Heidi Weatherald is a theatre maker, actor and voice artist with over thirty years of experience creating work for stage, radio, screen and young audiences across Australia and internationally. Her performance career includes collaborations with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Seven Network and Nine Network. She has performed with leading theatre companies including the Sydney Theatre Company, State Theatre Company South Australia, Australian Shakespeare Company and Barking Spider Visual Theatre. She has worked extensively with ArtPlay, Splash Theatre Company, Regional Arts Victoria, the City of Melbourne and Hobsons Bay, as well as the Melbourne Recital Centre and The Wiggles. She has appeared in the iconic children’s television series Here's Humphrey and worked in Denmark with Carte Blanche. She designs and facilitates creative arts experiences in early childhood settings and schools (P–12) that integrate drama, voice, movement, storytelling, and visual art. Her research explores play as a powerful tool for emotional literacy and connection, including co-presenting Big Soft Toys for Big Feelings at the Contemporary Perspectives in Early Childhood International Conference (2025). She contributed as a studio assistant on the public sculpture Spirits of Time and Place, located along the Kooroit Creek Trail, Altona North. Heidi is an ARIA-nominated artist, the youngest of ten children, and co-founder of Pocketfool.

Jennifer Andersen is a theatre maker, arts researcher and early childhood teacher. She has worked as an actor. and puppeteer for companies including Vitalstatistix, Mainstreet Theatre Company, Duck & Co. and Patch Theatre. A founding member of theatre companies, ONE TOE and Pocketfool, she has created numerous works for children and young people. She has extensive experience facilitating music and dance workshops for babies, preschool children and their adults. Jennifer was the founder of the La Mama for Kids program and for 8 years was the artist learning coordinator at ArtPlay, developing the capacity of artists to work with children. Jennifer’s PhD and current academic research focuses on artists working with children in education and community settings.

Kym Tonkin is an actor and special education teacher. As a performance ensemble member with Mainstreet Theatre, Salamanca Theatre, Polyglot and ONE TOE, he devised and performed numerous shows for children and community groups. He is a founding member of the theatre collective, Not Done Yet. He has worked in special schools as a performing arts specialist and teacher of young people with autism. He recently performed in the Ponycam productions ‘All of This Could Be Yours’ and ‘Feast’.

Loukia Vassiliades is a performer and teaching artist dedicated to creating theatre-based opportunities for children. Shaking Egg Hunt (2013-15) & Happy Sticks (2015) were presented at ArtPlay and devised for babies. During the pandemic Loukia created Concoct with your Imagination, a sold-out online workshop in partnership with La Mama kids. This was shortly followed with Cooee, her debut theatre piece and contribution for families as part of Banksia and Mother Tongue Festivals. Fast forward to now, while new projects gestate Loukia continues to relish making theatre with her home-schooling families.

Emma Salzano trained in the Creative Dance Mangala Method in 2005 and has been passionate about creating workshops, weekly classes and theatre productions for babies and children of all ages ever since. With nearly two decades of experience, her work bridges creative dance, early childhood development, music and play. She designs embodied experiences that empower babies to move freely, families to connect deeply, and children to grow in confidence. Over the past ten years she has conducted repeat workshops at ArtPlay (City of Melbourne) including Beam Me Up Baby, Tingle Tangle, and Curious and Curiouser. Emma’s practice is grounded in reflection, collaboration and a deep respect for the creative intelligence of even the youngest participants.

Rasheeda Cooper is an early childhood music educator, dancer and musician. She has facilitated early childhood music and movement classes for babies and their carers, for 16 years in Melbourne, as a qualified Suzuki Early Childhood teacher. She practices improvised creative dance at Mangala Studios. She is an accomplished pianist and percussionist on the Indian tabla, African djembe and the Middle Eastern darabuka, having performed at many community events around Melbourne and regional Victoria, for multicultural audiences. She has taught children from preschool up as a qualified Suzuki piano teacher for over three decades.

Geoffrey Ricardo is known for his figurative work that centres around a narrative language. He works primarily in sculpture, printmaking, etching, lithography and painting. Geoffrey was the winner of the 2009 Lorne Sculpture Exhibition. His work is represented in select major private and corporate collections as well as public and university museum collections in all states of Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW, Queensland Art Gallery, State Library Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Andrea Reichert is a versatile artist born in Germany. As an actor, she has appeared in several productions, including PonyCam’s ‘Feast’ (Substation) at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2024 and ‘Ripe for Action’ (Butterfly Club among others) with Not Done Yet in 2025. She has also performed in masquerades and Butoh productions. Andrea is a trained classical singer but since moving to Australia her artistic spectrum has expanded. She has written and produced a radio play and several animated short films, ironically sung in a Vegemite commercial, and was a member in an opera company and a diversity of choirs. Andrea exhibits as a visual artist and she also loves vocal and movement improvisation.

Artists