About the Festival

About Us

Arts. Performance. Community. Connection.

Shepparton Festival commissions, develops and presents a thrilling two-week annual program of events encompassing performance, music, literature, visual arts and food. The Festival brings people together from all walks of life to celebrate our vibrant creative community.

For two weeks in 2024, we will spill into familiar and unfamiliar spaces across the region as we continue our legacy as one of Victoria’s longest running arts festivals.. Our diverse program allows us to watch, listen, connect with and honour each other. For 27 years we’ve been passionate about giving artists a platform, paving the way for the Festival to be treasured locally and beyond.

Our Vision

A stellar arts festival that is locally treasured and valued beyond our region.

Our Mission

We support the development of a creative community whose members seek, see, hear, andspeak truths of all kinds, with an ever-empathetic heart, an unflinching eye, an open mind, and the readiness to listen and grow. In this way, we enable and encourage our community to participate in art that strengthens and unites, while stimulating reflection and growth.

Our Culture

We are creative, inclusive and courageous. We value the arts, our community, our diverse histories and our strengths. We value discourse and seek influences within and beyond Greater Shepparton that can help us understand, improve, and set and achieve our goals.

Values

Sharper

We will use art as a way to stimulate discourse, to draw a picture of what it looks like when we, as a community, fulfil our potential. We will use art to identify solutions and to name what holds us back. We will be courageous.

Deeper

Our diverse community’s happiness and prosperity are inextricably linked to our ability to become a truly inclusive community. We believe that our journey to that destination must begin with reconciling our past. That is why we will put First Peoples First. We know that we need to engage meaningfully and listen more attentively to understand more deeply.

Clearer

For us to deliver a sharper and deeper Festival we must be creative, focussed, efficient and effective. To do that, we need to act purposefully, transparently and accountably. We need to be clear on how we convert our understanding of our purpose and context into strategic direction, how this determines our creative and organisational plans, how we communicate them, and how we monitor progress against them. To achieve this, we will invest in strengthening our governance and operational processes so that our goals, objectives and roles are clear and targeted.

Community. Culture. Creativity.

Shepparton Festival is being conscious of the people around us, the world around us, and our own feelings. We are conscious of the materials we use, of our senses, our stories and our shared humanity.

We’re bringing a Conscious Creative.

Our Team

Kristen Retallick (she/her)

Festival Director

Kristen is dedicated to supporting a healthy creative ecology for regional arts development and nurturing the important role that the arts plays in social discovery and progress towards more cohesive and equitable communities and society. Kristen is a visual artist who has contributed to the Shepparton Festival since 2018. She is a member of Splinter Contemporary Artists and the Make Good Collective, and holds a position on the Greater Shepparton Creative City Strategy Advisory Committee. Kristen was previously Arts and Culture leader, Moira Shire Council where she developed and ran the inaugural Moira Midwinter Festival, and Gallery Manager/Curator, The G.R.A.I.N. Store Nathalia. She has almost two decades of art industry and education experience.

Kristen completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts: Graphic Design/Multimedia at The University of Ballarat (Federation University) in 2002 and a Master of Teaching: Visual Arts at The University of Melbourne in 2015.

Mimi Leung (she/her)

Chair

Mimi Leung is an artist and illustrator whose playful work weaves together the real and surreal in dynamic depictions of imaginative creatures and abstract forms.
Her multidisciplinary practise engages painting, drawing, writing and moving-image to process subconscious thoughts and feelings; applying a lens of curiosity and playfulness to the world around her as well as within. Mimi also works closely with culturally diverse and youth communities to develop their own stories using digital media.

Mimi is represented by The Jacky Winter Group and has exhibited internationally.

Peter Kelton

Peter Kelton (he/him)

Secretary and Child Protection Officer

Peter is a qualified and practising lawyer. He previously held numerous managerial positions bio-pharma logistics (including as CEO and Managing Director). Peter has thorough understanding of commercial activities including operations, business Development, marketing, strategy, and governance. He lives in Mooroopna.

Anita Larkin (she/her)

Treasurer

With over 20 years in the creative sector, Anita has made significant contributions to various organizations, including Multicultural Arts Victoria and Kaiela Arts. Her multifaceted expertise spans from organizational development to event management, all grounded in her commitment to equity, self-determination, and human rights.

Anita holds a Graduate Certificate in Arts and Cultural Management from Deakin University and an Associate Diploma of Music (Piano). She’s been pivotal in numerous creative projects and has a strong background in grants assessment, underscoring her dedication to the arts and community development.

Currently, as the Manager of Kaiela Arts, she’s leading a post-pandemic organizational rebuild. Anita also actively engages with her community, serving on the Shepparton Festival Board and volunteering locally.

Arti Shah (she/her)

Committee Member

Arti is a speech and language pathologist working in primary schools and possesses a deep passion for communication (including speech, language, and literacy) access and equity. She is also a poetic artist, producing her pod-and-videocast program Human Chapters, which sensitively explores individual lived experiences and aspirations. Arti was the recipient of the 2022 City of Greater Shepparton Women’s Charter Award for her work in providing platforms such as Human Chapters, Human Book Club, and a special project with the African House. Arti lives in Numurkah.

Tim Winkler (he/him)

Committee Member

Tim started his working life sterlising infectious waste before graduating to weed counting, double-glazed window sales and rubbish collection. As life progressed to a less colourful state he worked as a journalist at The Age and as a government advisor before moving to the higher education sector, where he has worked for more than two decades. He is a marketing and communications consultant based in Shepparton, working with a wide range of organisations and while he believes he is untalented in most of the arts, he has a great love for them. Tim lives in Ardmona.