Janina Harding, Principal Project Manager – Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair, Creative Victoria
Janina is a proud Meriam (Erub/Mer) woman, the first generation of her family to be born on mainland Australia, in Naarm (Melbourne, Victoria). Janina is the lead curator and manager of the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair.
Janina has worked on First Peoples cultural projects, employment programs, public broadcasting, events management and arts management. Janina served on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council (now Creative Australia), the Torres Strait Islander Advisory Board for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and was Secretary for the Victorian Wongai Torres Strait Islander Corporation for twenty years.
From 2002-2015, Janina worked at the City of Melbourne, managing the Indigenous Arts Program, where she established, curated and produced the Indigenous Film Festival Blak Nite Cinema and the Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival.
Janina was the Artistic Director of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair from 2015-2022 where she transformed the art fair into a vibrant multi-arts festival that embraced and empowered artists and communities. She enabled artists to feel comfortable in sharing their work on their terms, through a platform that was culturally nourishing whilst crushing the western construct of the term “art”.