2025 DDCA Award Winners!

We’re delighted to share that Dr Shannon Owen and Prof. Donna Lyon have been awarded the Distinguished Innovation in Creative Arts Award at the 2025 The Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Creative Arts (DDCA) for the Left Write Hook documentary that started it all.

This is what the judges had to say about it:

We applaud Left Write Hook as innovative creative research that applies screen practice with applied medical research to deliver socially focussed public engagement and scholarly impact in generating national dialogue concerning gendered violence. With creative research underpinned by a social justice ethos, the power of Left Write Hook lies in the capturing of lived experiences of communities around domestic violence including re-narrativization of childhood sexual experiences. In foregrounding these difficult stories through screen practice these important stories take on an embodied resonance that is a pertinent facet within the creative arts.

We also recognise the exemplary power of this initiative based on its significant development of partnerships between academia, the screen industry, philanthropy and sector leaders working in Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) and domestic violence. The initiative is most worthy of this innovation award, particularly in its very foregrounding of the lived experiences across communities as well as organisations that offer support services to the victim-survivors. It is great to see that Left Write Hook has received substantial research funding in support of the project’s arts, health and justice advocacy.

2025 Deans and Directors of Creative Arts, Award Winners

If you haven’t already, you can now stream the documentary on Netflix, through the link below