Leadership Lab - Adelaide
Description
Leadership Lab - Adelaide is a free, one-day, in-person event for Adelaide-based artists and arts workers.
A cross between a workshop and a conference, the Leadership Lab helps you better understand the system you’re working in, connect with peers in generative ways, and identify small but powerful actions you can test to create change.
Each event is co-created by Creative Australia and local Curators to celebrate and platform sector-led leadership. For our Adelaide Lab, we are working with Celia Coulthard, Programming Executive for First Nations work at Adelaide Festival Centre and Yusuf Hayat, artist and independent producer to select local presenters and facilitators.
At the Lab you’ll hear inspiring perspectives from featured speakers, take part in practical breakout sessions and leave with ideas you can apply in your context, organisation or community. You don’t need to be in a formal leadership role to attend – all you need is an interest in working collaboratively on shared challenges.
Registrations closed at 4.30 pm ACST on 17 September.
Image: Leadership Lab - Dawin, 2026. Credit: Brett Walker.
Accessibility
This event will have a range of access supports available including:
quiet room
visual story (guide to access features of the venue and event)
adjustable lighting
air conditioning.
If you have other access needs such as captions, notetaking or Auslan interpreting, please let us know when you register. We will work with you to support your access needs.
Local Curators
Celia Coulthard
Celia Coulthard is an Adnyamathanha woman, based on Kaurna and Peramangk lands where she works as Programming Executive for First Nations work at Adelaide Festival Centre. Celia sits on the boards of Artlink Magazine and Nunga Wangga Aboriginal Media Corporation, Create SA’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Strategy Panel and picks up the occasional gig in leadership lab curation.
Yusuf Ali Hayat
Yusuf Ali Hayat is committed to social justice. He has worked in leadership roles in the Arts as well as for several international non-government organisations. Yusuf is a former Artistic Director at Next Wave Festival and also as General Manger and then Visual Arts and Community Engagement Lead at Nexus Arts. Yusuf’s research focuses on migrant narratives, transcultural aesthetics and intersubjectivity in art. As an artist, Yusuf’s work integrates photography, video, painting and architectural approaches to sculptural form. Yusuf has undertaken artist residencies at NEXUS Arts, Adelaide and the British School at Rome. He has exhibited in Australia and overseas.
Host
Dr. Ananth Gopal
Dr. Ananth Gopal is a facilitator, coach, geographer, and actor with 12 years of experience helping organisations and communities navigate complexity, change, and diversity. He brings a unique blend of academic insight and creative practice, combining a PhD in Human Geography with a professional background in theatre. His work spans the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, with a focus on adaptive leadership, inclusion, and systems thinking. Trained at Harvard Kennedy School by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Ananth is a committee member of the Australian Adaptive Leadership Institute and founder of Polykala, a leadership and facilitation practice focused on the social and ecological challenges of our time. Ananth has taught at the Universities of Melbourne and Wollongong (in Geography) and designed and facilitated programs for clients including Creative Australia, Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet, Melbourne Theatre Company, City of Melbourne, Australian Museum, UTS and the Australasian College of Paramedicine. As an actor, he has performed across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, and is an Associate Artist with Melbourne Playback Theatre Company. His approach to leadership development is experiential, reflective, and rooted in the arts—enabling organisations to shift culture and strengthen their capacity to lead with nuance, courage, and care.
Presenters
Gaelle Mellis | Keynote speaker
Gaelle Mellis is a proud disabled woman, award-winning designer, cultural leader, and advocate whose work has shaped the Australian disability arts sector for more than three decades. Working across theatre, dance, visual arts, screen, access, and cultural leadership, she is recognised for challenging conventions, expanding artistic possibilities, and advancing disability-led practice. As a designer and collaborator, Gaelle has contributed to numerous acclaimed productions. Alongside her creative practice, Gaelle has built a reputation as a sector leader, change-maker, and disability and arts advocate. Gaelle has also held leadership roles across arts, disability, and screen sectors where she has influenced policy, industry development, accessibility practice, and opportunities for disabled artists nationally. Driven by a belief in creativity as a catalyst for social change, Gaelle's work continues to challenge assumptions, create new opportunities for disabled artists, and demonstrate how disability perspectives enrich Australia's cultural landscape. She is currently Creative Director of Tutti Arts.
