
Co - Creators
Nicola Lambert
Founder and Creative Director
Nicola Lambert was formally trained as a Printmaker in Limerick School of Art and Design, Ireland. She has been involved in the Arts and Community sector over the past 11 years in various roles, in both Ireland and Australia. Nicola is a practicing community artist who works in print, textiles, oil paint, assemblage and installation.
Nicola is the founder and director of Create & Sow Community Art Interventions. Create and Sow mission to provide an outlet for creative community involvement, while seeking to produce high quality artwork, installations and interventions through art making, participation and exposure. https://www.createandsow.com/
Nicola has been the key artist and creative producer of Studio Connect Canberra for the past 5 years. Studio Connect are a group of Canberra artists living with a disability or mental health issues; creating individual and collaborative artwork responding to Canberra and their personal stories. Her aim is to raise awareness of the presence of professional artists with disabilities working in Australia. Create & Sow assist artists in pursuing their dream of creating and sharing their art with the local and national arts communities. https://www.studioconnectcanberra.com/
Over the past year Nicola has poured her energy in to establishing Sullivan Trail. This journey start about 5 years ago when Nicola considered that maybe Melbourne and Canberra do have something in common. Melbourne has the lanes, Canberra has the drains. At first this project was about beautifying the concrete drains that ran through this lovely green belt. After opening open the conversation with the broader community, it became apparent that this project could mean so much more by connecting the broader communities with our Aboriginal heritage , our waterways and our communities stories. So the adventure began.
Karen Williams
President & Managing Director, Molonglo Conservation Group
Karen works with people and environment to adapt and develop innovative ways of integrating natural resource management, social history, community history, community (cultural) development, and the visual arts. Karen uses specific skills—as author, scholar, researcher and artist—to initiate the creative interaction of environment, culture and social inclusion.
Karen’s doctoral thesis provides a conceptual framework that recognises situated ways of knowing and liberating subjugated knowledges, particularly at the interface between Indigenous cultures of industrialised countries. Developing sustainability initiatives and education, the framework integrates economic, socio-cultural and environmental considerations to bridge between Western and Indigenous knowledge.
Karen uses a reflexive process of experience and reflection, providing the conceptual basis of a research method that does not privilege theory over practice; recognising, instead, the role of reflexivity as a fundamental grounding stage in the development of theory.
Byrd
Byrd is a freelance graffiti muralist and conceptual sculptor, living and working in Canberra since completing his Bachelor in Visual Art and Dip Ed at the Australian National University in 1998. Starting out as a graffiti painter 20 years ago, he remains passionate about grass-roots and activist arts practice, and the street art movement’s history in the local and global contexts. He makes commercial and experimental works for gallery exhibition; commissions for private & corporate clients; as well as competing for public mural tenders.
Byrd is an active arts networker, serving as invited curator for the Art Not Apart Canberra Arts Festival (2018/19/20. Further, byrd’s professional experience includes as educator (for schools, TAFE, government bodies and universities); as an arts mentor & board member (invited by local arts institutions); and curator (freelance, for local companies and art festivals. His work is represented in many private collections also internationally; as well as and major state and national collections .
Ruby Barnett
Frith St & Sly Fox Coffee
Ruby is a local artist who runs her own business Frith St.
Coming from an artistic family, Ruby studied at ANU majoring in Film Studies and Sociology with the intention of becoming a documentary filmmaker. People's stories, family history and the way communities come together has always been a passionate pursuit.
After Uni, she worked for a local Architectural firm that focused on community facilities and waterharvested landscapes. A large part of this job was meeting with clients and user groups to listen to how they interact with their spaces and ensure that the end result was a sustainable design and construction and responded to the existing landscape.
During this time she met Patrick of Sly Fox Coffee and together over the past seven years they have built up a wonderful local community along the bike path. Such is the warmth, love and connection to the place, that people have come together to create a community garden, little library, love letter box and a writing desk. It even presented itself as the perfect host to their wedding last year and seasonal community markets.
Sullivan's Creek has been a large part of Ruby's life, from walking down the bike path to Dickson shops as a little kid, to university days and now raising children and a business alongside. With this personal connection and love of Canberra, Ruby is incredibly excited to be involved in such a wonderful and necessary community project!