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Winning the Inaugural SONARR Award for Voice Performance & Acting Excellence

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Published on October 22, 2026

Performance Beyond (the) Words

Last week I won the inaugural SONARR Award for Voice Performance / Acting Excellence (Voice-Over) in Sydney. Out of an entire industry of entrants, I made it through to just three finalists. I was joined by the two wonderful-hearted and talented narrators, Yannick Lawry and Felicity Jurd, and I was privileged to take home the award.

It’s a massive honour to have won given the calibre of the talent. I’d like to thank my agent EM Voices, my peers, my family and friends for their support along with AAVA… and given the AI conversation right now, it’s more important than ever to highlight the extra value human performers bring to the table and continue to ask our governments to legislate to protect our biometric data, for the good of future generations.

Colin Cassidy holding the SONARR award trophy aloft with friends on the red carpet at the inaugural SONARR Awards in Sydney
On the red carpet at the inaugural SONARR Awards in Sydney.

A first for Australian audio

SONARR (short for Sound and Narrative) is Australia’s first awards night to bring podcasting, radio, audiobooks and voice-over together under one roof, and I’m proud to be part of its first year. It launched this year to fill the gap left after the Australian Commercial Radio Awards and the Australian Podcast Awards wound up. It named 91 finalists across its categories, and 42 specialist judges scored every entry against its own merits rather than against other entries.

Founder Pariya Taherzadeh-Desovski put it simply: audio in this country needed a fresh look. The gala night at Machine Hall in Sydney on 15 October was hosted by Alexei Toliopoulos and supported by founding educational partner the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), industry partners RØDE and Original Audio (who created the sound of the awards), and supporting partner the Australian Association of Voice Actors (AAVA).

Engraving on the SONARR 26 trophy: Voice, Performance / Acting Excellence Award, Voice-Over, Colin Cassidy
The SONARR 26 Voice Performance / Acting Excellence Award.

What I said on stage

I used my quick speech on stage to publicly thank Simon Kennedy for his support during a tough mental health journey, after (allegedly) my copyright was infringed and my voice was cloned (according to a Swiss voice forensics team) and continues to be monetised on YouTube and Play.ht (whose team was acquired by Meta in 2025).

I wanted to encourage the audience that as AI impacts us, it doesn’t have to happen to us. Through support, reflection and a shift in perspective, it can actually happen for us: taking us on a journey of curiosity to discover we’re more valuable and more capable than we thought, and learning what new worlds and capabilities AI might open up for us.

As AI impacts us, it doesn’t have to happen to us. Through support, reflection and a shift in perspective, it can actually happen for us.

Performance from the heart

I also spoke about performance that comes from the heart, although I didn’t have time to elaborate. But if there’s a gap to be found where value can be added, it must surely be in offering something AI either:

  1. Cannot do;
  2. Can’t do as collaboratively as human-to-human ideation; or
  3. Costs too much to do: iterating, and relying on computer operators’ mastery of AI tools.

Arguably, AI won’t generally push back, disturb or challenge you, or respond with EQ: empathising, brainstorming and crafting alongside you.

If human craft shifts to higher ground and proves itself to be of more value, it will need to earn that across every phase of the process. If a voice is known to add ideas, get them in early, or even at pitch stage. The same goes for every phase where human creativity can cross-pollinate, from flash to bang.

If every competitor is leveraging AI equally, and their humans are all brilliant but in silos, it will be the teams who optimise human value-add and cross-pollination across those silos who take the higher ground.

What the research says

  • USA: A Harvard Business School field experiment with 791 Procter & Gamble professionals found the top 10% of ideas were three times more likely to come from human teams working with AI than from individuals working alone, and that AI-supported teams blended technical and commercial thinking that usually stays in silos.1
  • USA: Wharton researchers found that ChatGPT can make individual ideas more creative, but significantly reduces the diversity of ideas across a group.2
  • Australia: University of South Australia researchers concluded that AI is not independently creative: it relies on human direction, and creativity remains a fundamentally human competency.3
  • Europe (UK): Researchers at UCL and the University of Exeter found that AI-generated ideas made individual stories more creative, but made them more similar to each other: a “social dilemma” for creativity as a whole.4
  • Europe (Netherlands and Denmark): A 2026 meta-analysis of 19 studies by researchers at Tilburg University and Aarhus University found that generative AI makes creative output measurably more homogeneous.5

In other words, AI can make each of us faster and individually better, but when everyone uses it the same way, ideas converge. The edge goes to teams who bring diverse human thinking in early, and keep it cross-pollinating across every phase.

AI and voice: where the industry stands

Across the voice industry, the conversation has moved from “if” to “how”:

Protections like these matter. But I also believe protection from AI can become productivity from it.

My proposal to government: FAIRGO

Out of my own lived experience of copyright and voice-clone theft, I’ve put forward a proposal called FAIRGO: Federal Artificial Intelligence Remuneration Governance Obligations. It’s a licensing framework for voice, face and likeness: a statutory scheme, delivered through Australia’s existing copyright institutions rather than a new agency, that would:

  • Define copyright in a work as separable layers, so each contribution (writing, performance, music, image) can be identified and licensed on its own.
  • Make every person’s biometric identity (voice, face, likeness and movement) an inalienable right: never owned outright, never assigned away, but legally licensable. Using someone’s biometric data for commercial gain without consent would be treated with the seriousness of modern slavery.
  • Make existing international identification and provenance standards mandatory for AI platforms operating in Australia.
  • Run collective licensing, remuneration and affordable enforcement on top, funded by the AI platforms rather than taxpayers.

