Angharad Wynne-Jones
Angharad Wynne-Jones (she/ her) is Cymry (Welsh) Australian and lives on the unceded lands of Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung in Naarm/ Melbourne. She is the facilitator of Creative Climate, the national peak body for arts and climate, which delivers sector support, engagement, participation and systemic transformation and is funded by Creative Australia.She has held leadership roles at State Library Victoria and Arts Centre Melbourne and now works as an independent curator and creative consultant.
As artistic director at Arts House, she initiated Refuge – a six year publicly engaged investigation into the role of cultural institutions in climate catastrophes. She was co-founder of Chunky Move, associate director of Adelaide Festival, artistic director and CEO of London International Festival of Theatre and founder and director of TippingPoint Australia – energising the cultural response to climate change.
Wynne-Jones designed and delivered the Cultural Leadership MFA course at NIDA as well as leadership programs with Creative Australia. She is Chair of the artist-led experimental art organisation APHIDS, and a member of the Centre for Reworlding collective.
Jen Rae
Dr Jen Rae is an award-winning artist and researcher of Canadian Scottish-Métis (Indigenous) descent living on unceded Djaara Country (Castlemaine) Australia. She is recognised for her practice and expertise situated at the intersections of art, speculative futures and climate emergency disaster adaptation and resilience – predominantly articulated through transdisciplinary collaborations, multi-platform projects, community alliances and public pedagogies.
Rae is the co-founder and creative research lead at the Centre for Reworlding, co-founder (with American artist Dawn Weleski of Conflict Kitchen) and director of Fair Share Fare, a member of the National Task Force for Creative Recovery. She was awarded the prestigious 2023 Creative Australia Fellowship for Emerging and Experimental Art, the 2024 Australian National University’s H.C. Coombs Creative Fellowship and the 2024/ 2025 International Visiting Artist Residency at the University of Wisconsin.
Jen creates and contributes to experimental multi-platform collaborative projects balanced with professional mentoring of other artists, public talks, workshops and deep socially engaged projects with diverse partners and communities.
Claire G. Coleman
Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman and award-winning writer whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays, poetry and art criticism while either living in Naarm/ Melbourne or on the road.
Born in Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar/ Perth, away from her ancestral country she has lived most of her life in Victoria and most of that in and around Naarm.
During an extended circuit of the continent, Coleman wrote a novel, Terra Nullius (2017, Hachette), influenced by certain experiences gained on the road. Claire’s second novel, The Old Lie (2019, Hachette), was written in response to what she learned when travelling.
Lies, Damned Lies (2021, Ultimo), Coleman’s first non-fiction book, unpacked the effects of the history of Australia’s colonisation. Enclave (2022, Hachette) is her third novel,Coleman has won the Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship and the University of Queensland Non-Fiction Book Award. Her novels have been shortlisted for The Stella Prize (2017) and long listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award (2023).
Lichen Kelp
Lichen Kelp is an artist, performer and curator. Her solo work investigates ephemeral biological processes and the transubstantiation of chemical reactions. Melting, subliming, fruiting, flowering, decomposing, bubbling and shapeshifting are explored through field work, photography and live experiments emerging from liquid landscapes. Performing as part of Kelping with Dylan Martorell as well as sometimes members Benjamin Hancock and Jason Hood, she creates haptic and multi-sensorial unfolding scenographies, with soundscapes derived from electronic ikebana; local botanicals and handbuilt electronics; as well as hydrophones, water percussion and ice-based touch-sensitive instruments.
Tony Birch
Tony Birch is the author of four novels: Women & Children, which won the 2024 The Age Fiction Book of the Year; The White Girl, winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing, and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award; Ghost River, winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2012. He has also published two poetry books and four short story collections, the most recent of which, Dark as Last Night, won both the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction. In 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award. Tony Birch is an activist, historian and essayist, and is currently the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne.
Brendan Kennedy
Descendant of the Murray River and Murrumbidgee River Traditional Nations, Brendan Kennedy is a leader in all areas advocating for First Nations rights to water and Country, Tati Tati nation sovereignty, and community self-determination. He has taught language in schools and early childhood centres in Robinvale and continues to share and create learning opportunities for the North-western Victorian Aboriginal Communities.
A Tati Tati, Latji Latji, Wadi Wadi, Mutti Mutti man, Kennedy has been reviving culture and language for over 15 years, producing language books, animations, digital apps, Country reports and art exhibitions.
Brendan Kennedy is a Director, Aboriginal Water Officer and Cultural Engagement Officer at Tati Tati Kaiejin, an Indigenous-owned and operated not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to reconnect First Nations peoples to waterways and Country. At Tati Tati Kaiejin, Kennedy continues efforts to achieve Cultural Flows and purinya kaiejin kathiwatha – healthy water flowing.
