Live Performance Australia (LPA) is honoured to announce Rob Brookman AM, as the recipient of the 2017 Sue Nattrass Award®.
Rob Brookman is one of Australia’s most respected and experienced arts administrators. In a long and diverse career he has led a number of Australia’s foremost arts organisations and festivals. He has recently completed a five year term as Executive Director of State Theatre Company South Australia and will take up a new role as Executive Director of the Adelaide Festival in early May.
Rob’s experience and interests are unusually diverse, ranging from the classical to the avant-garde and the commercial, across all art-forms. His keynote is versatility and a dynamic range that covers both exemplary management and artistic vision.
He has held leadership positions in a number of Australasia's foremost festivals and performing arts organisations including the Adelaide Festival (Administrator, Associate Director, Artistic Director), Adelaide Festival Centre (Programming Director, Producer, Artistic Director), National Festival of Australian Theatre (Artistic Director), New Zealand International Festival of Arts (Artistic Director), Arts Projects Australia (Founding Co-Director), Sydney Theatre Company (General Manager) and State Theatre Company South Australia (Executive Director).
In 1992 he co-founded Australia’s leading world music festival WOMADelaide and remained as Artistic Director and/or Artistic Advisor for 15 years. Rob has also run his own cultural consultancy Sweet Reason Pty Ltd offering consulting services to major productions and festivals, and undertaking feasibility studies and project development work for a wide range of clients including festivals, commercial developers and local government agencies.
Rob has held many arts-related Board positions including Deputy Chair of Playing Australia, Chair of the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, Chair of the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals, and is currently a Trustee of the WOMADelaide Foundation, Treasurer of the Arts Industry Council of SA and a Board Member of the Melbourne Festival.
Rob Brookman AM said “I have been blessed to be able to pursue a livelihood in the arts that involves doing things and working with people that I absolutely love; and doubly fortunate to have worked in our industry at a time of incredible change and development which has afforded opportunities that were undreamed of when I started out. To be so generously recognised by my peers through the Sue Nattrass Award is the best kind of icing on the most fabulously rich, complex, beautiful and utterly enjoyable, cake.”
The Sue Nattrass Award will be officially presented to Rob at the 17th annual Helpmann Awards on Monday 24 July at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney.