people
board
MICHAEL FORTESCUE, CHAIR
Michael has been a member of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board and the Music Board of the Australia Council, and a board member of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. He has been a teacher of double bass and lecturer in improvised music at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music, and a tutor and auditioner for the Australian Youth Orchestra, as well as Tasmanian President, and National Vice-President of the Musicians Union.
BERENICE DUNSTON, SECRETARY
Berry is a Counselor and Psychotherapist in private practice and a Consultant Supervisor. She holds a Vocational Graduate Certificate in Development Trauma from the Australian Childhood Foundation, a Graduate Diploma in Individual Psychotherapy and Relationship Therapy from JNI, Master of Education from UTS and Bachelor of Arts in Behavioral Sciences from UNE. Berry is a descendent of one of the orphans who was at the Queens Orphanage (now the Kickstart Arts Centre) and has a particular interest in the heritage of St Johns Park. Berry provides expertise in issues connected with history, youth, children and social psychology.
JAMI BLADEL, PUBLIC OFFICER
Jami holds degrees in Dramatic Arts (VCA) and Education (UTas) and has been the Artistic Director/CEO of Kickstart Arts since 2006. Prior to that she was the Artistic Director of Big Wig Youth Theatre for 7 years and worked freelance as an actor, writer, director and producer in the community cultural development, live performing arts and film industries, mainly working in Melbourne and New South wales. Jami was a member of the Health and Wellbeing Advisory Council to the Tasmanian Minister for Health and on the Leadership group of the National Arts and Health Foundation. Jami’s expertise and responsibilities on the Kickstart Arts board include artistic vision and leadership, strategic planning and social entrepreneurism.
MOE SULTAN, MEMBER
Moe Sultan is a Director and Project Manager at Sultan Holdings and a social entrepreneur. He is a graduate with First Class Honours from the University of Tasmania specialising in International Relations and Political Science. Moe has over 10 years executive experience in International Relations having worked throughout the Middle East, and Asia advising global firms and governments. With a specialising in political risk management, Moe brings a unique perspective to pursuing collaborative partnerships with corporate Australia and government.
PETER GAGGIN, MEMBER
Peter is a director of Philp Lighton Architects and has an interest in aged care and community architecture. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, an examiner / mentor with the Board of Architects Tasmania, and he and his partner Andrea live in Mount Stuart with two teenaged boys. Peter is particularly interested in the living history of St John’s Park, also being a committee member of theFriends of the Orphan Schools.
Outside of family and work, Peter is an avid hockey player and is in the Australian Masters Hockey Team and is also a Life Member of Tasmania University Hockey Club with whom he runs around with on Saturdays.
ANDY VAGG, MEMBER
Andy Vagg is an artist, curator, writer and educator. He completed a Master of Contemporary Arts at the School of Visual & Performing Arts, Launceston, in 2011, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart, in 2007. Before focusing entirely on his art career, Andy trained and worked professionally as a psych-nurse in the health system in New South Wales. His art practice explores the qualities and limitations of post- consumermaterials, and their inherent ability to effect, respond to, and delineate social evolution. He creates work in social contexts, to activate spaces to form literal and metaphorical platforms for the development of ideas to encourage positive social change. Andy has created work in public and private spaces in Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston and Hobart. He has collaborated with community in colleges, high schools, primary schools, community centres and child and family centres and curated the Art From Trash community exhibition at the Salamanca Arts Centre for five years.
Andy has been a Committee Member of the Glenorchy Arts and Cultural Advisory Committee since its inception in 2011.
PETER FAY, MEMBER
Curation, creative development of artists with disabilities, gallery management Peter Fay has a BA and Dip Ed from the University of Sydney. He has been an English teacher in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA; and an independent art curator in state and regional galleries and with the National Gallery of Australia, which in 2002 toured an exhibition "Home Sweet Home” of 250 works drawn entirely from his own collection, in Australia and in New Zealand. Peter is a foundation and life member of many Australian art galleries, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia and a former board member of Arts Project Australia in Melbourne an organisation dedicated to the creative development of artists with disabilities.
