Douglas Gautier is CEO & Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival Centre. Since 2006, he has delivered a program-led strategy that has positioned Adelaide Festival Centre as a hub for Asian-Australian cultural engagement.
Douglas’ program innovations include the Adelaide Guitar Festival and the OzAsia Festival, which is Australia’s premiere international contemporary arts festival focusing on Asia.
Douglas is currently overseeing the redevelopment of the Adelaide Festival Centre. When fully completed in 2018, the festival centre precinct will see the unveiling of a new Festival Theatre entrance with renewed foyers and upgraded facilities; new dining experiences across Adelaide Festival Centre; technical theatre upgrades; a children’s arts playground; and a revitalized northern promenade featuring Adelaide’s very own Walk of Fame.
Prior to his joining the Adelaide Festival Centre, Douglas was the Director of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, held the posts of Deputy Executive Director of the Hong Kong Tourism Board and Director of Corporate Affairs and Marketing for STAR TV (the Asia-wide satellite television network of Newscorp). He was also the founding Vice-Chairman of the Asian Arts Festival Association and a board member of the Asian Cultural Council (Rockefeller Foundation).
In 2013, Douglas was elected Chair of the Association of Asia Pacific Performing Arts Centres (AAPPAC).. He is also the Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Arts and Cultural Leadership, a member of the new Australia-Singapore Arts Group, an Executive Councillor of Live Performance Australia, an advisor to the Hong Kong Arts Festival, a Flinders University Councillor, and an adjunct professor of the University of South Australia.
Douglas was a key driver in the successful bid for Adelaide’s accreditation as a UNESCO Creative City for Music. In 2016, Douglas was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the arts and the community

Rebecca Coates is Director of Shepparton Art Museum (SAM), a position she has held since 2015. Located in regional Victoria, SAM is recognized for its national collection of Australian ceramics and is currently working with architects Denton Corker Marshall to develop a new purpose built art museum to be completed in 2020.
Rebecca has extensive professional art museum and gallery experience in both Australia and overseas. She has been a curator, writer and lecturer. Her previous roles include, Lecturer in Art History and Art Curatorship, University of Melbourne; Associate Curator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA); the Melbourne International Arts Festival; the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the old ACCA., . She speaks and writes regularly on contemporary art and theory, curatorial practice, and art in the public realm. She is an Honorary Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, and has held a number of board and advisory roles, as Chair of City of Melbourne’s Public Art Advisory panel, City of Stonnington, and the Australian Tapestry Workshop. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Melbourne.

Professor Alan Pert is the Director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He oversees the leadership of the Masters programs and leads interdisciplinary design studios and research workshops. Prior to this, Alan spent 6 years as Professor of Architecture and Director of Research at the University of Strathclyde in his native Glasgow, Scotland.
Alan is also a highly acclaimed practitioner of architecture. In 2002, Alan established NORD (Northern Office of Research by Design), specialising in creativity, architecture, urban design and research. NORD’s projects included designing furniture galleries for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; a major regeneration of the ‘Potteries’ in Stoke on Trent; the Primary Substation for the 2012 Olympics in London; the Shingle House in Kent; and the Creative Industries & Artists’ studios co work space in Glasgow.
He features in the ‘Faces of British Architecture’ exhibition and website, which celebrates the wealth of British talent responsible for key building across the globe. Alan’s diverse research interests lie in the boundary between theory and practice. They include designing for creative, curatorial and exhibition spaces; as well as ageing, wellbeing and the health environment.
Since arriving in Melbourne in 2012, Alan has been researching the life and works of Ernest Fooks, while working on the restoration plans for a Fooks modernist heritage house.
Alan is also Chair of the Strategy Board for the Melbourne Housing Expo 2015 - 2018, which was established to deliver a transformable model of housing to meet the current crisis of affordability and lack of diversity in housing choices in Victoria.

Best known as the founder of George Town Festival and being its director from 2010 - 2018, Joe Sidek has established himself as one of Malaysia’s strong advocates for the arts.

Before taking up the position of festival director, Joe Sidek played major roles in various forms of art expression – from event management, art curator-ship, restaurant ownership and even costume design. A lesser known fact about Joe is that he still runs his family–owned textile chemical factory, Chemdyes Sdn Bhd.

