Tania Cañas

Tania Cañas is the arts director at RISE Refugee, and a PhD student at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Her experience in the arts extends across performance, research, communication and facilitation; specifically, she uses theatre to explore self-determination, representation, identity and self-actualisation in marginalised Australian communities. For example, she recently worked with RISE and NMIT to develop a series of Forum Theatre workshops with students who are recent migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Tania’s work Unwelcome Mats, commissioned for Melbourne Fringe’s 2015 project Uncommon Places, featured mats sporting unfriendly phrases to raise questions about who owns space in Australia, and who decides whether someone is welcome—or not.