About Me
While there are many terms Moale James could use to identify herself, she calls herself a fifth-generation migrant and holds ancestry to Papua New Guinea (on her Mother's side), Scotland and England (on her Father's side). Moale has been raised by Educators and Artists (musicians, dancers, weavers, performers and storytellers) and it was this community of people that fostered her passion for community-led storytelling.
Moale was born in Darwin, Northern Territory on Larrakia Country and has spent most of her life taking part in the many productions of Drum Drum, Sunameke, Weaving Cultural Stories and Gaba Musik. These engagements have led her to working in multiple grassroots, community-arts projects but her higher education has led her to work part-time in government-arts organisations.
Moale's first passion comes back to storytelling and both empowering and captivating her community in the stories she shares. This desire to share stories has also brought Moale into the world of arts production - creating opportunities for others to tell their own stories with their own voices. This passion has led her to write for a number of organisations like, Ascension Magazine, Asia Pacific Report and The Art Relations Journal - to name a few.
Most recently she created and hosted the podcast, ‘Our Women, Our Stories’ bringing together both Australian First Nation and Pacific Islander women to explore the ways they engage with culture and its many facets in the everyday context.
Moale was also a part of the Creative Producing team for Brisbane Festival, World Science Festival and Blak Social’s, ‘Blak Friday’ event. She was also a key Artist and Curator in Heru Pinkasova’s project, ‘Bilum Mamma’; a Curator-in-Residence for the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art’s 2023 exhibition, Sis: Pacific Art 1980-2023 among many other community-arts projects.
Moale also strongly believes that engaging in storytelling with different communities is a powerful tool to create harmony. She delves into this theory more in her Tedx talk, "Three cups of tea".
The desire to learn more about her creative practice has led her to study a Bachelor of Communications (Major in Journalism and Minor in Studies of Contemporary Society) at the Queensland University of Technology. Much of Moale's work has been focused on this passion for creating harmony between communities, sharing stories and building on her knowledge with her mentors, elders and through higher education.
