ndrew Bleby
has 30
years’ experience and an extensive record of success in senior management of
the performing arts, theatre, festivals and events.
His
management record has extended in recent years to include an impressive
array of consulting projects and clients as well as ongoing management of
significant projects, festivals and events. Before setting up ABA in 2008 he
spent nine years heading Arts
Projects Australia (Melbourne) as General Manager and Executive Producer. (APA is an Associate Company of
Andrew Bleby
& Associates.)
During that time he developed and produced several of Australia’s
biggest festivals including one of the biggest ever – Festival
Melbourne 2006, the award-winning, hugely successful free $12m Cultural
Festival of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, the largest fully curated
arts festival ever held in Australia.
This was followed by the Festival of the 12th FINA World
Championships, a major free international festival held in
Melbourne
in March 2007.
He is now in demand from major clients around the country and overseas to
undertake arts-based consultancies: project development, reviews, feasibility
studies, planning and festival management.
With Associate Insite Arts, he produces Tasmania's hot new festival MONA
FOMA.
Andrew Bleby
has directed or produced seven different arts festivals, five of them
international and five of them brand new. He was founding
Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival in 1985. In almost all these positions he
oversaw all aspects of management, programming and marketing.
For ten years he was Program Director of the Adelaide Festival Centre,
South Australia’s major performing arts complex, producing and presenting a wide array of
programs including significant international seasons, subscription series of
contemporary dance and world theatre, community and education programs. He was a
key member of the senior management team at the AFC, managed national tours and
was Executive Producer of several major musicals including
42nd Street
, The King and I and South
Pacific in
Australia
,
New York
and
Hong Kong
. He has also produced spectacle, commercial drama and circus shows.
He has extensive global experience in programming international artists
and with international organisations including ASSITEJ (Association
Internationale du Théâtre pour les Enfants et la Jeunesse) and AAPPAC (Association
of Asia-Pacific Performing Arts Centres), has been an invited keynote
speaker at conferences in Shanghai, Vancouver, Dunedin and Melbourne and has
studied at the International Center for Culture and Management (ICCM) in
Salzburg.
Andrew has also undertaken significant work as an independent consultant,
including a major review of Opera Australia, a review of the Australian
Performing Arts Market, the production of a manual on youth festival management,
strategic planning workshops for The Push International Performing Arts Festival
in Canada and regional festivals in Australia, planning for the National
Institute of Circus Arts, major project management for the Australian Centre for
the Moving Image, and project development for the Victorian Arts Centre,
Orchestra Victoria and festivals in several states.
He has been a member of over thirty boards and committees. Formal
qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma in Education from the
University
of
Adelaide
. He received a Diploma with Distinction in 2002 from the ICCM in
Salzburg
and was Dux of their
Summer
Academy
in Arts Management and International Project Workshop.
ASSOCIATES
& ASSOCIATE COMPANIES
ee Cumberlidge is a
producer and event manager with a range of performing arts experience from large
scale festival management to the small to medium
company sector. Lee worked with
Arts Projects Australia from 1999 in both
Adelaide
and
Melbourne
on various projects in key programming, operational and strategic development
roles. From 2004 to 2009, he was based in
Melbourne
as Associate Producer of APA’s
Melbourne
office alongside General Manager
Andrew Bleby, and subsequently as Executive Producer for ABA.
Lee took a key role on the Commonwealth Games Festival Melbourne 2006 and the
FINA Festival 2007 where he was responsible for managing the programming process
and the development and management of the large festival budgets.
In his time with APA, Lee was
heavily involved in the management
of WOMADelaide (1999, 2001, 2003), the Australian Performing Arts Market (2000,
2002), and in touring productions to various major festivals and venues
in the Asia Pacific region. from Europe, Africa and the USA. A Director of
Insite Arts, he also produces theatre programs for the Brisbane Powerhouse.
Lee has also championed the work of
several Australian artists and companies. In 2006, he was one of four recipients
of the Australia Council’s Developing Independent Producer’s Initiative, a
program which has allowed him to provide services and experience to a
number of independent Australian theatre companies in the creative development
and presentation of their work in
Australia
and overseas.
HELEN
RICKARDS (Schemes Consolidated)
Helen Rickards has
a career in arts consultation, management and theatrical production that spans
25 years and has included work as a director, producer, performer, teacher and
manager of small and large organisations.
She
works as a consultant and creative producer in arts management and production
with organisations in 2006/9 that have included ArtPlay (City of Melbourne);
Melbourne Workers’ Theatre; Becken Projects; NICA (National Institute of
Circus Arts), Performing Lines (NSW), Arts Projects Australia (SA), On
Tour Ltd (UK) and fortyfivedownstairs. She consults with organisations to
develop ongoing programs, business plans and short term projects and funding
submissions to Government, philanthropic and private funding bodies for
their realisation.
In
1977, she co-founded the
Melbourne
based visual theatre company, Handspan Theatre, and worked as the company’s
Executive Artistic Director and General Manager until 1986, producing
significant theatrical works, developing the company’s community outreach
programs and establishing Handspan’s international touring circuit, managing
tours to UK, France, Germany, Italy, USA and Canada..
