I grew up in a crazy house on the rural outskirts of Melbourne. What kept me sane was movies, drawing, and the bush. I was brought up to contribute and at 19 started my career as a nurse. Those means of escape and my family experiences shaped the trajectory of my career as a mental health nurse and a creative. Nursing is rewarding and has greatly informed my creative work. In 1991 I completed a 4 year degree in Ceramic Design at Monash University. Clay is a beautiful, grounding medium that I still use as part of our education projects. My creative work always had a narrative element. After a few years as a ceramicist, I traveled around Asia for 6 months, had the usual epiphany, and decided I was going to be an animator.

After a few short courses I applied to do a Grad. Dip in Animation at VCA Film School Melbourne University in 1998. The application process was tough so I was delighted when I was successful and I had found my creative spot. My student film Like Drowning won Best Overall Graduating Script and Outstanding Achievement in Film, it toured the international film festival circuit, won many awards, and my career as an animator began. My professional shorts have been screened at many international film festivals, been commissioned by local and international broadcasters, and won numerous awards, and funded by film funding bodies and numerous Philanthropic organizations.

In 2010 I started offering Animation as an engagement and incidental literacy learning tool for marginalized teenagers in regional areas- in particular to newly arrived refugees learning English for the first time. Pollyannafilms’ education program uses animations without dialogue offering a universal means of learning via pictures and sound effects. With the help of interpreters, participants learn to animate film scripts developed from shared stories by using a simple tracing/rotoscoping technique. Our student shorts have won Best Middle School Animation, and Best Primary Animation and have been nominated for Best Short Doco (Professional) and Best Senior School Animation at the Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) awards. We also offer entry-level animation traineeships to marginalized adults who struggle with digital literacy. Trainees work as animators on our professional shorts. Pollyannafilms is currently in production on Socially Sanctioned, a series of animated shorts about socially sanctioned abuse, and our first animated documentary feature Complicit about Australia’s detention centers.

I often say to our trainees ‘People cannot survive this millennium without being part of the digital world and people can’t survive the digital world without a connection to the environment that provides hope for the future.’ For the last 15 years, we have also worked with our beautiful pigs to grow canopy trees and organic produce using permaculture principles. Participants on our projects are invited to participate in our permaculture projects. In 2024 I was invited by Poni Tongun and Lydia Wandabwa, founders of The Bel’s Project at the Quaker Hill Academy in Kitale, Kenya to integrate our hybrid learning program, using animation and permaculture, into the new Kenya syllabus at Quaker Hill.

I visited the Academy in January 2024 to start the teachers incidental learning training, we have continued teaching online.