Full Curriculum Vitae

• Current PhD Candidate - CQUniversity Australia - Thesis working title  Opera and the Anthropocene: Responding to Place and Environment through Writing New Australian Opera Libretti 
• Master of Arts (Research) - Queensland University of Technology
• Graduate Diploma of Management (Arts) - University of South Australia
• Bachelor of Education (Hons) - Queensland University of Technology 

THEATRE

2015 

IT ALL BEGINS WITH LOVE – wrote, produced and directed this verbatim theatre play focusing on survivors of domestic and family violence. Script published by Playlab. https://playlabtheatre.com.au/shop-publications/playlab-indie/it-all-begins-with-love-by-rod-ainsworth/ 

2012

The Extraordinary Fall of Wheezer Hennessy – short play written for the Tales of the Underground Project with Creative Regions

2010

The Forgetting – short play commissioned for the Dancing Back Home project, a collection of short plays by emerging Australian playwrights (JUTE Theatre, Cairns / Mudlark Theatre, Launceston).

2009

Roland Thring and the Year all his Christmases Came at Once – wrote, produced and directed this play for children. JUTE Theatre (Cairns) / Creative Regions (Bundaberg)

2008

Backstage – commission to write a play to commemorate 401st show of The Playhouse Theatre (Bundaberg) – Australia Council for the Arts funded. 

2000

Living with Lear – adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear written in collaboration with drama students at St Luke’s Anglican School (Bundaberg).

1995

Dischord! – short play written for The Shock of the New Festival (La Boite Theatre). Shortlisted for the Queensland Theatre Company/Comalco Making Contact Award.

OPERA

2021

A Fleck of Gold  – opera libretto adaptation of Rod’s short play The Extraordinary Fall of Wheezer Hennessy – work in progress

2016 

Tumbulgum and the Countdown to Midnight at the First Supper between Now and Forever, commissioned by Opera Queensland as part of Arts Northern Rivers’ “If These Halls Could Talk” project. 12 month collaboration with Lindy Hume (Artistic Director) and Jason Barry-Smith (Co Creative Producer). Rod wrote the script for and directed this project. 

2014

ROLAND THRING AND THE YEAR ALL HIS CHRISTMASES CAME AT ONCE, adaptation to opera libretto. 

2010

LORETTA  – librettist for this full-length opera (composer Peter Rankine). The opera started its life under the title The Crushing.

PUBLICATIONS / CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2022

Presentation at the Australasian Association of Writing Programs Conference: Fire Country, at the University of the Sunshine Coast in November. Paper entitled I See Fire in Your Eyes: Questions about whether opera could be a means for de-colonisation in regional Australia

2020 

Presented as panellist in a session called Getting in on the ground floor: Commissioning new work at the arTour Showcase 2020 (online)

2019          

Co-presented a workshop on “Using the Arts to Promote Health” at the Thinking Innovatively in Collaborative Health Care Practice at the Wide Bay Health Symposium (CQUniversity) 

2019         

Panellist at PAC Australia Conference on the complexities of touring.

2016          

Presentation of a paper IT ALL BEGINS WITH LOVE – and a Bear: The processes, ethics and impacts of  making art with and for victims of domestic violence at the Inter-disciplinary.net’s Domestic Abuse and Violence Conference in Prague, Czech Republic

2015 

IT ALL BEGINS WITH LOVE play script published by Playlab

2014  

It All Begins With Love: Making a play for change in Bundaberg by Rod Ainsworth. In Cultural 

Solutions, Griffith Review, Volume 44 (“Notes from the Front” supplement), edited by Julianne Schultz.

2013   

Ripples Over the Great Divide, co-authored with Dr Jude Pippen, published in a collection edited by Norma Bowles and Daniel-Raymond Nadon – Staging Social Justice: Collaboratively-Developed Activist Theatre, published by Southern Illinois University Press. 

