Here is arts editor HELEN MUSA’s latest Arts in the City column.

Canberra Glassworks has announced Aimee Frodsham is the new chief executive officer of the Canberra Glassworks, uniting CEO and artistic director responsibilities. With more than 25 years’ experience working with artists and craftspeople, including 12 years at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate in London, Frodsham has been artistic director of the Glassworks since 2018.

Symphony in the Park returns as a free outdoor concert uniting Mark Seymour with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Commonwealth Park, March 8.

Enlighten is not just light, it’s music too, with nightly live music celebrating Australian artists, featuring Murray and the Movers alongside indigenous artists Tjaka and Lemonise and local favourites Koebi Faumui, Archie and Divine Devilles.

Quincy Houghton, deputy director for exhibitions and international initiatives at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will deliver the 2026 Betty Churcher AO Memorial Oration, examining the role of cultural institutions in an interconnected world. The free event is presented both onsite and via livestream, National Gallery, March 11. 

My Brilliant Career was always a feminist novel, but now showbiz writers Sheridan Harbridge, Dean Bryant and Mathew Frank have transformed Miles Franklin’s literary heroine Sybylla into a defiant singer-songwriter. This Melbourne Theatre Company’s production, starring Kala Gare, will be at Canberra Theatre, March 7-15.

Phoenix Collective opens its 2026 season with Heartstrings, a chamber concert celebrating love, romance and loss through Borodin’s String Quartet No. 2, Ella Macens’ contemporary elegy and traditional Scandinavian wedding music. Wesley Music Centre, March 1.

A literary and visual arts gathering will see poet Jen Webb launch Sarah Rice’s poetry collection, Alight on All Things Precious, which weaves ekphrastic verse with her well-recognised artworks and a discussion on the intersection of poetry and art, hosted by Rose Lucas, National Library, March 14.

The International Women’s Day Roundtable will hold a timely conversation celebrating Hispanic migrant women. Moderated by Prof Catherine Travis, the English-language discussion explores identity, dual nationality and intergenerational impact. ANU, March 5.

Canberra Contemporary on the Lakeside celebrates summer with two exhibitions: Amy Claire Mills’ Deep End reimagines accessible third spaces through a multisensory installation, while Water by Hands On Studio examines water as material, system and lived experience, Both open until April 12.