JIM EVERETT, MEMBER & CHAIR OF ABORIGINAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Aboriginal Elder and Aboriginal community cultural leader Jim Everett – pura-lia meenamatta – is a member of the Plangermairreenner clan of the Ben Lomond people of the Cape Portland nation, Tasmania. He was born on Flinders Island in 1942 and in 2008 was based in Hobart. Everett has had a longstanding engagement with the arts as a poet, playwright, writer of short stories and as a television and radio producer. It was not until 2006 that Everett took up fine arts, when he worked with the painter Jonathan Kimberley to produce a collection of synthetic polymer paint and charcoal works that interwove Everett’s poetic script with Kimberley’s organic abstractions. This group of works was exhibited at Bett Gallery in Hobart, and the gallery’s website describes the collaboration as serving those 'who see the future as one necessarily defined in respectful conversation and shared journeys’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Everett’s long and passionate involvement with Aboriginal affairs, both as an activist and a government employee, informs his artistic aspirations across the full range of creative mediums he employs.
ANDRY SCULTHORPE, MEMBER
Member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community with traditional family links to tebrakuna (cape portland), Trawlwoolway country. Andry is the land and heritage project coordinator at the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre(TAC).
DR. MARY KNIGHTS, MEMBER
Senior Curator of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Mary was the Director of the South Australian School of Art (SASA) Gallery at the University of South Australia (UniSA) for ten years. Mary has written extensively about Australian Art with 40 published essays and reviews.
DR. ANN JOSELYNN BALTRA-ULLOA, MEMBER
Ann Joselynn Baltra-Ulloa (Jos), is a lecturer of social work at the University of Tasmania. Originally from Chile, she came to Australia as a refugee and has dedicated her professional life to working with the refugee-arrived communities.
people
staff
JAMI BLADEL, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR/CEO
Jami Bladel has been the Artistic Director and CEO of Kickstart Arts since 2006. Kickstart Arts is a current Key Organisation of the Australia Council for the Arts. Prior to that she was the Artistic Director of Big Wig Youth Theatre in Hobart for 7 years. Jami has worked extensively as a freelance theatre director, actor, writer, producer, dramaturge and performing arts educator. She has directed over 37 arts projects, written 4 plays, brokered arts/health and community partnerships, worked as a teaching artist and is mentor to emerging artists and producers. She studied Acting at the VCA school of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1987 and completed a Bachelor of Education at the University of Tasmania in 2000, and is currently studying for a Masters in Advanced Leadership through Monash University in association with Women in Leadership Australia. As a director, Jami has worked with a wide range of people including professional actors, students and community members. Her community work has largely involved leading groups of people through a process to develop personal stories into new works for performance.
RICHARD BLADEL, CREATIVE PRODUCER
Richard Bladel is well into his third decade of working as a professional artist. At one time or another he has worked with all sorts of arts organisations as a writer, playwright, dramaturg, video maker and as a producer of projects in music, visual arts, digital media, performance and writing. Richard has a focus on encouraging the expression and inherent creativity of people of all ages, building connections between people through art making and on breaking down the barriers between the arts and other sectors. He studied BA in Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney during the 80′s, majoring in film theory and production. He was founding Artistic Director of Kickstart Arts, and managed the organisation from 2001- 2007. From 1998 to 2000 he was Arts Officer at The Tasmanian Trades & Labor Council (now Unions Tasmania).
CHRISTIAN FLORENCE, PRODUCER OF CREATIVE EXCHANGE
Christian started his arts career in the UK, as a teenager literally running away with the circus. After studying circus at CircoArts, Christchurch, NZ, Christian moved to Melbourne and in 2007 was Founding Director of the Melbourne Juggling Convention. Since 2011 he has lived in Tasmania, Co-Founding Social Circus Tasmania with his wife Staja. In short, Christian has been using circus to help build resilient people and communities for over a decade, and he is overjoyed to find himself at the helm of the Creative Exchange; another fantastic vehicle with the potential to positively affect people and the community in myriad ways.
people
artists
COLLEEN MUNDY, HEALING GROUND ARTIST
Colleen Mundy is a member of the Palawa people of Tasmania whose basket-weaving maintains a long-held matrilineal tradition of her people. Mundy has spent most of her life in the bush or on the beach and this personal history provides the foundations for her craft: she employs natural fibres and dyes derived from the bush, and in some cases shells are integrated into the weave to enhance the appearance of her baskets. Mundy’s work was exhibited in the Object Gallery’s “wovenforms” exhibition in 2005, and she has been involved in a number of workshops to educate the public about Tasmanian Aboriginal weaving practices, alongside shell-workers and other weavers.
