About Us

OUR MISSION

What’s your story? Our mission is to amplify voices of women in a safe and supportive space that provides an opportunity for them to create and share their story, make sense of our world, deepen our understanding and compassion, break down barriers and experience the joy of creative connection. We build resilience and capacity, while inspiring understanding and celebrating our individual and cultural differences as a source of strength.

WHAT WE DO

Since 2018 Voices of Women has encouraged over 1,500 First Nations and diverse women in Australia and internationally to create and share their unique story.

We present collaborative cross-cultural creative workshops, public readings, open call outs, mentoring programs, live shows, films and podcasts across Australia and internationally. Stories are presented with trained performance artists including outstanding emerging and experience actors, directors, sound and lighting designers and workshop facilitators, wrapped in new exciting music by a composer in residence.

OUR HISTORY

The first workshop and live presentation began in 2018 at Studio MV on the Parramatta Road Petersham (Gadigal Country), followed by EDGE with Inner West Council in 2019. Workshop programs encouraging community connection through storymaking, podcasting and live presentations have taken place annually with regional and metropolitan partners in NSW including:

  • South Coast (Yuin Country),
  • Dubbo (Tubba-gah (maing) Wiradjuri Country)
  • Northern Rivers (Gumbaynggir Country)
  • The Riverina (Wiradjuri Country)
  • Newcastle (Awabakal and Worimi Country)
  • Ryde (Wallumedegal Country)

The first feature film CLEARWAY (CORONA) was filmed at Articulate Art Gallery in 2020 with trained performance artists and commissioned new music. This was followed by the release of the award-winning feature film Entanglement  in 2021, four Australian shorts Our Mob, Invisibility, The DressSun in My Bones, Queen Bessie’s Gal, and eight international shorts We Are Still Here, The Dress, Isolation in Lockdown, Fully Present, Body and Breath, Now You See Me, Trap Musik and On Being Twelve. Entanglement and the short films have won film festival awards and commendations across Europe, Australia, North America and the United States, was screened at The United Nations Womens Conference in Rwanda 2023 and broadcast on SBS Television and NITV Television in Australia as part of International Womens Day and NAIDOC Week.

Live productions with professional actors include Amplify (2022) in Dubbo, Entanglement Live (2023) in Dubbo, Goulburn and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Embellishment (2023) at KXT Broadway Sydney in 2023, and Women of the Riverina (2024) at KXT Broadway and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.

We released the Voices of Women Podcast in 2021, and launched the first Voices of Women International Film and Script Festival in 2025 in three continents: Sydney, New York and Kenya.

Our composer in residence Elizabeth Jigalin has been commissioned to create music for CLEARWAY (CORONA), Amplify, Entanglement film and Entanglement live, Embellishment and Women of the Riverina. We have worked with trained performance artists since 2018, including actors, directors, sound and lighting designers and workshop facilitators in regional and metropolitan NSW, and internationally.

GOVERNANCE

Voices of Women Inc is a registered Not for Profit Incorporated Association with DGR status. It is supported by Australian Federal, State and local government bodies, private donors and foundations and an extensive network of collaborating arts organisations.

BOARD MEMBERS

Lliane Clarke

Lliane is the Artistic Director and President of Voices of Women which she created in 2018. With a passion for diverse written and spoken stories, she is a journalist, published author, producer, director, and author mentor as well as a communications and marketing consultant in the performing arts. Since 2020, she has directed community workshop programs focussing on empowering women through sharing stories across regional and metropolitan NSW in Australia and internationally, including in collaboration with partners in the US and Kenya.

She directed CLEARWAY (CORONA) in 2020, co-directed Entanglement in 2021, and directed the short films Our Mob, Invisibility, The Dress and Sun in My Bones in 2021. She has devised collaborative community-based scripts for live performance since 2018, including Amplify in 2022, Entanglement Live in 2023, Embellishment in 2023 at KXT Broadway Sydney in 2023, and Women of the Riverina at KXT Broadway and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.

She was awarded the Carla Zampatti Arts and Culture Medal NSW for Entanglement and is a Member of Institute of Community Directors Australia (ICDA), Compact Alliance Multicultural NSW, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and National Council of Women of New South Wales.

Jeanne Kinninmont

Jeanne is the Business Manager and Treasurer of Voices of Women and is an­­­ experienced business project manager and consultant and Fellow of the Institute of Public Accountants. Jeanne is experienced in business consulting, business writing and communications, project management, financial management, preparing business plans and generally working with business managers to improve results and effectiveness. She is Business Manager at Writing NSW, and has been Director Project Words, General Manager Moorambilla Voices and Senior Project Manager APRA. Jeanne is also a keen photographer.

