People

Donna has been a Director and Chair of Everybody NOW! since March 2020. Donna has extensive experience in the arts industry having worked across a broad spectrum of roles including management, strategy, development, philanthropy, and fundraising. She has worked in senior positions for some of Queensland’s highest profile arts organisations and was a key member of the team that secured the Australian Performing Arts Market (APAM) for 2014, 2016 and 2018 in Queensland. Prior to joining the arts sector Donna worked with a number of corporates domestically and internationally.  As Executive Director of the Australian-Thai Chamber of Commerce in Thailand Donna coordinated business representation by 21 international chambers to the Thai government. Donna is also a Director and Chair for Loreto College, Coorparoo.

Tara is a Lawyer and Commercial Counsel who runs her own business, Hastings Consultancy. She is currently a Director of Aquis Park, home of the Gold Coast Turf Club and Event Centre and General Counsel and Board Secretary to Racing Queensland.

Richard is a strategic marketing, communication, media and stakeholder relations Executive with extensive experience working across Government sectors and Tourism as well as consumer products and services with leading global brands.

Ian Pidd is a freelance director of theatre and festivals and Co-Director of Everybody NOW. His work tends to be musical, accessible, playful and genre hopping, and is regularly seen throughout Australia and in Europe, US and Asia.
Ian co-created and co-directed Passenger with Jessica Wilson, a work in which an audience experience a contemporary western revenge tragedy from within a bus moving, which had a hit season in Melbourne, London’s Greenwich and Docklands Festival and at Sydney’s Art And About. He directed Sam Halmarack and JOF’s ecstatic participatory music work We Are Lightning which garnered a Green Room nomination and toured the UK in winning a Judges Choice award at Dublin Fringe.

Ian was project director on Polyglot’s First On The Ladder project and, the 2021 Green Room Award Winning work Big Day In, where musicians performed outside locked-down aged care homes. He was the Artistic Director of Back To Back Theatre and project Director for Snuff Puppets and Men Of Steel. He has had a long involvement in large scale music festivals and was the Arts Programmer at The Falls for over a decade.

Ian is a Churchill Fellow and was the inaugural recipient of Melbourne Fringe’s Living Legend Award.

Kate is an experienced creator of large-scale, community-engaged performance works and has managed many complex and layered community cultural development projects and multi-art events over the last 15 years.

Kate has guided Everybody NOW, through a highly successful period of growth since the company was founded in 2015, reaching over 48,000+ people in 200 communities across five states of Australia between the ages of 3-100 years young.

She has worked across Australia for leading arts organisations such as MONA FOMA; Salamanca Arts Centre as Arts and Events Manager, and Festival Manager of their 35th Anniversary Events; the Woodford Folk Festival as Major Projects Producer responsible for all commissioned works and large-scale opening and closing ceremonies; HOTA Home of the Arts and the Gold Coast’s Bleach* Festival as Associate Director.

Kate has a passion for site-specific, contemporary community-engaged performance, community storytelling and creating participatory, accessible arts and culture where audiences are co-creators of their creative experience.

Bec Reid is an Australian based performer, producer, director, choreographer and engagement specialist.

Bec encourages people to see their world in new ways through highly physical, participatory, practical, collaborative and celebratory actions. For 20 years, Bec has passionately worked in the space where professional artists and communities of interest meet; collaborating with communities and artists nationally and internationally.

Together with Tristan Meecham, Bec leads All The Queens Men, and is a founding Director of Everybody NOW! with Kate Baggerson and Ian Pidd. She also regularly collaborates with acclaimed artists Madeline Flynn and Tim Humphrey.

In 2017-18, Bec was a Fellowship recipient from the Australia Council for the Arts.

Bec has continually served on arts boards and regularly mentors young and emerging artists formally and informally. Bec’s true loves are Staffordshire Bull Terriers Italo Disco, Ceilidhs and dancing.

Andy is a highly experienced finance specialist with a range of clients across industries. He provides businesses with CFO services and project-based consultancy. His background as a financial director and general manager for a number of creative and digital agencies makes him well placed to understand the unique strategic challenges faced by these organisations.

He provides financial planning & consultancy, P&L and cash flow forecasting, budgeting, product & service, pricing & margin analysis, implementation of new finance processes and systems, building business cases for new investment opportunities and resource management and operations. Andy lives and runs his business from Elanora, on the Gold Coast.

Pru Wilson is an experienced producer, choreographer, dancer, director, photographer, videographer, adjudicator, dance convenor and stage manager.  Over the past 14 years Pru has worked in Melbourne and London before returning to the Gold Coast in late 2017.

Pru joined Everybody NOW! as a project producer in 2021, hitting the road for You Should Be Dancing Rockhampton and The Inaugural Annual Dance Affair Cairns. In 2022 she was formally appointed as Everybody NOW!’s Company Producer where dived straight into overseeing major new works, such as Those Who Rock presented by HOTA Home of the Arts, Roller Coaster as Company in Residence at Bleach Festival, and Everybody NOW’s national slam poetry program for seniors, Gran Slam.

She is also Producer with the Gold Coast Eisteddfod as well as runs her own photography and freelance choreography business. Some of her recent performing arts credits include: Producer Supercell Contemporary of Contemporary Dance – Makers Program, Gold Palm Theatre award recipient for her choreography on St. Hilda’s Musical – Matilda 2021, Performer ‘How To Spell Love’ – Brisbane Festival 2020 & QLD poetry festival 2019, Performer and collaborator on Matilda Award winning ‘Inside Out’ contemporary dance work by Tammy Zarb and Co – Bleach Festival 2019, Artist creating ‘Circular World’, Rage Against The Virus – HOTA 2020.

Kirsty has led a multifaceted life utilising a range of skills and experience in the arts, academia and not-for-profit sectors. Her roles have included project and event management, place-making, grant writing, fundraising, partnerships and sponsorships, and music performance, education, research and online innovation.

Following success as a classical pianist, educator and researcher both in Australia and overseas, Kirsty spent four years at the ANU School of Music as Development Officer and Videoconference Manager, and five years at the Churchill Trust in partnerships and sponsorships, and strategy and research. As an independent arts and cultural consultant she was also the creative force behind Acton Walkways, a collaboratively sponsored community engagement program in Canberra, and the ACT heritage funded project ‘Sunken Stories of Old Acton’.

Following a move to the Gold Coast in 2023, Kirsty is now looking forward to engaging with and connecting intergenerational communities nationally with Everybody NOW!.