Meet the Team
Creatif Kate
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Co-Director, Workshop Facilitator
The GOAT. Multi-award winning, multi-talented, multi-chronic illness having, creative force behind DAT Fest, Femmes & Thems Comedy, and more. Full-time artist since 2018: producer, performer, poet. Disabled, queer, furious feminist with an intersectional lens. Driven, determined, decisive.
Susan Williams
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Co-Director, Workshop Facilitator
Ace Access Advisor & workshop leader. Legendary legacy in the arts sector. Swiss army knife in vaguely human form: activist, actor, anything at all (can't say no).
Jamie Fenton
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Festival
Co-ordinator
Jamie is an actor and occasional stand-up comic raised and based in Taranaki. Jamie works as a data analyst and has studied with The Hub Studio (Sydney) and Stage Centre (Taranaki) and has acted in various stage shows in Wellington including Summer Star Trek (2013-2018), Binge and Chill (2019), and Don’t Date Androids (2018). Jamie works as a Data Analyst and has a Master’s in Business Analytics (Marketing) from Massey University.
Liv Ward
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Designer
Liv is a trans-non-binary comic and designer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. They love accessible design and making art a sustainable career in Aotearoa. They graduated from Te Herenga Waka Architecture School in 2022 and are passionate about housing equity and land back! Free Palestine bitches!
Charlie Hann
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Website Designer
Charlie Hann has some experience in website design and web accessibility. They have also done theatre production for the Victoria Ancient Theatre Society, Illegally Blind and Women Drinking Hemlock.
Charlie has also been involved in multiple productions with amateur theatre group Drama Christi as an actor and scriptwriter. He is trying to publish his first novel about queer pirates and working on his second novel about queer spaceships.
They are proudly Autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, and queer.
Lauren Hayes
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Accessibility Co-ordinator, Blind Consultant
Lauren is a creative and passionate Digital and Arts Accessibility Consultant. Originally from Melbourne, she now calls Aotearoa home. Lauren has over 8 years’ experience in collaborating with organisations to review and provide guidance on best practice regarding accessible and inclusive design of products and services. As a freelancer, Lauren has significant experience in providing technical and advisory support to not-for-profit, disability, arts and community organisations, including Arts Access Victoria, Melbourne Fringe, Canva, Arts Access Aotearoa, the Show me Shorts Film Festival, and the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. When she’s not auditing websites or helping artists to make their work accessible, you’ll find Lauren checking out live concerts and theatre, learning Welsh, or exploring local cafes.
Lyneen
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Deaf Consultant, NZSL Co-ordinator
Katie Wild
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Volunteer Co-ordinator, First Aid
Katie has a background in acting (Only F**Ks Pat Me On The Head, Molten Tears ‘pon Withered Vine), and is part of the New Zealand Film Collaborators team who are striving to make filmmaking more accessible. She has lived experience with AuDHD, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia (chronic pain).
When she’s not nurturing her four beautiful children, or at work nurturing other children (as a kindy teacher), Katie can found raising orphaned animals, creating nourishing meals, or working on a film set. She has a huge drive to help others find inspiration, and pursue what lights up their life.
Witnessing someone be in their element, loving what they’re doing, is truly an honour.
Wesley
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Assistant to Creatif Kate
Bethany Miller
Role in DAT Fest: Assistant to Susan Williams
Keegan
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Marketing
EJ Barrett
Role in DAT Fest 2024: Finance and Wellbeing Co-ordinator