Hasitha Adhikariarachchi

Hasitha Adhikariarachchi is a spoken word artist and has been involved in Voices of Women since its first program in 2018. Raised in Sri Lanka, she calls Sydney home. Hasitha was the runner-up of the Poetry Section of International Women’s Day Writing Competition by South Coast Writers Centre and has been featured by the Macquarie University in ‘Emerging Writers Festival – 2018’ and ‘South Asian Film, Arts & Literature Festival – 2017’. She won the NSW Multilingual Poetry Slam in 2017. Her debut children’s book, Mr and Mrs Dingiri Rabbit, was published in 2021 and her short fiction and poetry have been featured in various anthologies and online journals. She performed her monologue, The Greyhound, the Dark-Bearded Man and the Wind, at ‘The Monologue Adventure’, Voices of Women 2018 and co-facilitated and performed Sambandha//Connections in 2025.

Di Bird

Di Bird is a proud Gomeroi woman. She is a singer, grandmother and storyteller who regularly performs with her band the Di Bird Jazztet. Di wrote and performed Invisibility in the Voices of Women feature film Entanglement and performed in Embellishment at KXT Broadway. Di studied at Tranby Aboriginal College and works at the Youth Koori Court. She is a First Nations advisor to the Voices of Women program.

Natalie Rose

Natalie is one third of the performance collective called ‘post’, and is Creative Director and CEO at Shopfront Arts Co-op. Natalie has been involved in Australia’s contemporary arts scene for the past 21 years. Her work has been seen nationally and internationally at Sydney Festival, Belvoir, Sydney Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Cambridge Junction (UK) and Sydney Opera House, to name a few. Most recently with post, Oedipus Schmoedipus has toured to Santiago Chile, West Kowloon Cultural Precinct Authority in Hong Kong and in 2020 was to be showcased as a part of AsiaTOPA at Arts Centre Melbourne. Their 2017 Sydney Festival work Ich Nibber Dibber was remounted at Sydney Opera House and Malthouse Theatre. Nat has facilitated workshops for the past 21 years for young and emerging artists with and without disability. Nat has a Bachelor of Arts (Theatre-making) from the University of Western Sydney, Nepean and has previously trained at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists and Urban Theatre Projects as a member of their ensembles.

Alison Muir

Alison is an effective and successful professional fundraiser whose strategies and initiatives have raised $60M through major gifts, bequests, grants, for not-for-profit and charitable organisations in the higher education, health, arts and social justice sectors. Her expertise includes designing customised fundraising strategies, building and strengthening donor relations, campaign design, appeals, special events, communications and media. Alison writes and performs comedy and develops film scripts and was a volunteer co-presenter and co-producer on 2SER-FM on arts program Entertainment Magazine for five years and in 1992 created the program Final Draft (about writing – all kinds), which is still running on 2SER today.

Diana Beauchamp

Diana is a strategic business executive who supports teams to clarify vision, initiate projects, develop systems, organisational and marketing infrastructure in social enterprises, government and private sector settings. She specialised in digital infrastructure, communication and commercial strategies for growth in businesses looking to scale up, disrupt and challenge the status quo.

She successfully collaborates with executives, business owners and sector stakeholders to create enduring partnerships, networks and strategic outcomes that reinforce and build reputation.

Jennifer Halbert

Jennifer Halbert is a Senior Legal Tribunal Member for the Australian Government, having held positions on National Sport, Guardianship, Administrative Appeals, NACT Consumer and Commercial. She was a former Registrar in the Family Court of Australia.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Voices of Women collaborates and consults regularly with members of its Advisory Committee and Public Fund Members.

Victoria Kennedy

Victoria is a proud member of the Wongaibon clan of south-west NSW, an actor and health professional. As an actor, she is known for Redfern Now (2012) and Bony (1992). She performed in a theatre production at the Weimar Kunst Festival Germany, and in Close to the Bone at Q Theatre. She is currently a Board member of Mooghalin Performing Arts, and continues to work within the arts community. Victoria performed The Dress in the Voices of Women feature film Entanglement and advises the program on First Nations storytelling.

Clare Grant OAM

Clare has been an actor and advisor in the project since 2018. She has been involved in the creation of new works for theatre, radio and film for many years. She worked for two years with KISS Theatre Group in Europe. She was a founding member of The Sydney Front. Her solo performance Woman in the Wall has been presented in Sydney and in New Zealand. She was Co-director then Artistic Director of Playworks (1994-7) and served on the Theatre Committee of the NSW Arts Advisory Council (1994-6) and Theatre Fund, Australia Council (1996-99). Other performance work includes Burn Sonata (1998) and Inland Sea (devised with and directed by Nikki Heywood) (2000), Laquiem (composed and directed by Andree Greenwell from writing by Kathleen Mary Fallon) (1999). She has collaborated with John Gillies on the live performance of Prelude to the Mary Stuart Tapes 1998 and 1999 and the film The Mary Stuart Tapes (Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals) (2000). Clare has been a lecturer in performance at UNSW since 1998. She was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 2021 for services to performing arts.

