Currency House was founded in 2001 by Katharine Brisbane AM, the founding owner of Currency Press, Australia’s leading publisher for the performing arts. For over two decades Currency House has fostered fearless debate on the arts and cultural affairs through public forums and its essay series Platform Papers. The conversation continues under the direction of her daughter, Harriet Parsons, and General Editor Julian Meyrick, in the New Platform Papers and an annual authors’ convention. 

Our authors are leaders in the performing arts and humanities and include Wesley Enoch, Robyn Archer, Lee Lewis, David Throsby, Scott Rankin David Pledger and Astrid Jorgensen. The annual convention takes place in July and brings the creative arts into conversation with other spheres of public life to discuss matters of national interest and the role we play as artists in the nation’s affairs.

The talks from the convention are published each year in the end-of-year volume of the New Platform Papers together with two long essays by commissioned authors which we provide as a free discussion paper from our website in March and June. 

Platform Papers and the New Platform Papers are available in hard copy through our sister organisation and distributor, Currency Press.

All donations to Currency House go towards authors’ fees which we are proud to pay the rate recommended by the Australian Society of Authors of 95c word for a living wage for artists. 

We are enormously grateful to our donors whose commitment allows us to support Australian writers and artists in their work.