CHERYL MUNDY, HEALING GROUND ARTIST
pakana singer, songwriter, poet, playwright, performer and fibreworker. Previous Australian Aboriginal Arts Council representative to Canada for global Indigenous Arts Conference. Worked in her Tasmanian Aboriginal (palawa) community over thirty years for Aboriginal rights. Various positions in state and national justice and health organisations and agencies. Development of Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing Policies and Programs, and Aboriginal Early Childhood Learning Centres. Nurse and Master of Public Healt.h
ANDY VAGG, HEALING GROUND ARTIST
Andy Vagg is an artist, curator, writer and educator. His practice explores the qualities and limitations of contemporary existence, and how the choices we make inherently effect, respond to, and delineate social evolution. He creates work in social contexts, to activate spaces to form literal and metaphorical platforms for the development of ideas to encourage positive social change.
Andy has created work in public and private spaces in Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston and Hobart. He has collaborated with community in colleges, high schools, primary schools, community centres, and child and family centres. Andy completed a Master of Contemporary Arts at the School of Visual & Performing Arts, Launceston, in 2011, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart, in 2007. He has been a recipient of the Australia Councils AIR programs in 2010 and 2013, the Situate Arts in Festivals program in 2013, and the Contemporary Arts Tasmania Board Mentorship program in 2010. Andy has been a Committee Member of the Glenorchy Arts and Cultural Advisory Committee since 2011.
DEB SLEEMAN, HEALING GROUND ARTIST
Deb Sleeman uses sculpture to explore the animate and inanimate in our world as integral rather than separate entities, resulting in a blurring of the boundaries between topographical and living forms.
Her work is largely inspired by and based in the natural world and island community within which she lives and works. It is informed by formal study as well as life experiences of a landscape traversed slowly, sailing and walking. Deb has a degree in Applied and Visual art from ACA, SA, and has exhibited in SA, Vic and NSW in Sculpture x Sea, Lorne Biennial, BOAA and the Heysen and Palmer Biennials. Her many group and solo exhibitions both in SA and Interstate include the Outback Art Prize, ‘Uneasy, Contemporary South Australian Art ‘at the Samstaag Museum and guest exhibitor at the Coriole Music festival.
She works with community, being given the Artist as Educator award by SAYAB in 2008 and has completed many artist’s residencies and workshops in schools and communities. Her numerous private and public art commissions include 'Midden' and 'Timeline' on the Adelaide coastline and 'Rock the Boat' on Kangaroo Island.
MATT DANIELS, HEALING GROUND ARTIST
Matt is a digital artist and creative technologist. He works freelance, predominantly on arts based projects. He has a passion for new technologies, specifically how they will influence art and what new art forms will arise from them. Matt is fascinated by the influence of computer games, the level of engagement people have with them and how these technologies and processes can be used for communicating ideas outside of the traditional gaming genres.
Matts major clients include Roar Film, Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Blue Rocket Productions and Kickstart Arts.
Matt enjoys melding art and technology and has applied this in anything from creating digital graphics and effects to digital puppetry, animation, games, touch sensors and motion based interfaces. Matt has worked as
system designer and content creator for film, theatre projects and art performances and installations. He has worked of several projects for Dark Mofo had works installed at FauxMo and last year was invited to work in Denmark with Terrapin, Teatret Gruppe 38 (Denmark) and Trickster-p (Switzerland) as part of the Aarhus 2017 – European Capital of Culture.
SAM WALLMAN, HEALING GROUND ARTIST
Sam Wallman is a political cartoonist and comics-journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. His drawings have been published in places like the Guardian, The New York Times, the ABC and SBS. In 2016 he visited the United States to draw everyday people's responses to the presidential election for Australian, Italian and American media outlets. He was previously art editor for Overland Literary Journal, and is currently a contributing editor to the publication. He has edited and published some books, including 'Fluid Prejudice', an anthology of comics and cartoons focussing on marginalised Australian histories, and 'If We All Spat At Once They'd Drown: Drawings About Class'. Three of his pieces of long-form comics-journalism have been nominated for Walkley journalism awards, including 'Winding Up The Window: The End of the Australian Auto Industry' and 'A Guard's Story: At Work In Our Detention Centres', which won the 2014 Human Rights Award in the Media category. Sam has presented work at the Melbourne Writers Festival, the Sydney Opera House, Federation Square, MONA's Dark Mofo Festival, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and Italy's Internazionale journalism festival.