SPEAKERS
FLINDERS ISLAND, TASMANIA | 4-7 May 2026
Exploring regenerative approaches to place, economy and community
Conversations
Our speakers don't come with polished answers. They are not going to tell you what to do. They come with hard-won experience, genuine curiosity, and a deep commitment to doing things differently. Each has navigated the messy path toward regenerative thinking - or whatever word you want to use. Each brings a perspective that will stretch, challenge, and inspire. They are storytellers, practitioners and advocates. What they share is a belief that place matters, community leads, and that the old ways of thinking about tourism, economies, arts, nature, food, land, and belonging are ready to be reimagined.
Damon Gameau -
Damon Gameau is an Australian film director, speaker and author. As a director he wrote, directed, and performed vocals for the 2011 Tropfest-winning short film Animal Beatbox. In 2015 he turned to activism with his debut feature documentary That Sugar Film, which sold to 25 territories and received numerous awards, including the 2015 AACTA Award for Best Documentary. His campaign book That Sugar Book was a bestseller in Australia and published in 20 countries and 8 languages. Damon then directed the climate solutions feature documentary 2040 and authored an accompanying book 2040: a Handbook for the Regeneration. Both films sit in the top 10 highest grossing Australian documentaries at the domestic box office. Damon then co-founded Regen Studios with Anna Kaplan where together they work with philanthropists and partners to build comprehensive impact campaigns for their films, raising money for ecological solutions and awareness in classrooms, boardrooms, and Parliaments around the world. Recent projects include Regenerating Australia and his most recent film, Future Council. Damon’s TEDx Sydney talk ‘went viral’ via the global TED platform.
Cherise Addinsall -
Cherise knows what it means to work slowly, carefully, and in genuine relationship with place. Her work across Pacific Island communities is rooted in a simple yet radical idea that the people who live somewhere already hold the knowledge needed to shape their future, and that outsiders are there to listen, not lead. She's spent years working alongside Indigenous communities on questions of food, land, tourism and belonging, and to support communities in finding their own. Her focus on regenerative agritourism grows from a deep belief that how we relate to place and food is inseparable from how we relate to each other. Cherise brings to this conversation a rare combination of island literacy, genuine humility, and hard-won experience of what it actually takes to shift systems.
Furneaux Community -
Around 900 people call Flinders Island home. That's a small number by any measure, but the diversity of lives, livelihoods, knowledge and perspective held within that community is anything but small. It's a community shaped by self-reliance, by the rhythms of a remote island, and by a fierce sense of stewardship for the place they live in. They don't need solutions from elsewhere.
Since 2021, this community has been on a journey, one triggered not by a development strategy but by a collective desire to protect and steward what matters. That journey is ongoing, experimental, and honest about its complexity. The people of Flinders Island are not the backdrop for this gathering, they are also the hosts, the guest speakers, and the knowledge holders.
Deborah Wace -
Botanical artist, print maker, fabric designer, natural historian, and ecological activist, Deborah has spent many years living amongst the wild buttongrass plains and deep rainforests of Tasmania, collecting specimens (sustainably and with permissions) to inspire her art and design creations.
Her specimen collection has grown over the years into a significant archive of immense beauty forming a unique record of Tasmania’s botanical heritage, including many threatened and endangered species.
Tasmania is a botanical paradise harbouring strange species from the Jurassic era, and deep rainforests which contain some of the world’s oldest and largest living plants. Deborah actively campaigns for the conservation and appreciation of wild botanical sites.
Vanessa Ward -
Vanessa Ward is a designer and researcher at the University of Tasmania, where she leads the Bachelor of Design and the Regen Design Lab. Her work explores how design can move beyond sustainability toward net-positive outcomes for ecological and social systems.
Vanessa's presentation shares two stories: the design program being built at the University of Tasmania, and a cycling journey from the mountain village of Ostana to Venice exploring what regenerative tourism could be for a village, valley and waterway. Both stories are explorations in designing with a place and its bioregion.
We acknowledge and pay our deepest respects to the Traditional Owners of the land on which we live and work. We thank all Palawa for their ongoing custodianship of the lands, seas, waterways, and skies we are lucky to call home in Lutruwita/Tasmania, and recognise their deep connection to Country. We support Palawa in their struggle for treaty, truth telling, and justice. We pay our respects to all Palawa and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past and present, and acknowledge that this always has been, and always will be, Aboriginal land.
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