About the Australia & New Zealand Hub
The Creative Bureaucracy Festival Hub - Australia and New Zealand is a regional offshoot of the main Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin. We are a small group of passionate Australians and New Zealanders who have come together to help progress creative bureaucracy in our region.
Our vision
To build a bigger conversation about public values, creativity and public service.
To celebrate a more confident, outward looking, braver and ethical public service.
To challenge existing narratives and showcase examples of what is possible and what can be achieved.
To explore how to transform the lived experience of working within, with, and alongside government.
Image Credit: Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
About Us
The truth is we are are every public servant or person working in, or with, the public sector that wants to do things differently.
To kick things off, we are a small core team of volunteers inspired to build a community. As we gather fellow enthusiasts to join us, we will be setting up and supporting place-based groups to support events and activities throughout Australia and New Zealand. If you would like to get involved - please get in touch and join our community.
Meet the Hub Team
Margie Caust is the co-author of ‘ The Creative Bureaucracy and it’s radical common sense’, with Charles Landry. She worked her way up from a ‘base grade clerk’ in the SA State Government to Director, Capital City Committee via work in the women’s sector, job classification systems, structural and budget reform. As head of Thames Gateway and the Greater South East for the London Development Agency, she led a multifaceted transformation program. She has since advised on economic opportunity; the potential of creative industries; environmental innovation; how government agencies can forge good working relationships across boundaries.
Robbie Slape has spent most of his career in Australian local, state and federal public service organisations. During this eclectic journey so far, he has spent time in many different content realms, primarily in emerging technologies, transport and infrastructure, and often within a strategic policy setting. He gravitates towards the ‘edge’ policy areas – the ‘why’ questions – while also grappling with the systems challenges of longer time horizons – the perennial ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions facing bureaucrats. For him, the Creative Bureaucracy Festival is the ideal place to commune with like-minded folk who also obsess over these questions.
Amber Guette is the pen name behind ‘Dear Minister – Letters from a Public Servant’, a light-hearted yet deeply insightful fictional commentary on the state of a public service and the trials and tribulations of being a public servant. After publishing her book, Amber began connecting with a like-minded global tribe of public servants seeking better ways of being and doing public service, which led her to the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin. Having rediscovered the JOY of being a public servant (Yes, you heard right, the JOY) and the spark of hope to creatively address challenges and make a difference - Amber initiated the movement to bring the festival spirit to Australia and New Zealand.
Kate Spencer is a designer and creative producer. Her experience in the public service come from working within cultural institutions and local governments. Today she works as an external partner and collaborator with a range of government agencies on place-based and cultural projects. Kate’s motivation to be part of CBF-ANZ comes from her own lived experiences trying to overcome the challenges and frustrations to bringing creativity into the day-to-day ways of working on public sector projects. She is inspired by the individuals doing amazing work despite the system, and the glimpses of hope and optimism of when and how it can be achieved.