Luke Wilson | Welcome to Country
Luke Wilson is a Cultural Educator with Kuma Kaaru Cultural Services that has spent many years showcasing and sharing his culture, locally, nationally and internationally. He is a Kaurna Narungga, Ngarrindjeri, Arrente and Ngadjuri man. Luke has a passion to share his culture with the world so people know and embrace his people and culture.
Christie Anthoney | Breakout session facilitator
Christie is a respected cultural leader whose work spans festivals, government, higher education and major arts venues, driven by a belief that creativity is essential public infrastructure for strengthening communities. Having worked across Australia, Scotland, Canada and Hong Kong, she nurtures her international network of cultural leaders and champions the arts as a catalyst for innovation and civic participation. Christie serves on arts boards, lectures in festivals and arts leadership and co-owns a social enterprise called Neighbourhood Node.
Yasmin Gurreeboo | Breakout session facilitator
Yasmin (Midlato – fifth-born daughter) Gurreeboo (she/they) is a theatre director, facilitator and cultural leader working across professional theatre, social justice and community arts. Yasmin is neurodivergent and of Muslim Mauritian and Scottish heritage. As CEO and Artistic Director of ActNow Theatre, they create collaborative work, challenge systems of oppression and build spaces where communities can tell the stories they want on their own terms, using theatre as a tool for social change.
Euan Black | Breakout session facilitator
At TACSI, Euan combines three of their passions — design, networks and social justice — to unearth better ways of working together that create real change. For him, the best part of the job is connecting the deep wisdom of people with lived experience with other rich evidence, and using the insights that emerge to imagine new possibilities for people and systems. Empathetic yet strategic, Euan naturally thinks in systems and uses that ability to help other people build their own systems awareness and leadership. Euan loves leaning into the discomfort of being a beginner and strives to learn about the world through the eyes of others. A design and pop music enthusiast, Euan is passionate about good typography and perfectly produced Scandinavian pop.
Katt Osborne | Breakout session facilitator
Katt Osborne is an arts leader, company founder, creative producer and performance director and maker. As well as a currently practicing independent artist Katt has held numerous leadership positions, most recently as the Executive Director of The Blue Room Theatre (Boorloo/Perth). Previously she was the Artistic Director of Riptide Youth Performance Company (Mandjoogoordap/Mandurah) and a co-founding artist and the inaugural General Manager of The Last Great Hunt (Boorloo/Perth). In 2023, Katt was awarded a prestigious ‘40under40’ at the Business News awards – WA’s leading awards program that recognises and celebrates the state's leading entrepreneurs, innovators, and future business leaders.
Anna Powell | Breakout session facilitator
Anna Powell has extensive experience building coalitions and networks within communities, nationally and internationally, to bridge divides, address the root drivers of social cohesion and support a more active democracy. She has been CEO of Collaboration for Impact since 2022. Previously, she held leadership roles in international development and philanthropy, driving systems change across diverse contexts. Her work focuses on mobilising people, institutions and ideas to create lasting social impact.
Jason Boehme | Breakout session facilitator
Jason Boehme is an award-winning Narungga and Kaurna theatre maker, writer, director and choreographer whose practice spans performance, festivals and large-scale public events. Founding Creative Director of YIRRAMBOI Festival, his acclaimed works include Blood on the Dance Floor, Wild Dog, Adelaide Festival commission Guuranda, and Logan St for State Theatre Company South Australia. Through Guuranda X, Jacob is pioneering a First Nations-led international touring and cultural exchange model with communities in India and Scotland.
Dominic Guerrera | Breakout session facilitator
Dominic Guerrera is a Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri poet and visual artist based in South Australia. His interdisciplinary practice moves between poetry, text-based visual art, printmaking and ceramics, with language operating as both literary form and visual material. Across his work, Guerrera engages deeply with themes of Aboriginal justice, truth-telling and self-determination. Guerrera is an award-winning whose work often combines political clarity with intimacy, using direct and declarative language to challenge colonial narratives and institutional power. He received the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize and the David Unaipon Award. He is the First Nations editor at Cordite Poetry Review, one of Australia’s leading poetry journals.
Alice McCool | Breakout session facilitator
Alice McCool is an artist, curator and writer. Her practice spans video, painting, sculpture and installation. Alice is currently Facilitator at fine print magazine, and Creative Producer with Open Space Contemporary Arts. In 2024, Alice was a Creative Australia (re)situate Venice Biennale Delegate. She has recently curated and exhibited at FELTspace, Post Office Projects, Suite7a, Sawtooth ARI, The Little Machine, Bus Projects, Future Juice and Pari ARI and was a Finalist in the 2026 Churchie Emerging Art Prize.