Jacqui Smith

Jacqui is the (Acting) Head of Commercial (Tourism, Retail and Venue Engagement) at the National Museum of Australia, Non-Executive Director of the National Capital Attractions Association and a Non-Executive Director of The Song Company, Australia’s premier vocal ensemble. She is passionate about Australia’s cultural and creative industries and has over 25 years of experience in arts management, international commercial partnerships and philanthropy, communications, and major events and tour management, across the performing arts, higher education, tourism and publishing industries.

Michele Seminara

Michele is a poet, editor and has been published in a poetry collection Engraft (Island Press, 2016), collaborative chapbook Scar to Scar (with Robbie Coburn, PressPress, 2016) & HUSH (Blank Rune Press, 2017). She recently published a collection of her poetry with UWA Publishing, Suburban Fantasy.

Jeanne Ryckmans

Jeanne Ryckmans has worked for two decades in Australian publishing. A literary agent and co-founder of Key People Literary Management, she is a former senior publisher at Random House and HarperCollins Australia. Prior to joining the publishing world, she worked for seven years in arts television (France 2/SBS Television) as an on-air presenter and documentary producer, and was features editor at ELLE Magazine and books editor for Vogue Australia. She is the author of three books including Trust: A Fractured Fable (Upswell Publishing 2023) and was Artistic Director of the Canberra Writers Festival from 2020-2022. 

Kaye Tuckerman

Kaye Tuckerman is based in New York City, and continues to work throughout the USA, Canada, London, Europe, Australia. Kaye is a graduate of Australia’s two most prestigious arts institutions: WAAPA – Bachelor of Arts Music Theatre and NIDA – Post Graduate Diploma Directing.She has directed multiple theatre productions throughout Australia and Asia, and most recently has directed the short films: Fragile, Black Canvas, Permission, Still Here, Trumped. She was Co-Director and Co-Producer of the Voices of Women feature film Entanglement and directed the shorts On Being Twelve, Isolation in Lockdown, Body and Breath, Now You See Me, Trap Musik and Queen Bessie‘s Gal.

Yvette Henry Holt

Yvette Henry Holt is a multi-award-winning poet, essayist, editor, stand-up comedienne, and femin_artist photographer of erotic desert landscapes and queer votive imagery. Heralding from the Yiman, Wakaman and Bidjara Nations’ of Queensland, her poetry has been widely published, translated, anthologised, and reviewed in print and online domestically and internationally. In 2005 Yvette was awarded the David Unaipon Award for her manuscript anonymous premonition (UQP), the debut collection then went on to win the Victorian Premier’s Literary for Indigenous Writing in 2008, Scanlon Poetry Prize NSW 2008, and the Kate Challis RAKA Award 2010. In 2018 Yvette’s poem mother(s) native tongue was Highly Commended for the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Award – Queensland Poetry. Yvette’s research, editorial and writing contribution toward the field of Aboriginal literature, more emphatically poetry, and Indigenous women’s leadership spans over twenty-years across all states and territories of Australia.

INTERNSHIP

Voices of Women’s Artistic Director and its Committee are keen to mentor and share their skills with younger women or women wanting to work in this space and have successfully offered Marketing, Social Media and Production internships.

Vale (Aunty) Kerry Reed Gilbert

Voices of Women will always remember and respect with love and gratitude the support and inspiration of the extraordinary woman (Aunty) Kerry Reed Gilbert (deceased). Kerry was a respected and much-loved Aboriginal Elder, Matriarch, and Warrior of the Wiradjuri Nation, from Central New South Wales, a writer, activist, poet, mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Her work has been performed nationally and internationally. She was the inaugural Chairperson of the First Nations Australians Writers Network (FNAWN) in 2012 and continued as Patron. She gave the permission for her work When the Bell Tolls to be read and published at VOICES OF WOMEN 2019. The work was read by guest artist Teena McCarthy. Read about her biography The Cherry Pickers Daughter published by Wild Dingo Press.

Kerry compiled and edited a collection of First Nations voices from across Australia titled A Pocketful of Leadership in First Nations Australia Communities 2017. Her poetry and prose have been published in many journals and anthologies nationally and internationally and has been translated in French, Korean, Bengali, Dutch and other non-English speaking languages. She was an immensely positive force for change. Read one of her last podcasts with Michele Seminara on Verity La here. Anita Heiss wrote a beautiful eulogy which you can read here.


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