BATS & BELONGINGS
Call to Artists: Bats & Belonging Exhibition – Exploring Connection Through Art
Geelong’s skies come alive each evening as thousands of Grey-headed Flying Foxes stream from Eastern Park, tracing soft silhouettes across the city’s twilight. These remarkable animals, often misunderstood, play a vital ecological role, pollinating native trees and dispersing seeds that sustain our local landscapes.
Yet, as their habitats overlap more and more with human spaces, new questions arise: how do we coexist, and what does care for these animals look like in a shared city?
Art Meets Science
The Bats & Belonging exhibition is being sponsored by Bats of Geelong Wildlife Shelter, The House Geelong and Deakin University and invites artists, storytellers, and community members to respond to these ideas through art. While science can struggle sometimes to communicate its important research in ways that can reach broad audiences and inspire engagement beyond academic arenas, integrating art with scientific research has the potential to bridge this gap, drawing in diverse crowds and connecting them to conservation practice.
Through Bats & Belonging, art becomes a space for dialogue between humans and the non-human lives that share our neighbourhoods.
Call for Submissions
Artists of all backgrounds are invited to contribute works inspired by Grey-headed Flying Foxes, by their behaviour, their relationships, and their presence in our shared city.
The project is calling for people who want to explore their understanding of care, connection, and coexistence through Grey-headed Flying Foxes. What do they reveal to you about sharing space with other lives? And what might our responsibilities be as individuals and a community to the animals who we share our city with? If you're inspired to create something, whether you're an experienced artist or a first-time contributor with a story to share, then please consider a submission to this exhibition.
Key Themes to Explore
- Care, connection, and coexistence
- Shared urban spaces between humans and wildlife
- Ecological belonging and community responsibility
This is a chance to celebrate the beauty and complexity of the flying foxes that glide over Geelong each night — and to reimagine what it means to live alongside them.
To find out more information and to submit your work, follow this link.