Katt Osborne | Breakout session facilitator
Katt Osborne (AFOCAL) is an arts leader, company founder, creative producer and performance director and maker. As well as a currently practicing independent artist Katt has held numerous leadership positions, most recently as the Executive Director of The Blue Room Theatre (Boorloo/Perth). Previously she was the Artistic Director of Riptide Youth Performance Company (Mandjoogoordap/Mandurah) and a co-founding artist and the inaugural General Manager of The Last Great Hunt (Boorloo/Perth).
Sonya Rankine | Breakout session facilitator
Sonya Rankine is a Ngarrindjeri, Narungga, Ngadjuri and Wirangu multidisciplinary artist, cultural educator and founder of Lakun Mara. Her practice spans weaving, visual art, songwriting, performance, and theatre, grounded in culture, language and intergenerational knowledge. Sonya works across arts and community contexts, creating opportunities for cultural expression, collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Truc Truong | Breakout session facilitator
Truc Truong is an artist whose practice explores power, class, colonial histories and how ideas of value and taste are constructed. She is the founder of Smoking Fish, an artist-run studio and café that operates as an extension of her practice. Moving between art, food and everyday life, Smoking Fish considers how an artistic practice can exist outside conventional gallery structures while creating space for experimentation, exchange and community.
Emmaline Zanelli | Breakout session facilitator
Emmaline Zanelli (b.1994) is an artist living on Kaurna Country. She combines elements of video, photography, sculpture and performance to create work that considered themes of labour and youth culture. From 2016 - 2023, she was a co-director of multi-arts collective The Bait Fridge. Her most recent video work Pocket Money was featured in Yield Strength: 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, curated by Ellie Buttrose.
Program schedule
- 9:00 am - 9:30 am
Registration desk opens
- 9:30 am - 10:00 am
Welcome to Country
Presented by Luke Wilson, Cultural Educator, Kuma Kaaru Cultural Services
- 10:00 am - 10:15 am
Setting the scene
Hosted by Dr. Ananth Gopal, Polykala
- 10:15 am - 10:45 am
Keynote address | The System Is Working Exactly as Designed: A Disability Lens on Leadership, Culture and Systems Change with Gaelle Mellis
What if exclusion isn’t a flaw in our cultural systems, but proof they are working exactly as intended? Drawing on disability arts, the Social Model of Disability, access thinking and crip time, this keynote challenges assumptions about leadership, expertise, productivity and power. Far more than a conversation about inclusion, it is a provocation about systems change. This keynote considers how disability perspectives disrupt outdated paradigms and may hold the key to cultural transformation. The question isn't who fits the systems, but how we redesign them.
- 10:45 am - 11:15 am
Morning Tea
- 11:15 am - 12:30 pm
Break-out session | Gadla Warra/ Fire Talk with Jacob Boehme
Gadla Warra, which means Fire Talk in Kaurna language invites participants to slow down and examine how perspective, experience and assumption shape what we see. Through a guided sequence of observing, remembering, feeling, questioning and speculating, participants move beyond immediate judgement toward deeper interpretation and shared meaning. Originally developed as a tool for discussing artistic experiences, in Gadla Warra participants practise noticing before judging, listening across different viewpoints, questioning assumptions and recognising that a system can look very different depending on where we stand within it.
- 11:15 am - 12:30 pm
Break-out session | Power with Jacinta Koolmatrie
Join Jacinta for a session exploring the idea of Power. Together you will ask questions like: How do we experience power? How are we impacted by power? How might we play into power? This session will use both visual and verbal approaches. In small groups and as a collective we will yarn and illustrate what power in the sector looks like to us. This session will be useful for those who like to communicate visually, but are also comfortable with yarning openly. Through reflection, participants will ask themselves how they might contribute to systems of power.
- 11:15 am - 12:30 pm
Break-out session | Fuzzy Messy: How to map your system around what you care about with Katt Osborne
AFOCAL invites you to put on your 'systems thinking' glasses to gain a new perspective on the interconnected system that you’re part of. In this introductory taster to systems thinking, you’ll follow alongside our imaginary arts and community organisation while beginning to create a draft map of your own system. Together, we’ll notice patterns, make connections and develop a greater sense of the complex moving parts that influence your context.