With his industrialist background, entrepreneurial nature and his visionary passion for the arts, it is no surprise that 8 years after his appointment as festival director of GTF in 2010, the festival has grown incrementally ever since. Alongside GTF in 2018, Joe also directed the Rainforest Fringe Festival in Kuching, having founded the festival in 2017. He also helmed the Butterworth Fringe Festival for 3 years (2015–2017) and earlier in 2014, he brought Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival to Southeast Asia and showcased the inaugural Tropfest South East Asia in Penang. In 2021, he curated and directed KLWKND, a weekend series of events compassing all genres from the arts, heritage, history, culinary and more, and one of the first post-pandemic city-scale festivals in Malaysia.

Over the years, Joe Sidek has been invited to speak regionally and internationally in cities like Brisbane, Taipei,  Seoul, New York, Salzburg, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Chiang Mai, Seoul, Gwangju, Shanghai, Adelaide, Yokohama and Malta among others about his role in placemaking, advocacy of the arts and about Penang.

He is 2020-2022 chairman of Federation of Asian Cultural Promotion (FACP), an industry expert on the industry panel of Malaysian federal agency for the arts and culture, Cultural Economy Development Agency (CENDANA), and the current chairman of Penang Arts Council.

Sharon is the Research Director of the Culture Academy, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and the Chief Research Officer of the National Arts Council in Singapore. In these roles, she leads teams to carry out studies on social impact of the arts, population surveys on arts and cultural engagement as well as arts and cultural manpower in Singapore. As an economist, she has conducted research in productivity measurement and growth, industry development, choice experiments and the non-market valuation of cultural resources. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Cultural Policy, Journal of Cultural Economics, International Journal of Hospitality Management and Tourism Analysis.

Jumaldi Alfi (b. Lintau, Sumatra, Indonesia) consistently explores new possibilities in painting. Over the past ten years, his paintings have shown this evolution of themes and styles. He is particularly known for his compelling personal iconography of visual signs, reflecting existential and spiritual experience on an individual and collective level. In creating his comprehensive painting series such as Blackboard Paintings, or, more recently, the series of Melting Memories, Collage Paintings, Alfi draws on a scope of references from text to empirical objects of the natural world to Renaissance paintings and his own memories; the effect of his work being mysterious and intimate.
Jumaldi Alfi lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and has exhibited extensively in Asia as well as internationally. Recent important exhibitions include Re-reading Landscape, Mooi Indies, ARNDT Singapore, 2014 and Do Not Shoot the Painter, UBS Collection exhibition, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan, Italy, 2015. Alfi is a member of the artists’ group Jendela and a co-founder of the artists’ initiative and cultural platform OFCA International (Office For Contemporary Art). As co-founder of several artists collectives he developed SaRanG, a location which provides a physical infrastructure of several buildings hosting different art institutions in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Adib Jalal is a placemaker, design curator, and community organiser whose life and work is a continued exploration of making our cities creative and inclusive places to live in.
He is currently the Co-founder and Director of placemaking studio, Shophouse & Co, a consultancy that helps developers and communities create programmes and interventions that bring positive social and economic impact for the space and community.
Previously, Adib was the Festival Director of Archifest (2012 to 2013) where he restructured the festival to its current form by introducing the Archifest Pavilion competition and other content pillars alongside a new visual identity. Prior to that, he had stints as a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic’s School of Design, as a multi-disciplinary designer at award-winning design studio, FARM, and as the Founding Editor of FIVEFOOTWAY, one of the pioneer blogs about Asian cities which he co,founded in 2007. Passionate about nurturing communities, Adib also lends his time as a design mentor alongside contributing to his neighbourhood’s grassroots organisation.
Adib holds a Bachelor (Hons) Architecture from National University of Singapore.

Dr June Yap is Director of Curatorial, Programmes and Publications at the Singapore Art Museum, where she oversees content creation and museum programming.
Her prior roles include Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator (South and Southeast Asia), Deputy Director and Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, and curator at the Singapore Art Museum.
Amongst exhibitions she has curated are No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th Venice Biennale with artist Ho Tzu Nyen, The Future of Exhibition: It Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Singapore), Paradise is Elsewhere at Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Germany), media art exhibitions Interrupt and Twilight Tomorrow at the Singapore Art Museum. She is the author of Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia (2016).

