Our Team
Co-directors
Dr Simon Spain
PhD, MSIP, BA (Hons), FICDA
Simon is a visual and socially engaged artist with over thirty-year’s experience of delivering and designing programming for children and young people in several countries. Simon is a highly effective leader of arts initiatives with the capacity to drive high quality results, raise funds and innovate. He was awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Community and Cultural Development Fellowship in 2017. He is a Tate International associate, Chair of Regional Arts Australia and is the Arts and Culture representative for the B4 Early Years Coalition in Tasmania.
Victoria Ryle
MEd, BEd (Hons)
Founder of Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, Ireland (1997) and Kids’ Own Publishing, Australia, 2003 and has pioneered publishing books by children through artist-led community partnerships, presenting on this practice worldwide. She is a PhD candidate at UTAS on the culturally transformative power of publishing with children drawing on 30 years experience as a teacher, facilitator, advisory teacher and teaching artist. Victoria is Australia’s inaugural Catalyst for the new International Teaching Artist Conference (ITAC) Collaborative alongside 12 other international artists.
We have a team of associates we employ or draw upon for advice and support when required. Meet some of them…
Arnold Aprill
Arts Education consultant, Chicago, USA
Lenine Bourke
Arts activist and consultant, Brisbane, Australia
Anna Cutler
Director of Research and Learning, Tate, London, UK
Dr Barbara Piscitelli
Arts education consultant, Brisbane, Australia
Martin Drury
Arts consultant, Dublin, Ireland
Anna-Lise de Lorenzo
Business consultant and marketing strategist, Tasmania, Australia
ArTELIER hub : the full ArTELIER team of artists numbers over 45 but there is a dynamic group who currently manage administration, planning and review of the program. Find out about all the artists here…
Ruth Langford
Ruth plays a key role in advising and guiding the program.
Ruth Langford has 20 years experience working delivering cultural arts based experiences with schools and yout. She is the Creative director of the Nayri Niara good spirit Festival Director, Aboriginal Community development worker, Practitioner of Ceremony and Healing Holotropic Breathwork facilitator. She is the Cultural Producer of walantanalinany pulingina,a program to enliven and embolden Tasmanian Cultural creative expression. with a focus on a tiered strategy including working with children and youth.
She is a Yorta Yorta woman born into the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community and has been blessed to travel the world sitting with indigenous and World wisdom tradition holders.
Dr Julia Drouhin
Julia produces programs and bring backend web and administrative and writing skills to the program.
Dr Julia Drouhin explores embodiment of invisible soundscapes that reveal friction in sociality and shift usual modes of transmission. Her work using field recordings, electromagnetic frequencies as well as textiles, edible and found objects had been presented in Europe, Hong Kong, Brazil, South Africa and Australia.
She gives workshops, lectures and conferences based on her practice and her Ph.D in aesthetics, sciences and technology about the art of walking and radiophonic psychogeography (University of Paris 8-France-2011).
Karen Revie
Karen gets stuff done and brings marketing and planning skills to the hub team.
Karen Revie is a writer, visual artist and educator who lives and works in Launceston, Tasmania. She has worked in arts for many years with the firm belief that art has the power to effect positive personal and cultural change. Karen is creative director in her own arts consultancy The Holographic Lounge where she regularly manages video production projects as well as digitally projected exhibitions for new media artists. Karen has written numerous articles for ABC Online as a freelance arts journalist and in 2012 her writings were published in a recording by Annexe Theatre. Karen's artistic process involves the investigation of magic in science and science in magic.
Leigh Tesch
Leigh brings evaluation, planning and organisational skills to the ArTELIER team.
Leigh Tesch is a performing artist, project co-ordinator, arts facilitator, evaluator and therapist. Leigh works with communities, delivering arts programs in health and education settings. Currently her practice includes storytelling performance and workshops for young children and families. She collaborates with Kirsty Grierson in the Small Stories Project, creating engaging performance experiences to support relationships, growth and development for very young children and their parents/carers, offering shows for 2 to 5 year olds, and under 18 months, as well as professional development for educators. Leigh is also the executive officer of Inscape Tas, a community organisation that supports artists to work in healthcare and she is doing PhD research into the stories of people on renal dialysis.
Bec Stevens
Bec contributes her experience of working with children and families over many years together with her creative thinking.
Bec Stevens is an artist preoccupied with plants, people and places. She has trained in fine arts and environmental design. She works across disciplines, using drawing as a base for all endeavours. She is skilled as a designer and maker; teaching artist; as well as a facilitator and producer. Bec believes in the capacity of creative practice to work through complex problems in lateral and effective ways. She seeks to weave understandings of the social, historical and geographical attributes of the places we inhabit and embody.. Bec has been involved in the creative fields for 20 years with experience within community, galleries, museums and artist run initiatives.
Sheree Martin
Sheree connects people, ideas and technologies for the program.
Embracing and trusting in the unravelling process of creativity is integral to the artistic practice and way of life for New Zealander and Tasmanian based Artist, Sheree Martin.
Sheree’s passion for igniting imagination, whilst nurturing creativity and enhancing health and wellbeing was influenced and shaped at New Zealand School of Creativity and Art. Sheree utilises analogue and digital photographic processes to play and interweave her curiosities in shifting light and visual perception with intentions of mindfulness and integrity that culminate in works that strive to critique conventions of photography with a sense of place.
Sheree operates the Little Red Art Shed, running a host of creative arts programs for young children and their parents in Hobart.
Andy Vagg is an artist, designer and performer. He creates work in social contexts, activating spaces to form literal and metaphorical platforms to develop ideas to encourage positive social change.
Lucien Simon has worked as a freelance filmmaker, writer and community artist since 2006.
Kelly Drummon-Cawthon experiences as a professional in the world of performance and education span over twenty-five years of art, performance, directing, producing, choreographing and teaching
Leigh Tesch is a performing artist, producer, arts worker, project co-ordinator, facilitator, evaluator and therapist.
Bella Young is a 24yr old Tasmanian artist passionate about performance as an actor, dancer, teacher & director.
Karen Revie is a writer, visual artist and educator who lives and works in Launceston, Tasmania.
Robyn Godfrey is a freelance dancer/circus performer, and trainer at Circus Studio, Tasmania. Her specialties include Aerial Arts, Acrobalance, Hoop and Dance and she has directed many community dance and circus projects,
Sheree Martin is a New Zealand artist embracing and trusting in the unravelling process of creativity engaged with young children in Hobart.
Kris Shaffer worked with arts and crafts in schools throughout Tasmania for over 40 years and have conducted on Country workshops in Bushfoods and cultural practices in isolated communities.
Melanie Fidler is multidisciplinary artist whose love for Tasmania drives her creative process. Melanie has been involved in various exhibitions, collaborations, art festivals and developmental workshops.
Julia Drouhin is an artist and curator interested in the embodiment of invisible soundscapes that reveal friction in sociality.
Luke Campbell is an artist living with Down Syndrome and creates wildly physical, naturally virtuosic, intellectually and emotionally engaging movement that examines the human condition.
Simon Spain is a visual and socially engaged artist who produces and co-designs creative engagements for children and families.
Victoria Ryle will bring her planning, design and vast experience and knowledge of publishing to the program.