Emily Thornton is Birrbay-Dunghutti musician, writer, editor, and community arts practitioner whose work centres cultural revitalisation, storytelling, and connection to place. Currently based in Sydney on Gadigal land, her creative and research practices focus on decolonising traditionally colonial spaces and artistic traditions, particularly within Western classical music and arts institutions.

Emily holds a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Criminology from the Australian National University. As a performer, she has extensive experience in orchestral, chamber, and solo music-making, alongside a longstanding commitment to community-engaged arts practice.

With more than ten years of teaching experience, Emily has worked across private tuition, schools, and community arts programs, teaching students of all ages and abilities. She has particular expertise in supporting students with diverse access needs, and is committed to creating inclusive learning environments where every student can develop confidence, creativity, and a lifelong connection to music.

Working across music, writing, and editorial practice, Emily takes an interdisciplinary and critically engaged approach to examining how institutions, performance traditions, and cultural industries continue to reproduce colonial power structures. Her work also actively explores pathways for ethical, culturally grounded transformation, with an emphasis on relational practice, accountability, and community-led ways of working.

Emily is also a creative writer producing multilingual work across poetry, song, and narrative forms, including writing and singing in her ancestral language as part of an ongoing commitment to cultural renewal and intergenerational knowledge sharing. Her creative practice is deeply grounded in community and Country, and prioritises care, continuity, and cultural responsibility.

Alongside her creative work, Emily is an arts and culture journalist contributing Indigenous perspectives to Australia’s cultural discourse. Her writing has been published in numerous literary journals and media such as the National Indigenous Times and Limelight, Australia’s leading arts magazine, where she covers music, performance, and arts policy through a decolonial and community-informed lens. Her journalism foregrounds First Nations voices and critically interrogates questions of representation, ownership, and cultural labour within the arts.