Sarah Martin has 20 years of operational and leadership experience in the arts and entertainment.
She established WOMAD (World of Music, Arts & Dance) as one of the Singapore’s foremost arts festivals and thereafter, across Asia Pacific. Subsequently, she launched the inaugural Singapore Formula One Grand Prix as its Director of Operations, overseeing event delivery and entertainment programming.
Currently, Sarah is CEO of Arts House Limited (AHL), a strategic contributor to Singapore’s thriving arts community. Besides organising the Singapore International Festival of Arts, an annual pinnacle celebration of interdisciplinary arts, AHL also manages two key landmarks - The Arts House and Victoria Theatre & Victoria Concert Hall, and arts enclaves - Aliwal Arts Centre, Drama Centre and Goodman Arts Centre.

Kenneth Kwok is the Assistant Chief Executive Officer (Planning & Development) at the National Arts Council of Singapore, overseeing the Strategic Planning, International Relations and Research departments as well as arts education and capability development policies and programmes. A former secondary school teacher and vice principal with the Ministry of Education, he holds an Ed.M in Arts in Education and has served as adjunct lecturer in Educational Drama with the National Institute of Education. He has also been involved in community arts projects over the years with various local arts groups, and has sat on the boards of Arts House Limited, *SCAPE youth centre, and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. Kenneth is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing with LASALLE College of the Arts and will be moving to the Ministry of National Development as Director, Partnerships and Coordination from 1 Jan 2020.

Dr Lim Chye Hong 林彩鳳 is a specialist in Chinese Art with a thorough understanding of professional museum practices, including developing, implementing and evaluating exhibitions, festivals, as well as public and education programs. She has lectured for the University of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of New South Wales during her stint in Sydney, Australia. She is also the English sub-editor for The Tao Gives Rise to Ten Thousand Things: Taoist Relics from the Chu Region. Prior to joining the Asian Civilisations Museum, Chye Hong was the coordinator of Asian Programs at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Currently, she is Deputy Director of Audience, Learning, and Digital Media at the Asian Civilisations Museum.

Adib Jalal is a placemaker, design curator, and community organiser whose life and work is a continued exploration of making our cities creative and inclusive places to live in.
He is currently the Co-founder and Director of placemaking studio, Shophouse & Co, a consultancy that helps developers and communities create programmes and interventions that bring positive social and economic impact for the space and community.
Previously, Adib was the Festival Director of Archifest (2012 to 2013) where he restructured the festival to its current form by introducing the Archifest Pavilion competition and other content pillars alongside a new visual identity. Prior to that, he had stints as a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic’s School of Design, as a multi-disciplinary designer at award-winning design studio, FARM, and as the Founding Editor of FIVEFOOTWAY, one of the pioneer blogs about Asian cities which he co,founded in 2007. Passionate about nurturing communities, Adib also lends his time as a design mentor alongside contributing to his neighbourhood’s grassroots organisation.
Adib holds a Bachelor (Hons) Architecture from National University of Singapore.

Douglas Gautier is CEO & Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival Centre. Since 2006, he has delivered a program-led strategy that has positioned Adelaide Festival Centre as a hub for Asian-Australian cultural engagement.
Douglas’ program innovations include the Adelaide Guitar Festival and the OzAsia Festival, which is Australia’s premiere international contemporary arts festival focusing on Asia.
Douglas is currently overseeing the redevelopment of the Adelaide Festival Centre. When fully completed in 2018, the festival centre precinct will see the unveiling of a new Festival Theatre entrance with renewed foyers and upgraded facilities; new dining experiences across Adelaide Festival Centre; technical theatre upgrades; a children’s arts playground; and a revitalized northern promenade featuring Adelaide’s very own Walk of Fame.
Prior to his joining the Adelaide Festival Centre, Douglas was the Director of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, held the posts of Deputy Executive Director of the Hong Kong Tourism Board and Director of Corporate Affairs and Marketing for STAR TV (the Asia-wide satellite television network of Newscorp). He was also the founding Vice-Chairman of the Asian Arts Festival Association and a board member of the Asian Cultural Council (Rockefeller Foundation).
In 2013, Douglas was elected Chair of the Association of Asia Pacific Performing Arts Centres (AAPPAC).. He is also the Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Arts and Cultural Leadership, a member of the new Australia-Singapore Arts Group, an Executive Councillor of Live Performance Australia, an advisor to the Hong Kong Arts Festival, a Flinders University Councillor, and an adjunct professor of the University of South Australia.
Douglas was a key driver in the successful bid for Adelaide’s accreditation as a UNESCO Creative City for Music. In 2016, Douglas was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the arts and the community

Best known as the founder of George Town Festival and being its director from 2010 - 2018, Joe Sidek has established himself as one of Malaysia’s strong advocates for the arts.

