For this year's Wilks Oration we are delighted to have Katrina Sedgwick OAM speaking on 'The Arts - the essential fabric of our society'.

Katrina, who has held many committee board roles and directorships with a wide range of creative industry and arts organisations, grew up in Adelaide, where as a nine year old she acted in the Peter Weir film The Last Wave with David Gulpilil and Richard Chamberlain. After finishing her schooling, Katrina sang with the State Opera, then in 1995 became the co-founder of the Sydney Fringe Festival. She was Special Events Producer for the Adelaide Festival of Arts from 1996 to 2000 and directed the ‘Come Out’ Festival for children in 1999.

In 2002, Katrina became the inaugural director of the biennial Adelaide International Film Festival, continuing for five festivals and investing in features that went onto international acclaim, such as Samson and Delilah, Ten Canoes and Home Stories. In 2012, she moved to Melbourne to join the ABC as Head of Arts, commissioning a diverse range of projects for prime-time television, developing a new strategy for Arts across the ABC – Television, Radio, News and Online. In 2015, she became the Director of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), the national museum for film, TV, games, digital culture and art.

This year Katrina was appointed as the inaugural Director and CEO of the Melbourne Art’s Precinct Corporation, where she manages a $1.7 billion transformation and oversees the management and operations of Federation Square, seeking to bring life to a single, continuous, arts, civic, and cultural precinct, stretching from the Square through Southbank.

Katrina was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2020 for her services to performing arts, screen industries and visual arts administration, and is extremely well qualified to talk to us about the place of the Arts in society here in Adelaide, in Melbourne and elsewhere.

We look forward to you joining us for this event.