2012          

Panellist at APACA Conference in Darwin regarding strategic regional arts projects

2010         

Panellist at Regional Arts Australia Artlands Conference in Goolwa, SA regarding strategic regional arts  projects

2008   

Game On! A Social Justice Theatre Project in the Wide Bay Burnett Region – YAQ Papers, 10th Anniversary Edition, 2008 – Co-authored with Dr Jude Pippen

2003  

Regional Indigenous Cultural Officers: Professional, Passionate and Personal – ArtReach, March 2003;  Reprinted in National Indigenous Times 

2003  

Valuing Your Story: Valuing Your Life – Co-authored with Jack Ritchie – ArtReach, June 2003

2003  

Some Indigenous Arts Initiatives – ArtReach, December 2003

2002   

Brewarrina Circus Skills Training – ArtReach, December 2002 

OPINION

2015  

The War on Terror is Closer than we Think – a commissioned blog post for Arts Queensland about the play IT ALL BEGINS WITH LOVE https://www.arts.qld.gov.au/aq-blog/health-and-wellbeing/the-war-on-terror-is-closer-than-we-think 

2012   

Music School Drop-Out, an article commissioned by Arts Queensland for the Classical Music Mapping Study written by Helen Lancaster

2012   

A segment of the above article called A Wishlist for Music in the 21st Century Queensland was published on the Arts Queensland blog on 6 March 2012 

2019 

Milbi Festival – devised and developed this new festival as a partnership between Gidarjil Development Corporation, Bundaberg Regional Council and Bundaberg Tourism. The Milbi Festival is a new arts and cultural festival designed to celebrate the beginning of Bundaberg’s famous loggerhead turtle breeding season. The project has included commissioning a First Nations designer to work with the community to develop the brand and working with Traditional Owners, the CQ Language Centre and First Nations artists as well as other feature artists in commissioning new work to launch in November 2019. 

2018

Regional Engagement Guidelines Project – producing and directing seven short documentaries about arts projects for Regional Arts Australia in seven states/territories. I was subcontracted to Natalie Fisher (NSF Consulting) on this project. 

2016 

Tumbulgum and the Countdown to Midnight at the First Supper between Now and Forever, commissioned by Opera Queensland as part of Arts Northern Rivers’ “If These Halls Could Talk” project. 12 month collaboration with Lindy Hume (Artistic Director) and Jason Barry-Smith (Co-Creative Producer). I wrote the script for, and directed, this project. 

2015

IT ALL BEGINS WITH LOVE – wrote, produced and directed this verbatim theatre play focusing on survivors of domestic and family violence. Script published by Playlab. https://playlabtheatre.com.au/shop-publications/playlab-indie/it-all-begins-with-love-by-rod-ainsworth/ 

2014

AFLOAT Creative Recovery, wrote, produced and directed a video documentary about creative recovery work in Wide Bay Burnett and Central Queensland following flooding events of 2011 and 2013.

2012

Tractor Tattoo, Developing a new festival with long engagement with the Kingaroy community. I produced and directed this festival which included commissioning of the conversion of a tractor to be into a large percussion instrument (artist Steve Langton), commissioning of a new song cycle for community bands, singers and the tractor (composer Peter Rankine) and the production of a major community event. This show involved hundreds of community members. By a strange twist, the event ended up on the same night as the local football grand final but got a bigger audience. 

2012

Tales of the Underground, Commissioning three new plays based on residencies in three ex-mining communities in Central Queensland (Cracow, Mt Perry and Mt Morgan) and production of the work and the regional tour to six locations. This collection of short plays by Angela Betzien, Victoria Carless and myself were based on month-long residencies in Mt Morgan, Mt Perry and Cracow (respectively) and the response to that through a 30 minute play each. The collection of works premiered in Brisbane then travelled to six Central Queensland locations including the three communities who were the subjects of the plays. This was a unique partnership between three local governments, the state government, federal government and saw great support (in kind) from mining companies and communities. 

2008

Backstage – a play to commemorate 401st show of The Playhouse Theatre (Bundaberg) – Australia Council for the Arts funded. 

2008

GAME ON! Theatre Production based on prejudice against LGBTIQ+ communities.  with Fringe Benefits Theatre (USA) and regional tour. Co-produced and directed this project. This project forms one chapter in the book Staging Social Justice: Collaboratively-Developed Activist Theatre. Norma Bowles and Daniel-Raymond Nadon (eds), published by Southern Illinois University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/23324 

2019 

Milbi Festival – devised and developed this new festival as a partnership between Gidarjil Development Corporation, Bundaberg Regional Council and Bundaberg Tourism. The Milbi Festival is a new arts and cultural festival designed to celebrate the beginning of Bundaberg’s famous loggerhead turtle breeding season. The project has included commissioning a First Nations designer to work with the community to develop the brand and working with Traditional Owners, the CQ Language Centre and First Nations artists as well as other feature artists in commissioning new work to launch in November 2019.