This is a growth framework, not a restriction. Running at AI machine speed as a global pilot funded by Big Tech, I estimate FAIRGO could unlock around A$1 billion a year in licensing revenue for Indigenous artists, IP owners, animators, writers, models, musicians, singers, actors, publishers, media companies, designers and entrepreneurs, funded by the AI platforms rather than taxpayers. It gives Australia (the country that gave the world wi-fi and the cochlear implant) a powerful negotiating lever with Big Tech, and a chance to lead the world on ethical, productive AI.

Here’s a short explainer, which I conceived, wrote and voiced:

FAIRGO explainer: Federal Artificial Intelligence Remuneration Governance Obligations.

You can read more in my LinkedIn article on FAIRGO, and show your support with #FAIRGOsupport. AI’s power for good must surely not come at the expense of the people whose voices, faces and work it learns from.

Performance beyond the words

For me, that simply means adding value: going beyond reading the words on a script, and even beyond a wheelhouse of 30 years of accumulated accents, characters and personas.

It means good people skills, listening and questioning. It means intuitive empathy, stakeholder management and ideation. It means drawing on my experience as an award-winning writer, wordsmith, creative director and people manager, and as a father, son, neighbour, cousin, uncle, grandad, husband, contractor and humble servant. It’s going to take all of it.

Colin Cassidy celebrating with friends at the SONARR Awards gala dinner
Celebrating with friends and colleagues on the night.

Congratulations to my fellow winners

What a line-up. Congratulations to Caddie Brain, whose A Cyclone for Christmas took SONARR of the Year, and to Rhys Gunter, top of the Voice pillar and winner of the Commercial prize. Congratulations also to my fellow Voice pillar winners Kyla Brettle, Sajarn Stow, Julia Rangiheuea, Laura Brierley Newton, Marc Fennell, Felicity Weaver and Ashlynne McGhee, and to SBS Audio (Network Excellence).

Across the other pillars, well done to Ian Moorhead, Lliane Clarke, Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon, Dr Helene Thomas, Dr Mia Lindgren, Professor Kate Burridge, Martin Franklin, Jessica Hamilton, Tony Martin’s Sizzletown, Pevan & Sarah, Dear Rachelle (True Crime Australia), We Used to be Journos (Ette Media), Audiocraft, Gizmo Verse, Coequal, The Wiggles, Dome and Finely Tuned, ABC Radio National, and NOVA Entertainment, Original Audio and Lifeblood for The Dynamic Blood Supply Audio System. The full list is on the SONARR winners page.

And a big shout-out to every finalist, including Liz Keen, Carly Portch, Lindsey Vassallo, Danni Stewart, Micah Kickett, Lowanna Grant, Dr Chelinay Gates, Adam Richard, Sienna Brown, Elaine Laforteza, Cate McKenzie, Kristy Hocking, Ashlea Hansen, Zoe Ferguson and Masako Fukui.

Thank you

Thank you to SONARR Awards founder Pariya Taherzadeh-Desovski and the SONARR team (Hamed Ebrahimi, Nafiseh Dadgar, Claire Sullivan, Ethan Walker and Dania Jordan Miranda), to host Alexei Toliopoulos, and to partners the Australian Film Television and Radio School, RØDE, Original Audio and the ever-energising Aaron Matthews, and of course the Australian Association of Voice Actors (AAVA). And congratulations once again to my fellow finalists Felicity Jurd and Yannick Lawry.

Thank you too to the judges for the time and care they gave every entry: Kade Robinson, Sian Gard, Simon Kennedy, Masako Fukui, Elle Beattie, Britta Jorgensen, Graham Hunter, Natalie Pozdeev, Olivia Sloan, Pearl Tan, Angus O’Loughlin, Farz Edraki, Lem Zakharia, Jane Curtis, Laura Brierley Newton, Madeline Joannou, Rhiannon Mooney, Chantelle Schmidt, Ali Aitken, Elise Cooper, Josh Butt, Jack Laurence, Adam Johnson, Miles Martignoni, Kaitlyn Sawrey, Aaron Matthews, Hannah Bowman, Daniel Bacchieri, Harry Hughes, Dianne Weller, Stuart Buckland, Camilla Hannan, Clint Drieberg, Andrea Ho, Jay Gasser, Rachael Hart, Sarah Young, Rhys Gunter, Celine Teo-Blockey, Dorje Swallow, Brianna Ansaldo and Francisco Lopez.

And thank you to everyone in our industry who keeps creating work that showcases human performance: work that goes beyond what mere text, or even an AI voice, can generate.

References

1. Dell’Acqua, F., Ayoubi, C., Lifshitz, H., Sadun, R., Mollick, E., Mollick, L., et al. (2025). The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise. Harvard Business School / NBER Working Paper 33641. Read the paper · HBS summary

2. Meincke, L., Nave, G. & Terwiesch, C. (2025). ChatGPT and idea diversity in brainstorming. Nature Human Behaviour. Read the paper · Wharton summary

3. Marrone, R., Cropley, D. H. & Medeiros, K. (2024). How Does Narrow AI Impact Human Creativity? Creativity Research Journal. Read the paper · UniSA summary

4. Doshi, A. R. & Hauser, O. P. (2024). Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. Science Advances, 10(28). Read the paper · University of Exeter summary

5. de Rooij, A. & Biskjaer, M. M. (2026). Generative AI makes creative output more homogeneous. Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (ECCE 2026), ACM. Read the abstract

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Performance Beyond the Words