The creative professional will spend a term working with students to create artworks that use new technologies including augmented and virtual reality to explore what it is to be a young person after a 2020 marred by coronavirus.

Arena's executive director Sharon Custers said it was hard to know what visitors would see when they arrived at an end-of-term "public experience" to cap off the residency.

"It's an interesting question and it depends very much on the artist - we work with many - and also on what the kids want to do, plus their ideas," she said.

"These workshops are so empowering because they bring together an artist's skills and young people's understanding of what it is to be kids in 2021."

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The project is one of three made possible by a $96,000 COVID recovery grant.

Member for Bendigo Lisa Chesters said it was fantastic to see Arena secure the funding.

"Many local artists and arts organisations across the regions have suffered throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, so the funding is warmly welcomed," she said.

Ms Custers said the projects would not be able to go ahead without grants.

Coronavirus decimated Australia's creative industries in 2020.

The pandemic also devastated groups that included Bendigo's South Sudanese community.

"South Sudanese culture is very much about gathering together, sharing and being in one another's company so isolation has been particularly hard on members of that community," Ms Custers said.

The grant will help Arena work with women from the South Sudanese community on a show that will take place at Ulumbarra Theatre next October.

Federal funds will also help a choir of Bendigo boys and young men work on a project about toxic masculinity.

"We've been working on the Kindling Throne project for long before the pandemic but the questions around toxic masculinity have become really urgent," Ms Custers said.

"We will be asking what it means to be a man today."

Arena will start work on projects as in January at the Engine Room.

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