct, the Abbotsford Convent.

Melbourne, she tells ArtsHub, ‘is a place where my children were born’. Consequently, she has visited the Convent and the neighbouring Collingwood Children’s Farm – originally the Convent’s vegetable garden – many times.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the 2019 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts