Industrial Evolution: Old + New = Creative Survival

Monica Davidson - Founder, Creative Plus

Monica Davidson is an award-winning expert on the creative industries, who began her creative life as a freelance journalist and filmmaker before starting a film production company in the early 90s. Her experience highlighted how desperately unprepared creative people can be for a life of entrepreneurship.

Having been in media sales for over 20 years – in airtime sales, PR and international distribution – Victoria Baldock has pitched a great many projects to a great many broadcasters.

Holding a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies majoring in Business Studies and Film Studies, Victoria began her career with a position at Network Ten Australia in airtime, later moving to London working with top broadcasters in the UK in various publicity and marketing positions. Victoria returned to Australia to take the position with Southern Star.

As Head of International Sales for Southern Star between 1997–2004, Victoria contracted millions of dollars worth of licensing agreements – placing thousands of hours of content in all genres to broadcasters all over the globe – The America’s, Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

In 2004, Victoria founded Verve Entertainment, an independent boutique distribution company representing over 60 producers including The Seven Network, Beckers, Granada, Distraction Formats, Engine Entertainment and a great number of independent producers including Quail Television (Aust), Vokyo Entertainment (Aust), Screendoor (Canada), Freehand (Aust), Black Diamond (UK), Comedy Time (US) and Top Shelf (New Zealand).

In 2013, Verve Entertainment’s focus shifted from placing projects internationally to representing international catalogues into Australia and New Zealand.  

Currently Verve is enjoying a further shift. Now based in Byron Bay, Victoria works as an executive and creative producer working in consultation with producers on the development of their concepts, funding models and preparing their projects for international distribution.

Victoria has attended all major televisions festivals markets, speaks regularly at conferences and is often invited to judge a number of industry festivals. 

With an avid interest in the rapidly evolving world of content distribution and consumption, coupled with an in-depth knowledge of rights definitions, Victoria has an acute understanding of effective windowing of content rights. 
 
Victoria's strengths are her unwavering ability to know what content can be placed where, when and for who. She can identify market trends, create a need, and successfully fill the gaps. Victoria is relentless in her pursuit to maximize sales revenue.

www.verveentertainment.com

It’s the people traditionally left out of the frame who interest Laura the most, as well as what happens after what would be the climax in many stories. A couple reuniting after the war, in IN THE MOOD; a woman who has changed her name and started a new life, only to find her old life catching up with her, in THE CLEANSKIN; what happens when you break up with the perfect person, in CHOOSING ZOE.

Laura’s novels have been shortlisted for the NSW Literary Awards, the ABC Fiction Prize and the Young Australian Readers’ Awards and published in France, the US and the UK.

Laura grew up in Sydney and graduated with a BA, Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney. She has worked in the areas of youth policy, social justice and health promotion, and has travelled widely, including living for spells in Germany, India, the UK, and ­ as a toddler­ in New Guinea, which is where she began her love affair with the sub-tropics.

She now lives in a small town near Byron Bay on the East Coast of Australia with her chosen family, including her godson and her son ­who has autism. For such a word-based person it’s been an extraordinary journey to learn to love and communicate beyond words.

Gregory Anderson is the director of a studio called Trigger, located in Sydney’s Darlinghurst. Trigger creates design and strategy for curated and branded spaces to evoke inspiring experiences.

Gregory’s passion is working with environments, from interpretive landscape interventions to wayfinding signage, and to intricate and interpretive museum exhibitions. Each project he undertakes involves an holistic design process comprising spatial, digital, graphic and activity components that meaningfully integrate and shape the intended journey or experience within that space.

Revealing meanings and relationships of our cultural and natural heritage through innovative design is also a central tenant of Gregory’s practice. Gregory has lead the revitalisation of landscape and built heritage interpretation for World Heritage site, Parramatta Park and exhibition design for Hill End Historic Site, both launched in 2016. Gregory recently co-authored the Sydney Opera House Interpretation Plan and has been working with the National Museum of Australia to redesign and implement a revitalised arrival experience, which will be revealed later this year.

Gregory is passionate about the arts and culture. His aim is to bring intellectual rigour, cultural enrichment and crafted detail to each project in order to develop high quality and sustainable design solutions that appropriately respond to their sense of place, context and the brief. Trigger was selected as the exhibition brand and environmental graphics designers for Tracey Moffatt’s representation of Australia for the Venice Biennale 2017. The brand is applied across multiple delivery platforms internationally. Gregory is travelling to Venice in May 2017 for installation (and the occasional party).

Melanie has been described by the Sydney Morning Herald as having a voice of ‘the utmost delicateness’, as a ‘songwriting gem’ by The Australian. Based in Candelo in southern NSW, Melanie has recorded ten albums and EPs including her latest, 'Song to Sing on a Saturday Night'. Melanie's critically acclaimed album The Cloud Appreciation Society was long-listed for the 2013 Australian Music Prize and she was nominated for an APRA award in 2011.

She has toured with Jason Mraz, The Frames, Bernard Fanning, Lou Rhodes, Slaid Cleaves and Sarah Blasko among others, as well as touring extensively on her own in Australia and Europe. Melanie recorded an album in French, which was funded by the highly successful Pozible campaign and gave Melanie a six month residency in France, writing songs with poet Alain Rivet and pop icon Helena Noguerra. Melanie has also written songs with Wendy Matthews and Catherine Britt, and for film and television.

Rosie is an actor and producer who was selected as one of the Screen NSW Emerging Producers as well as a Screen Producer’s Association Australia Ones to Watch in 2015. Her most recent project, multiplatform drama Starting From Now has broken over 30 million views online and has sold and played on Australian Broadcast television on SBS2. Rosie is both a lead actor and key producer on Starting From Now.

Rosie’s first producing credit, feature SKIN DEEP won Best Indie Feature 2015 by AfterEllen, received an honourable mention at the Austin Film Festival and was nominated for an AWGIE. Alongside her character as Starting From Now’s resident lost soul, Darcy, Rosie can also be seen in features Felony (Goalpost) and Stephen Sewell’s directing debut Embedded (The Steve Jaggi Company), as well as on TV in Clverman (ABC) and upcoming multiplatform sci-fi Restorations (STAN).