- 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Lunch
- 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Break-out session | Leading with Connection with Yasmin Gurreeboo
This interactive session is an invitation to explore how meaningful networks can grow from curiosity, shared experiences and active listening. Through playful activities and guided conversations, participants will discover unexpected things they have in common, share what they are passionate about and learn more about the people around them. Together, we will explore what we can offer each other and what new possibilities can emerge when we take the time to connect, listen and build relationships.
- 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Break-out session | The comfort of extraction with Dominic Gurerra
How do race politics and power dynamics shape our professional relationships with Aboriginal people in the arts? Through a guided yarning circle, participants are invited to reflect upon and draw from their personal experiences in this honest conversation about complicity, accountability and relational ethics. Together we will examine the uncomfortable truths that sit beneath collaboration, asking how whiteness operates through everyday professional conduct, what meaningful solidarity actually requires, and what it means to build and maintain relationships with Aboriginal communities that are grounded in responsibility rather than performance.
- 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Break-out session | Hidden Connections: Unlocking New Possibilities Together with Anna Powell
Many of us are already part of rich networks, yet there is often untapped potential within the people around us. This experiential session helps you discover new possibilities for working together on the challenges that matter to you. Through practical activities and guided reflection, participants will explore hidden connections through the lenses of personal, organisational and contextual change, uncover new insights about the systems they are part of, and examine how belonging, influence and collective power emerge through networks. Together, we will identify opportunities to strengthen relationships, bridge perspectives and unlock new pathways for collaborative action.
- 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm
Short break
Take a short break to reset and grab a cuppa.
- 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm
Break-out session | Show Your Working Out with Emmaline Zanelli (facilitator) and Truc Truong, Alice McCool, Sonya Rankine (panelists)
Improvisation and Innovation are words often associated with successful creative practice. But improvising and innovation can be a windy road to an unsure destination. In this session, participants will be encouraged to respond to a series of open-ended prompts whilst hearing panellists share inspiring stories of improvisations that lead to innovations. Participants will then be invited to share their notes in breakout group discussions, experimenting together with applying techniques to their own situations.
- 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm
Break-out session | Creative Shhh with Christie Anthoney
How do arts leaders navigate pressure from up, down, and out? Creative Shhh is a case-study driven discussion designed to build your gumption and grit, so you can front up to your practice or organisation with wind in your wings, when the world feels precarious. Drawing on real scenarios from the sector, we'll unpack how leaders hold their ground under competing demands and leave you with practical ways to stay steady and work together.
- 3:00 pm - 4:15 pm
Break-out session | Testing Emerging Ideas: How to Take Practical Action and Move Systems Forward with Euan Black
While other sessions explore systemic “being” and “knowing”, this lab is all about “doing”. Drawing primarily from the knowledge in the room (your voices), together we will identify a systemic opportunity for change and build out a repeatable process for taking systemic action. Testing as we build, you'll be introduced to an alternative to linear process that actually embraces complexity without overwhelming or overburdening.
- 4:15 pm - 4:30 pm
Short break
Take a short break before joining our final session for the day.
- 4:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Weaving it all together
We'll close the day with an opportunity for participants to chat in small groups and ask: “What's coming to the surface?” Hosted by Dr. Ananth Gopal, Polykala.
- 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Informal drinks
Hosted by Creative Australia
FAQs
- Who is this event for?
This event is for Adelaide’s arts and culture community – we need as lots of perspectives, networks and ideas in the room to help everyone make progress on the shared challenges. You might be an independent or working in an organisation, an artist or arts worker, in a formal leadership role or doing grass roots work in your community.
- Is there a cost?
No, this event is free! You do need to register to attend. Registration closes 1 week before the event.
- Is there access support available?
If you experience barriers to attending because you identify as a person with disability or who is d/Deaf, we can provide some financial support for access costs you might have so you can attend this event. For example: costs of Uber/taxi to get to the venue, support workers or childcare. You can apply for this via the registration link.
- Are there bursaries for independent artists and arts workers?
Yes, if you are an independent artist or arts worker you can apply for a bursary of $500 to support you to attend the Leadership Lab. There are 10 bursaries available to apply for when you register for the event. We will allocate bursaries on a random basis. You can apply for this via the registration link.
- Is there travel support available?
We are not able to provide travel support for this event. If you are an independent artist or arts worker you can apply for a small bursary to support you to attend the event.
- Will there be other Leadership Lab events?
Yes. There will be one more event in Sydney on Thursday 26 November 2026 and more locations in 2027.
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