Before taking up the position of festival director, Joe Sidek played major roles in various forms of art expression – from event management, art curator-ship, restaurant ownership and even costume design. A lesser known fact about Joe is that he still runs his family–owned textile chemical factory, Chemdyes Sdn Bhd.

With his industrialist background, entrepreneurial nature and his visionary passion for the arts, it is no surprise that 8 years after his appointment as festival director of GTF in 2010, the festival has grown incrementally ever since. Alongside GTF in 2018, Joe also directed the Rainforest Fringe Festival in Kuching, having founded the festival in 2017. He also helmed the Butterworth Fringe Festival for 3 years (2015–2017) and earlier in 2014, he brought Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival to Southeast Asia and showcased the inaugural Tropfest South East Asia in Penang. In 2021, he curated and directed KLWKND, a weekend series of events compassing all genres from the arts, heritage, history, culinary and more, and one of the first post-pandemic city-scale festivals in Malaysia.

Over the years, Joe Sidek has been invited to speak regionally and internationally in cities like Brisbane, Taipei,  Seoul, New York, Salzburg, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Chiang Mai, Seoul, Gwangju, Shanghai, Adelaide, Yokohama and Malta among others about his role in placemaking, advocacy of the arts and about Penang.

He is 2020-2022 chairman of Federation of Asian Cultural Promotion (FACP), an industry expert on the industry panel of Malaysian federal agency for the arts and culture, Cultural Economy Development Agency (CENDANA), and the current chairman of Penang Arts Council.

Kenneth Kwok is the Assistant Chief Executive Officer (Planning & Development) at the National Arts Council of Singapore, overseeing the Strategic Planning, International Relations and Research departments as well as arts education and capability development policies and programmes. A former secondary school teacher and vice principal with the Ministry of Education, he holds an Ed.M in Arts in Education and has served as adjunct lecturer in Educational Drama with the National Institute of Education. He has also been involved in community arts projects over the years with various local arts groups, and has sat on the boards of Arts House Limited, *SCAPE youth centre, and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. Kenneth is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing with LASALLE College of the Arts and will be moving to the Ministry of National Development as Director, Partnerships and Coordination from 1 Jan 2020.

Rebecca Coates is Director of Shepparton Art Museum (SAM), a position she has held since 2015. Located in regional Victoria, SAM is recognized for its national collection of Australian ceramics and is currently working with architects Denton Corker Marshall to develop a new purpose built art museum to be completed in 2020.
Rebecca has extensive professional art museum and gallery experience in both Australia and overseas. She has been a curator, writer and lecturer. Her previous roles include, Lecturer in Art History and Art Curatorship, University of Melbourne; Associate Curator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA); the Melbourne International Arts Festival; the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the old ACCA., . She speaks and writes regularly on contemporary art and theory, curatorial practice, and art in the public realm. She is an Honorary Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, and has held a number of board and advisory roles, as Chair of City of Melbourne’s Public Art Advisory panel, City of Stonnington, and the Australian Tapestry Workshop. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Melbourne.

Warren Fernandez is Editor-in-Chief of English/Malay/Tamil Media in Singapore Press Holdings. He is also Editor of The Straits Times, Singapore’s biggest selling English daily newspaper. He joined the paper in 1990 as a political reporter and rose to become News Editor. He later also served as Foreign Editor and Deputy Editor. He left to join Royal Dutch Shell in 2008 as a Global Manager for its Future Energy project, before returning to the paper in February 2012 as its editor. 

He graduated with First Class Honours from Oxford University, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and also has a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Both degrees were obtained on Singapore Press Holdings scholarships.

He is a board member of the National Parks Board (NParks), SPH (Overseas) Ltd, Straits Times Press Pte Ltd, The Straits Times Press (1975) Limited, Asia News Network (ANN), Singapore Symphony Group (SSO), National Arts Council and Chairman of The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund.
He has recently been elected President of the World Editors Forum (WEF) which is the leading network for print and digital editors of newspapers and news organisations around the world. WEF is part of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).