Paul Callaghan is a creative producer, educator, speaker and writer, who has worked at the intersection of cultural practice & technology since 1998.
From 2017 until 2018, he was Games & Interactive Programme Manager with the British Council working in the Film & Creative Economy teams to explore opportunities for cultural infrastructure, showcasing, and international opportunities for artist-game makers and creative producers. In 2017, he was a judge for the BAFTA Debut Game, and he sat on the games subcommittee for that year’s Breakthrough Brits. He has also been an advisor on Now Play This and sat on the steering committee for the London Games Festival. In 2014, he worked with arts charity IdeasTap as Partnerships Manager focused on film & games.
From 2009 until 2012 he was the co-director and then director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival; from 2010 until 2011, he sat on the board of the Game Developers’ Association of Australia; and he has assessed projects for state and federal funding agencies, including Film Victoria, Screen Tasmania, Screen NSW, Screen Australia, and The Australia Council for the Arts.
In 2011, he designed and delivered the game development strand of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s year-long Innovating with Technology (IWT) Games-based Learning program, and in 2012, worked with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image on their first Hothouse program. Between 2009 and 2012, he taught Narrative and Communication & Interactive Digital Media Project through RMIT’s Bachelor of Design (Games), and between 2014 & 2017 taught games design, narrative design, and studio practice at the University of East London’s BSc (Hons) Computer Games Development and BA (Hons) Computer Games Design – Story Development.
Paul has presented on topics including cultural infrastructure, writing for games, play, what education can learn from game development, and the fundamentals of game design at the BFI Future Film Festival, Continue, Arcadia, Adelaide Writers’ Week, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, GCAP, VITTA, TEDxMelbourne, the Melbourne Writers Festival, and the National Screenwriters’ Conference, and his writing has appeared online at if:Book Australia, Kill Your Darlings, ibrary, The Edge, and The Australia Council for the Arts, and in print in the Emerging Writers’ Festival Reader, Newswrite, Storyline, Metro Magazine, and Meanjin.
His work as a writer, narrative designer, and developer has appeared in Alternate reality Game Zydnei, run as part of the 2013 ISEA festival, award winning online action adventure Peleda with Fiasco Studios and Vishus Productions for ABC3, and Sunshine with Pachinko Pictures in support of LA Game Space. He has also worked with clients including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Millipede, Neoteny Design, The Project Factory, Chocolate Liberation Front, TUI Studios, 2K Marin / Canberra, and Infinite Interactive.
In 2018, he returned to Melbourne and is currently available for consulting, speaking, and writing opportunities.