She
is co-author, with
Maeve Vella
, of
Australia
’s definitive puppetry text Theatre of
the Impossible.
Helen
has been Executive Director of the City of Melbourne’s Fantastic Entertainment
in Public Places (FEIPP) program and
has developed and managed an arts industry outreach program from the Drama
Centre at the Flinders University of South Australia, known as PAIR’D –
Performing Arts Industry Research and Development Ltd. She co-ordinated,
produced and administered PAIR’D projects including the widely successful 3rd
International Women Playwrights Conference held in Adelaide in 1994;
cross-cultural collaborations between Okinawa, Japan and Adelaide, Australia for
the 1996 and 1998 Adelaide Festivals of Arts; and established and managed tours
to Seoul, Korea (1997) and Singapore (1998).
Since
returning to
Melbourne
in 2001, Helen has worked as General Manager for the Keene/Taylor Theatre
Project (2001/2002), as Interim General Manager for the Melbourne Fringe
Festival (2002) and as Project Producer for the National Institute of Circus
Arts (NICA) (2004-06) as well as continuing her freelance consultancy practice.
She lectures in Business Studies at the National Institute of Circus Arts and in
the Diploma of Theatre Arts Course at
Swinburne
University
. She also acts as Business Manager for ABA.
ROB
BROOKMAN (Sweet Reason Pty Ltd)
Rob Brookman is a leading Australian
arts producer, festival director, cultural programmer and arts
administrator. His range of experience and interests is unusually diverse,
ranging across all performing art forms from the classical to the avant-garde
and from the not-for-profit to the commercial sectors.
His keynote is versatility in both artistic
vision and exemplary management. He has held key positions in a number
of Australasia's leading festivals and key performing arts
organisations including the Adelaide Festival (Administrator, Associate
Director, Artistic Director), Adelaide Festival Centre (Programming Director,
Producer, Artistic Director), National Festival of Australian Theatre
(Artistic Director), New Zealand International Festival of Arts (Artistic
Director), Arts Projects Australia (Founding Co-Director) and Sydney Theatre
Company (General Manager). In 1992 he founded
Australia
’s leading world music festival WOMADelaide and
remained as Artistic Director and/or Artistic Advisor until 2007. He
continues to serve on the WOMADelaide Foundation. Major productions and projects
over the years include The King and I (Producer,
Executive Producer) which became the first Australian production to win a Tony
Award on Broadway, national tours of The Royal National
Theatre’s “An Inspector Calls”, The Guangdong
Acrobats of China, Twyla Tharp, Water Puppets of Vietnam and
the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”,
the creation, national and international tour of Philippe Genty’s Stowaways,
ground-breaking international tours including Company B’s Cloudstreet
(Zurich, London and Dublin) and Sydney Theatre Company's A Streetcar
Named Desire directed by Liv Ullmann and featuring Cate Blanchett
(Washington, New York).
Major achievements during his eleven year
stewardship of Sydney Theatre Company also included the planning, construction
and Opening (in 2004) of the 850 seat Sydney Theatre at Walsh
Bay, the creation of Australia’s only full-time professional acting ensemble
and the development and management of Greening The Wharf
- the most comprehensive environmental program developed by any theatre company
in the world which incorporates the second largest building-mounted solar power
station in Australia. Rob is currently Consulting Producer to Global Creatures (Walking
with Dinosaurs) in the development of a major new musical theatre
project and is also working with Arts Projects Australia on the development of a
new festival combining environmental concerns with world music performances.
Richard
Brecknock is Director of Brecknock Consulting, a national cultural planning and
public art consultancy with offices in
Adelaide
,
Brisbane
and
Melbourne
.
Established
in 1988, the company is unique in
Australia
in providing a wide range of cultural and art services to public and private
sector clients across
Australia
. Brecknock's cultural and arts services include three core areas:
policy, planning and project delivery. They are committed to creating culturally
rich communities and environments through cultural thinking and cultural
planning. The practice involves strategic thinking about cities, cultural
and arts policy development and integration of contemporary art into the public
realm.
ARTS PROJECTS AUSTRALIA (Adelaide)
APA
is one
of Australia's most renowned producers, event managers and touring
organisations: one with whom ABA has a long
and fruitful association, especially through the creation and management of
several major Melbourne-based festivals, with Andrew Bleby as Executive Producer
or General Manager.
MEGAFUN Pty Ltd (Melbourne)
Megafun
has been production management partner on major projects including MONA FOMA,
the opening of AAMI Stadium, the
Commonwealth Games Festival Melbourne 2006, the FINA Festival 2007, and the
Melbourne Moomba Festival 2000 - 2002. Megafun works with
ABA on technical production and site management for a range of projects.
ON
TOUR Ltd (London)
Based in
London
’s
West End
, On Tour produces and tours significant new work around the world. Director
Roger Chapman opened Sir Peter Hall’s Oedipus
at Epidauris in
Greece
and produced Tim Supple’s astonishing Indian production of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream. On Tour works with major companies and
other independent producers to invest in, develop and produce work of
international stature and present high definition theatre events in the major
cities of the world.
