Hello, I’m Grant Saunders. I’m an Indigenous Australian cultural educator, media maker and scholar who blends hip-hop-based education, Indigenous auto-ethnography and community storytelling to explore rights, history and justice. I collaborate with universities, councils and community media to create engaging learning experiences and culturally resonant documentary work. I’m passionate about mentoring students and early-career practitioners, translating research into accessible teaching, film practice and cultural strategy. Through hip-hop as method and medium, I aim to spark dialogue, empower communities and ensure Indigenous voices are foregrounded in classrooms, on screen and in policy discussions.

Grant Leigh Saunders

PRO

Hello, I’m Grant Saunders. I’m an Indigenous Australian cultural educator, media maker and scholar who blends hip-hop-based education, Indigenous auto-ethnography and community storytelling to explore rights, history and justice. I collaborate with universities, councils and community media to create engaging learning experiences and culturally resonant documentary work. I’m passionate about mentoring students and early-career practitioners, translating research into accessible teaching, film practice and cultural strategy. Through hip-hop as method and medium, I aim to spark dialogue, empower communities and ensure Indigenous voices are foregrounded in classrooms, on screen and in policy discussions.

Available to hire

Hello, I’m Grant Saunders. I’m an Indigenous Australian cultural educator, media maker and scholar who blends hip-hop-based education, Indigenous auto-ethnography and community storytelling to explore rights, history and justice. I collaborate with universities, councils and community media to create engaging learning experiences and culturally resonant documentary work.

I’m passionate about mentoring students and early-career practitioners, translating research into accessible teaching, film practice and cultural strategy. Through hip-hop as method and medium, I aim to spark dialogue, empower communities and ensure Indigenous voices are foregrounded in classrooms, on screen and in policy discussions.

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Language

English
Fluent

Work Experience

Regional Manager at Joint Colleges Training Services (NSW/ACT)
December 12, 2023 - October 16, 2025
Managing a team of five First Nations Cultural Educators and an administration officer in the delivery of cultural education to GP Registrars in Training.
Cultural and Creative Development Officer at Mid-Coast Council
September 4, 2023 - December 8, 2023
Researching, community engagement and implementing Council’s Cultural and Creative strategic plan.
Lecturer Global Indigenous Studies at The University of Newcastle
May 23, 2022 - September 1, 2023
Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Examiner, Researcher and Tutor. Taught ABOR1390, ABOR2244; researched Hip-Hop Based Education for Australian School Curriculums and the Criminology of Hip-Hop contesting Australia’s Justice System.
Sessional Academic, Indigenous Studies at Charles Sturt University
February 1, 2021 - May 20, 2022
Subject Coordinator, Lecturer, Examiner and Sessional Tutor. Taught Indigenous Health (IKC100), Indigenous Australian Cultures, Histories and Contemporary Realities (IKC101).
Sessional Academic, MA Capstone Research at AFTRS
February 1, 2021 - November 26, 2021
Teacher and MA student supervisor.
Sessional Academic, Aboriginal Studies at The University of Newcastle
February 4, 2013 - January 1, 2021
Subject Coordinator, Examiner, Tutor. Taught Australian Aboriginal People and Human Rights (ABOR1390), Reconciling Australia’s Colonial Past (ABOR2244), Introduction to Aboriginal Studies (ABOR1110).
Teacher, Film and Media, Creative Industries at TAFE NSW
February 4, 2013 - November 30, 2016
Subject Coordinator, Teacher, Examiner. Taught Directing, Producing, Sound design, photography, Video Camera, Editing, Script Writing.
Indigenous TV Producer at ABC
January 1, 2007 - December 1, 2011
Researcher, writer, TV Producer, Director, camera operator, and editor of TV half hour programs on Indigenous societies, cultures, histories and politics.

