Danielle Caruana is an award winning singer songwriter - better known to many by her on-stage moniker of Mama Kin.

This spellbinding singer and percussionist taps into the DNA of generations of creatives before her as half of the duo Mama Kin Spender - mesmerising audiences with her firebrand performances and songwriting.

Mama Kin Spender’s latest album Promises was nominated for an Aria this year, and on this episode of Streets of Your Town Danielle tells us how she lays her heart bare in the lyrics and emotion of this album, going into the layers of the demise and saving of her relationship with fellow musician John Butler.

She also wholeheartedly explores how to stay fierce as a woman and is unapologetic about desiring success and recognition for her work.

It was such a joy to speak to Danielle from her base at the eclectic creative hub of Fremantle in Perth about her songwriting, her upcoming performance at Woodford Folk Festival on the other side of the country, and her philanthropic work.

This episode of Streets of Your Town is a tribute to 30 years of friendship, and the power of the creative process in whatever form it takes.

Wren Valentino is an author, playwright, actor, film producer, entrepreneur and teacher based in Sacremento California. He’s the CEO and owner of Blue Dasher Productions, helping to bring more than 100 independent movies to the screen and championing the transformative power of the arts. Eight of his original screenplays and seven of his stage plays have been adapted for the screen.

And by an incredible stroke of kismet, this little Aussie Wandering journo met Wren almost exactly 30 years ago in a youth hostel in New York, where we bonded our friendship by sharing our artistic dreams over a hair dryer, while listening to a banging 80’s soundtrack during one of the city’s most savage snowstorms.

And we celebrate all of that on this episode of Streets of Your Town.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town substack magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

You can find more information on Wren on Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok. You can find more of his works at wrenvalentino.com

Sometimes our lives deviate from what we expected in ways we could never have imagined.

For Cairns based journalist, media trainer and author Kirsty Nancarrow, her bestselling and now award winning book Himalayan Dreams is proof that you never know what could be around the corner.

As a journalist for 15 years with ABC Radio in Queensland’s far north, Kirsty had covered literally thousands of stories for broadcast. However one of them stuck with her more than any other.

She met Som Tamang after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. Som was living in Cairns but still had strong links to his homeland of Nepal through his ongoing work with the organisation he founded - Friends of Himalayan Children. He went straight back to Nepal with volunteers from Cairns to help in the aftermath of of the earthquake where thousands of people lost their lives.

Kirsty soon discovered the backstory - that Som had made it his mission since escaping child slavery himself, to give all Nepalese children access to education and a better life.

She would eventually go to Batase Village as a volunteer teacher 18 months later, and decided then to write the story of this remarkable man in her first book.

As Kirsty tells us on Streets of Your Town, she is constantly inspired by Som’s story and how much of a difference he has made particularly for girls, saving many from a life of early marriage and back breaking labour. She says he shows the difference that anyone can make when they don’t allow the obstacles in their life to overcome them.

For more shownotes and links - please go to my Streets of Your Town magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

You can find more information on Kirsty at https://www.kirstynancarrow.com/