The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts is delighted to announce that we have received an extraordinary, transformative gift. This is going to change the way we deliver performing arts for years and years to come. The donation has been made by the Minderoo Foundation, with whom WAAPA has had a relationship over a number of years.

What this donation makes possible is for us to develop a premier visiting artist program. 

This enables us to reach out to the world's leading figures across all of the performing arts industries and bring those people into WAAPA to work with today's students, who will become tomorrow's leading practitioners.

This is the largest gift that has ever been received by a performing arts training institution anywhere in Australia. 

To say thank you to the donor, we have created a custom piece of music that hasn't been heard before or played before, and we're going to perform it today. The piece there is called Chrysalis, and it's composed by myself.

The chrysalis is a part in a butterfly's life where it goes into its cocoon, and during chrysalis then becomes a butterfly. 

These donations allow for us to perform for them and learn from them. The Minderoo Foundation have been extraordinarily supportive of Whopper for many, many years. This gift is something truly, truly remarkable. And on behalf of everybody at Whopper, I wish to say a heartfelt thank you to the Minderoo Foundation.

There is no doubt that this gift is going to enable WAAPA to become one of the world's leading training institutions, but the world's constantly changing. We're constantly developing our courses and thinking of new ways that we can empower future generations of performing arts. The journey that we're on is truly transformative and extraordinary.

If you would like to join us in enabling future generations of extraordinary performance practitioners, we'd love to hear from you.