It’s a great honour to be taking on the role of Executive Director of an organisation I love so dearly and have worked with over so many years in the different roles of teacher, artist, board member and consultant. I’m very excited to be embarking on this new chapter of my working life, and I hope to bring to this position all these different ISTA perspectives and my previous experience working with a wide range of organisations.
ISTA has a long history and I have watched it grow over the years into the wonderful organisation it is today under the leadership of Pat Zich and Sally Robertson. I want to honour our past while also steering the organisation towards a bright future which takes into consideration our current times, global developments and the changing nature of both learning and theatre. I’m thrilled to be working with the board and an amazing staff team who are passionate about the organisation and ensuring that what we offer is of the highest quality.
ISTA was founded on the principle of ensemble. And it’s as a community that we must proceed if we are to continue offering the very best experiences for young people, our communities and those outside the organisation who could benefit from our work. In the coming weeks we will be looking at how we can best listen to the diverse voices that make up our community and how these can inform the development of the organisation and our future work.
We look forward to once again offering the face-to-face events that we all love, developing our highly successful digital offer, creating new opportunities for our artists and initiating new programmes to give more people and communities around the world access to our work.
My plan for the following weeks is to familiarise myself with ISTA’s systems and operations as there’s a lot to learn and discover. It’s exciting to be in this position of learner, looking at the familiar with new eyes. I embark on this adventure, in the spirit of inquiry, with questions rather than answers!
I look forward to working with you all as we begin this new stage of ISTA’s development.
Dinos