The 2025 IMPACT Award winners have been announced by PAC Australia in a ceremony at Darwin Ski Club during the Australian Performing Arts Exchange (APAX).

The winner of the awards’ highest honour, the Wendy Blacklock Industry Legend Award, is Rhoda Roberts.

Wendy Blacklock Industry Legend Award winner Rhoda Roberts performing My Cousin Frank. Photo © TJ Garvie

A Widjabul Wia-bul woman, Roberts is a director, performer, author and executive who co-founded QPAC’s Clancestry, Sydney’s Festival of the Dreaming and the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust.

She has also directed Garma Festival, Parrtjima Festival and Boomerang Festival, and was Head of Indigenous Programming at Sydney Opera House.

Roberts is currently presenting her play My Cousin Frank at Wodonga’s HotHouse Theatre after performances in Adelaide and Melbourne.

“Woven throughout a career traversing performing arts, media and major events, shaping festivals and pioneering roles in major cultural institutions, [Roberts’] leadership and advocacy forged the pathway for the presentation of First Nations work to be presented as essential practice,” said PAC Australia Executive Director Katherine Connor.

The 2025 Performing Arts Centre of the Year has been awarded to Merrigong Theatre Company for a “bold and thoughtful” post-COVID approach including First Nations collaboration, the MerrigongX Artists’ Program and the Strangeways Ensemble of neurodiverse artists.

Queensland Ballet Dance for Health. Photo © Jason Starr

Queensland Ballet and Queensland Health received the 2026 Innovator Award for their “visionary partnership” and work with the the Van Norton Li Community Health Institute, involves dance programs for seniors and those who live with brain injury, arthiritis and Parkinson’s (Queenland Ballet also presents a Dance for Veterans program is supported by Queensland RSL).

“This project is innovation at its most meaningful: connecting art and science, performance and purpose and proving that dance belongs not only on stage, but in every part of community life,” said Connor.

Fraser Corfield, former Artistic Director of the Australian Theatre for Young People, was recognised for his 30-year commitment to youth arts. The Adelaide-based theatre company Slingsby was also honoured for its work in the sector, as was the Darwin-based performance organisation Corrugated Iron Youth Arts.

Dancenorth Australia won its second IMPACT Award for the 2024 tour of Wayfinder, which PAC Australia called “a landmark achievement in scale, ambition and community”, while Wagga Wagga Civic Theatre was awarded for its Traineeship Program, mentoring and nurturing emerging technical theatre talent in a time of acute industry shortage.

More about the 2025 IMPACT Awards can be found here.