Education

Doctor of Creative Arts at University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
February 1, 2017 - January 1, 2021

Qualifications

Doctor of Creative Arts
February 1, 2017 - October 29, 2021
This was a creative doctorate wherein I produced a feature length documentary on Australian Hip Hop and provided 50000 word research exegesis to support it.
MA Honours in Film and TV documentary
February 2, 2004 - February 28, 2006
I produced a half hour documentary and 7 minute short film for the Australian Film and Radio School, Sydney.
Graduate Diploma Media Arts and Production
February 1, 2001 - November 29, 2002
Bachelor of Arts in Communication
February 1, 1995 - November 30, 2000

Industry Experience

Media & Entertainment, Education, Government, Non-Profit Organization, Professional Services
    paper Mould

    This is a public service anouncement for tenants in Aboriginal Affordable Housing managed by Biribee Aboriginal Housing Corporation and the NSW Aboriginal Lands Council. This video is about the dangers of mould and how to prevent and manage it.

    paper Arrears

    This is a public service anouncement for tenants in Aboriginal Affordable Housing managed by Biribee Aboriginal Housing Corporation and the NSW Aboriginal Lands Council. This video is about paying your rent on time, what your rent pays for, how to avoid falling into arrears and the consequences if you do.

    paper Fire Safety

    This is a public service anouncement for tenants in Aboriginal Affordable Housing managed by Biribee Aboriginal Housing Corporation and teh NSW Aboriginal Lands Council. This video is about ways to keep fire safe within your home.

    paper Our Elders

    This video was produced for the NSW Deapartment of Eduction to celebrate 2023 NAIDOC theme of ‘For Our Elders’, featuring local Birpai elder stories from Garuk (aka Port Macquarie) on the mid-north coast of NSW.

    paper Pop's Dream

    Rosie, aged 6, observes the world with wonder and delight. Her beloved grandfather, Pop, lives alone in a dilapidated caravan with windows too dirty and salt encrusted to see the ocean views that once gave him such joy. When Rosie accompanies her sullen teenage sister Loretta and boyfriend to take Pop his dinner, she is appalled at the contempt and loss of dignity Pop has to endure. Although Rosie is almost powerless her compassion for Pop and resourceful imagination allow her to once again open Pop’s eyes to the beauty around him.

    paper Burke and Wills

    A feature film about two housemates who both go through massive life changing traumas to find themselves completely transformed, one for the better and one not so good.

    paper Remember

    A short film about homelessness.

    paper Hip Hop and The Block

    This long awaited Australian film is about the social justice issues facing Aboriginal communities in Australia imagined through the lens of First Nations Hip Hop. The film follows the journey of Sonboy, a young Aboriginal rapper from The Block in Redfern, once the black political and cultural heart of Sydney. Through a rich historical archive of Redfern and the lyrics of one of its children, this hybrid of essay and observational documentary film invites the audience into a place once feared and loathed by outsiders but loved and now mourned by generations of First Nations and Culturally and Racially Marginalised families originally drawn from communities all around Australia with an old dream to make it in the big city. The Block was purchased to socially house poor and working-class Aboriginal families through a grant by the Whitlam Government in 1973 to the Aboriginal Housing Company. It became the home of the Aboriginal community-controlled sector with the establishment of the first Aboriginal Medical Service, Legal Service, Black Theatre, Radio Redfern, Aboriginal Dance Theatre and it was the epicentre of black activism, where many protests took place including the infamous Redfern Uprising in 2004. Under decades of public pressure from police harassment, a powerful lobby group of middle-class white landlords with an appetite for better property prices on top of covertly planned obsolescence, The Block finally crumbled, eaten up by private developers for the development of student housing, a new business district and “affordable housing” for successful First Nations family applicants, without a criminal record. In the rubble of his disintegrating Hood, Sonboy produces his first EP at the local community centre, simply titled ‘Kid from The Block’. This film is about what this recording has to say about Australian colonialism and its last frontier, the “black heart of Sydney” or Sydney’s “black ghetto”, The Block Redfern.