HOST

NADINE MACDONALD DOWD

Nadine is a Yuwibera women from the Mackay region of Queensland. She has worked extensively within the arts industry for the past 20 years with companies such as kooemba jdarra Indigenous performing arts, LaBoite Theatre Company, Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts, kuril dhagun, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane Festival, Queensland Theatre Company, JUTE Cairns, and Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

Nadine is currently working as a Creative Producer on the 2018 Commonwealth Games Festival program and just finished taking a Gap Year roadtrip around Australia with her Husband Phil and dog Chessie!

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

JO BANNON (UK)

Brought to ATF2017 by Access2Arts

Jo is a UK based artist making live art and performance. Her work has been presented across the UK, Europe, South America and Australia, and is concerned with human exchange and encounter, exploring how our physical bodies experience the world around us and how this sensory experience can or cannot be conveyed. Jo was an “In Between Time” associate artist 2010-2015 and is a founding member of Residence. She also works as a dramaturg and as a producer of performance and live art.

JACOB BOEHME (AUS)

Jacob Boehme is a Melbourne born and based artist of Aborignal heritage, from the Narangga (Yorke Peninsula) and Kaurna (Adelaide Plains) nations of South Australia.

With a 20 year history working in Cultural Maintenace, Research & Revival of traditional dance with Elders and youth from urban to remote Indigneous communities across Australia, Jacob combines dance, puppetry, and playwriting to create multi-disciplinary theatre, dance and ceremony for stage, screen, large-scale public events and festivals.

Jacob’s latest work Blood on the Dance Floor premiered at Arts House North Melbourne, produced in partnership with ILBIJERRI Theatre Company. He is an Alumni of the 2014 British Council’s ACCELERATE Indigenous Leaders Program. Jacob is currently Creative Director of YIRRAMBOI First Nations Arts Festival.

ANDY FIELD – FOREST FRINGE – (UK)
Brought to ATF2017 by Melbourne Fringe Festival

Forest Fringe is an organisation run collaboratively by three artists based in the UK. Together they create festivals, host residencies and occasionally commission new work as a way of helping support a large and diverse community of independent artists working across and between theatre, dance and live art. They are perhaps most well known for the free venue they have run at the Edinburgh Festival for the last 10 years, providing space for new and experimental work within what is otherwise a very challenging commercial environment.

IVAN HENG (SG)
Brought to ATF 2017 by Oz Asia Festival

Ivan Heng is a pioneering Singaporean theatre director, actor, playwright and designer, of Hokkien and Peranakan descent. As the founding artistic director of W!LD RICE, Heng’s productions are concerned with identity, migration and gender and sexual politics within intercultural contexts. They have played festivals and theatres in more than 20 cities around the world.

LINDA KENNEDY (AUS)

Linda Kennedy is a Yuin woman from the South Coast of NSW. She is an architectural designer and design activist with a focus on decolonisation. Her independent design studio, Future Black, was established this year as a development of her blog Future-Black.com – Decolonising Design in Australia’s Built Environment. 

VANESSA LEE (AUS)

Senior researcher in social epidemiology within the discipline of Behavioural and Social Sciences in the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Sydney, chair Public Health Indigenous Leadership Education Network and a director on the board of Suicide Prevention Australia

Dr Vanessa Lee BTD, MPH, PhD is from the Yupungathi and Meriam people, Cape York and the Torres Strait.  Apart from holding a number of expert advisory positions, Dr Lee has contributed to public health policy as the first National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Vice President of the Public Health Association of Australia focusing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and social justice issues.  In her capacity as a director for Suicide Prevention Australia, Vanessa is engaged in national and international policy development, discussions and strategies to address Indigenous health and wellness of sexuality and gender diverse people and women’s health for suicide prevention.  Dr Lee recently received public acknowledgement for her contribution towards closing the gap in Indigenous life expectancy, from Prime Minister Turnbull. Vanessa is a social epidemiologist with extensive experience in public health research, curriculum development, and public health policy development and evaluation.  Dr Lee’s overarching goal is to improve the health and wellness, determinants of health, efficacy and linkages of services towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s, including sexuality and gender diverse populations, life promotion.

Hon. Kelly Vincent MLC

Kelly Vincent is the Dignity Party representative in South Australian Parliament. She was elected to the Legislative Council in 2010 in an event that made history.

She is the youngest woman ever elected to an Australian parliament and the first Australian to be elected on the platform of disability rights.

Kelly is passionate about the rights and needs of people with disabilities, and is also a keen human rights advocate. Around her political career she likes to pursue some of her other interests which include theatre and an endless crusade to fix grammar mistakes.

TEILA WATSON (AUS)

Teila Watson is a Birri Gubba and Kungalu Murri woman born and raised in Brisbane. An established performing artist – singer, poet and lyricist (known as ‘Ancestress’), 25 year-old Teila is also a writer, actor, play-write and youth arts professional. Her respect and understanding of Murri knowledges, First Nations self- determination, and the preservation of culture, informs her artistic endeavours and fuels her many passions. Teila’s art practices revolve around: climate change; decolonising to create sustainable futures; the impact that First Nations knowledges and practice has on country and people; and consequently the importance of Land Rights and First Nations sovereignty when considering environmental and social issues.

EMMA WEBB (AUS)

Emma Webb is Director at  Vitalstatistix, based in Port Adelaide, South Australia.  Vitalstatistix is a small contemporary arts organisation with a focus on the development of multidisciplinary artworks, which experiment with ideas, forms and engagement. Each year Vitals offers a program of performance, residencies, projects, events, exhibitions, festival experiences, collaborations with like-minded makers and presenters, and initiatives for South Australian artists.