2018

Regional Engagement Guidelines Project – producing seven short documentaries about arts projects for Regional Arts Australia in seven states/territories. I was subcontracted to Natalie Fisher (NSF Consulting) on this project. 

2016 

Tumbulgum and the Countdown to Midnight at the First Supper between Now and Forever, commissioned by Opera Queensland as part of Arts Northern Rivers’ “If These Halls Could Talk” project. 12 month collaboration with Lindy Hume (Artistic Director) and Jason Barry-Smith (Co Creative Producer).

2015

IT ALL BEGINS WITH LOVE, Queensland tour (17 venues) of verbatim theatre work about domestic and family violence. The tour was evaluated by Dr Wendy Madsen of CQUniversity. 

2015

Off the Edge – documentary about returning service personnel in Australia

2014

AFLOAT Creative Recovery, video documentary about creative recovery work in Wide Bay Burnett and Central Queensland following flooding events of 2011 and 2013.

2013

ARTICULATE Regional Arts and Culture Conference (Arts Queensland’s biennial regional arts conference in Rockhampton). Creating the arts and cultural program for this major state-wide conference. 

2013

RICHARD GILL Choral and Orchestral Boot Camp (CQUniversity, Creative Regions). Based on feedback from 30 music teachers and their professional development needs, I worked with CQUniversity to secure funding to bring Richard Gill to work with teachers and community musicians. 

2013

DINGO: Reflections on the Pride of the Dingo by Contemporary Regional Indigenous Artists (exhibition). I engaged a curator to work with a range of artists from the Sunshine Coast to Rockhampton to develop an exhibition which reflected positively on the plight of the dingo following bad press about the animals on Fraser Island. This exhibition was a feature of the Articulate Conference and the artists nearly sold all of their work at higher than expected prices through a silent auction that I managed. 

2013

Flood Marker Project – commissioning three pieces of public art along Toonooba/Fitzroy River in Rockhampton as a disaster recovery project following two major flooding events.

2013

Murri Girls into Art, Major Exhibition Commission. This project involved working with a group of First Nations women, all with mental health conditions, who had formed a group mainly for therapeutic purposes. They were being mentored by a local artist and were experimenting with interesting textile techniques. I secured funding to source a curator who the group would work well with then steered the project towards a major exhibition at the Rockhampton Art Gallery. 

2012

CQ Circus Project (CQUniversity, Flipside Circus). 12 month project working with Flipside Circus and CQUniversity’s Wider Participation unit to work with schools with large numbers of high risk young people to create circus performances in three communities in western Queensland communities (Woorabinda, Eidsvold, Baralaba).

2012

TRACE: Art, Poetry and the Built Environment, I commissioned two poets to respond to a range of stories about the built environment and heritage of Rockhampton then five groups of artists were commissioned to respond to the poetry to create five major site-specific, immersive works and to publish an anthology of the stimulus poetry. 

2012

Walter’s Block Party, Celebration of the arts in Rockhampton at the Walter Reid Cultural Centre. This was a large outdoor variety event which involved the closure of streets, fireworks, projection art, installations in the Walter Reid Centre, workshops and a variety program featuring musicians from around the region. 

2012

Toonooba Voices, commissioning of new documentary about the cultural significance of Toonooba (or the Fitzroy River) by First Nations Filmmaker Kaylene Butler (aired on SBS Television and NITV nationally).

2012

Tractor Tattoo, Commissioning of the conversion of a tractor to be into a large percussion instrument by artist Steve Langton, commissioning of a new song cycle for community bands, singers and the tractor by composer Peter Rankine and the production of a major community event. This show involved hundreds of community members and featured the premiere of work written by composer Peter Rankine for the tractor and community forces. By a strange twist, the event ended up on the same night as the local football grand final but got a bigger audience. 

2012

Tales of the Underground, Commissioning three new plays based on residencies in three ex-mining communities in Central Queensland (Cracow, Mt Perry and Mt Morgan) and production of the work and the regional tour to six locations. This collection of short plays by Angela Betzien, Victoria Carless and myself were based on month-long residencies in Mt Morgan, Mt Perry and Cracow (respectively) and the response to that through a 30 minute play each. The collection of works premiered in Brisbane then travelled to six Central Queensland locations including the three communities who were the subjects of the plays. This was a unique partnership between three local governments, the state government, federal government and saw great support (in kind) from mining companies and communities. 

2011

Artspoken Regional Arts and Culture Conference (Arts Queensland’s biennial regional arts conference in Bundaberg). Overseeing the arts and cultural program for this major state-wide conference. 

