Michael Shirrefs is an art/media mongrel, with a Fine Art degree in print-making; also in music, with a distant memory of performing in indie bands in his youth, and a more contemporary creative outlet writing and recording documentary scores. But over 3 decades, he has predominantly worked in the world of radio, telling and enabling others to tell stories of life, art and culture. For the past 20 years he has worked solely with ABC Radio National as a producer, broadcaster and documentary feature-maker.

 

In 2009, he was awarded a State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship to explore a misplaced and very large set of 19th C French books, resulting in an exhibition curated with the Library, titled Paris to Melbourne with an Atlas.

In 2012, Michael produced and presented his own weekly half-hour feature called Creative Instinct. During this time Michael travelled to India and made a series of programs about that region’s rapidly changing cultural landscape. A German Journalism Award, allowed him to travel and gather material for a series on Germany’s identity in the current European crisis.

 

Working closely with his broadcaster/writer wife Lyn Gallacher, over the past 13 years their life and work has straddled both the urban and rural, developing a small property near the southern-most tip of the Australian mainland, planting many thousands of trees on damaged farming land and staring in amused disbelief at their 2 alpacas. This part of their world means they have increasingly tuned into the lives, stories and aesthetics of their rural community.