2010

The Crushing, Commissioning of a new opera in collaboration with composer Peter Rankine. The work has subsequently had a reading with Queensland Youth Orchestra, a creative development which included a recording with Classical Accordionist James Crabb and soprano Katie Stenzel and a performance of an excerpt in a sugar cane field as part of the Crush Festival in Bundaberg.

Director of Programming, Queensland Theatre 

During his time with Queensland Theatre, Rod managed a multi-million dollar production budget producing the 2021 season and developing season 2022. In his time with QT, Rod produced the largest production in the company’s 50 year history, the stage adaptation of Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe (written by Tim McGarry, directed by Sam Strong) as a partnership between QPAC and the Brisbane Festival. He stewarded the 2021 season through the throes of COVID-19, including the management of multiple show shut-downs and changes, casting challenges and the logistics of inter-state border and quarantine arrangements. During this time, he was thrilled to produce the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello, a tri-lingual (Kala Lagaw Ya, Yumpla Tok and English) production adapted by Jimi Bani and Jason Klarwein as part of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair in 2021 after many COVID-related cancellations and changes. 

Manager, Arts & Cultural Services, Bundaberg Regional Council 

Rod’s role with Bundaberg Regional Council included management of arts and cultural venues and programs including the Moncrieff Entertainment Centre, Bundaberg Regional Galleries (two galleries), the Regional Arts Development Fund, a Community Arts Program and the implementation of Council’s first ever First Nations Cultural Officer as an identified role.  Rod drove the Bundaberg Region Arts + Culture Strategy 2019-2023 with consultants from CQUniversity, instigated and produced the inaugural Milbi Festival and managed a multi-million dollar upgrade to the Moncrieff Entertainment Centre. 

Founder, Director and Creative Producer – Creative Regions Ltd

With three other founding directors, Dr Jude Pippen, Sylvia Langford and Shelley Pisani, Rod co-founded Creative Regions Limited, a not-for-profit regional arts production and service company. Creative Regions became the only new entrant to multi-year State funding during a time of deep austerity and funding cuts. In this time, the company successfully bid for the management of all of the State Government’s major regional arts strategic projects from 2009-2014 including Creative Generators, Regional Stages, Regional Writing and Creative Capricorn – all multi-year projects designed to stimulate arts activity and capacity in regional Queensland. 

Senior Manager, Projects (Medical Pathways), The University of Queensland 

Stepping outside the arts, Rod has worked in The University of Queensland’s Rural Clinical School, as part of the Medical School, implementing a generational change to improving the regional and rural medical workforce through an end-to-end pathway for medical education across four regions. Rod received the UQ Faculty of Medicine Commendation in the Leader of the Year (Professional) Award. The Regional Medical Pathway (Central Queensland-Wide Bay) won the Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service Excellence Award (Collaboration) in 2022 and, in the same year, the UQ Medical Pathways Team won the Faculty of Medicine Collaborator of the Year Award for its work across Central Queensland, Wide Bay, the Darling Downs and South West regions, working with two other university partners (CQU and UniSQ) as well as four Hospital and Health Services. I led the development of a grant which saw $9.6 million of Commonwealth funds provided to the Central Queensland region to support medical education and infrastructure development. 

Selected projects: 

NSW Regional Conservatoriums Review – Specialist Cultural Consultant – Engaged by The Sparrowly Group (Sydney) to provide specialist regional cultural policy / strategy advice to support a major review of the Regional Conservatoriums in NSW. 

Collaborating with Regional Communities – worked as video producer and consultancy support with Natalie Fisher (NSF Consulting) developing a series of case study videos on regional arts practice from across Australia. 

Artlands Review – worked as a consultant to Natalie Fisher (NSF Consulting) advising on the producing and creative components of this national conference on the review for the Regional Arts Australia Board.

Establishment of the Boonah Arts and Cultural Foundation and St Edmunds College Foundation (Ipswich)

Implementing the Tourism Skills Formation Strategy for the Department of Tourism (Queensland)

Implementing the Pathways and Partnerships Program in the Bundaberg Region for Education Queensland, creating trade-based pathways for young people in the region. 

Writing the Rural Futures Strategy for the North Burnett Regional Council 

Operating as a national trainer for Our Community’s Certificate IV in Business (Governance) working with not-for-profit organisations across the country. 

Rod has worked for a broad range of clients across government, corporate and not-for-profit sectors and across a broad range of industries.