TNLP Directors
Kate began English tutoring in secondary school. At Monash University, in preparation for journalism, she studied law, politics and history with honours in most subjects and the Politics Exhibition. After 18 months she left to train in teaching English and Social Studies through the Technical Teachers’ Training College in Melbourne, with honours, then moved from classroom teaching back to tutoring to study more closely how people learn.
She then worked in London and Canberra for 25 years as a freelance investigative journalist and public interest advocate, specialising in drug abuse and rehabilitation, penal reform, and reforms in government such as Freedom of Information Legislation, whistleblower protection and regulation for blood security. Fixing the Government - Everybody’s Guide to Lobbying in Australia commissioned by Penguin Australia, was her public interest sector debrief on returning to a more focussed study of language and literacy in 1986, along with continuing her investigative journalism. TNLP began then.
Across nearly two decades Duncan has contributed a flood of ideas and teaching materials to The New Literacy Programme: stories, compilations, a board game, drama, advice on performance, music and other arts, audio book and poetry recordings. His work on Shakespeare attracted an offer of endorsement for TNLP from the Head of Education at Bell Shakespeare Australia's National Theatre Company specialising in the Bard.
httpss://duncandriver.tumblr.com/
The New Literacy Programme is The Next Big Thing.
John Wood watched over decades of R and D preceding the establishment of TNLP. He gave financial help, enabling the project to remain independent. He stopped Katherine Beauchamp going off the rails from unrealistic goals, researched, designed, and looked after regulatory and financial affairs.
This was while pursuing his own vital pioneering work. In 1976, John founded the national Freedom of Information Legislation (FOIL) Campaign with John McMillan and others. With John McMillan and Katherine Beauchamp he established Australia's first and only national Public Interest Movement, which he named Rupert. Rupert lit fires under numerous unsuspecting powerholders.
As Director of the Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs, he conceived, wrote and effectively had enacted what is now the Australian Consumer Law, recognised worldwide as the strongest of its kind, and due to be augmented along lines he proposed.
John designed Ombudsman schemes, complaint handling mechanisms, and anti-corruption measures, and founded or served on many committees serving government, the private sector and NGOs. After his long Commonwealth public service he worked extensively in the Pacific and South East Asia to help these nations build their own democratic institutions, until his death in 2016. John Wood is much missed by anyone who knew him, his work and his light touch.
Good reads: A polymath with a photographic memory, John read and retained libraries' worth of books. He loved Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, many female author and anyone rude about pretentiousness.
Katherine Beauchamp and Duncan Driver are also advisers on TNLP's Advisory Panel. Katherine is an adviser on literacy, teaching and writing, while Duncan is an adviser on literacy, literature, teaching materials, writing, and Shakespeare. See TNLP's other advisers below...
I have seen The New Literacy Programme (TNLP) develop over many years and I’m impressed by the innovative, practical nature of the program. It reflects enormous research, analysis, thought, consultation and creativity. TNLP is poised to make an exciting and substantial change to learning, language and literacy.
John Denison McMillan is an eminent jurist, highly respected in Australia and abroad. He has vast expertise in public law and public administration, and particular experience in administrative law, investigations, government accountability, and information law. John was Australian Information Commissioner from 2005 – 2010, and Australian Commonwealth Ombudsman from 2003-10. He was Integrity Commissioner, Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (2007), and acted as New South Wales Ombudsman. From 1983-2003 he lectured in administrative and Constitutional law at the Australian National University and was sometime Dean of the Faculty of Law. He was also a law lecturer at the University of New South Wales.
John has helped many volunteer organisations such as The New Literacy Programme during his long career. Since the 1970s he worked with TNLP Directors Katherine Beauchamp and the late John Wood in other capacities, such as public interest advocacy including the successful national Freedom of Information Legislation (FOIL) Campaign.
Also: Emeritus Professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. Professor of Law and Governance, European University Institute, Florence; Chair in Intellectual Property, Queen Mary, University of London. Member, Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, Centre for Commercial Law Studies.
When Peter was first briefed on Katherine Beauchamp's R and D journey and shown the Technical Documents, housed in thick tatty ring bind folders on her office floor, he said: ‘These documents should be in a Swiss bank vault!’ Of course, it was immediately obvious to him that the opposite is true. Patents are out of the question for documents defining and describing how a language works; they should in fact be disseminated as widely and quickly as possible.
Peter has published widely in law and social science journals on intellectual property law, business regulation, regulatory and governance theory and practice, amongst other topics. He has co-authored with Professor John Braithwaite, also an endorser of The New Literacy Programme. In 2004 they jointly received The University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Peter has also advised other not-for-profits such as Medicins Sans Frontiers, Oxfam, The Rockefeller Foundation, Third World Network, UNDP, WHO and Consumers International.
We are privileged to have had Peter's advice and support and immensely grateful for his contributions, and those of his colleague Gary Lea on not-for-profit standing and copyrights.
I am passionate about the role that literacy plays in the lives of children and adults. The New Literacy Programme (TNLP) is an exciting, ground-breaking method for encouraging and assisting children and adults to read, write and converse with confidence. I am delighted to be supporting and advising the team at TNLP.
Cathi works in mentoring and community consultation, holding office in various non-profit community organisations.She is a director of Community Housing Canberra, president of Parentline ACT, assistant treasurer of the Marymead Auxiliary and life member of the YWCA of Canberra and YWCA of Australia. She was a member of the ACT Council of Social Service for many years. From 1997 to 2007 Cathi was a director of Como Services Pty Ltd. She was appointed ACT Senior Woman of the year in 2018 and was surprised - to be considered a senior.
Cathi has extensive experience in governance, volunteering in the non-government sector, liaising with all levels of government, consulting with communities, facilitating, conducting evaluations and reviews, and writing policies and procedures in the government and non-government sector. She also has a wide range of experience in social policies and programs including housing policy. She worked with the Australian Council of Social Service in 1975 to establish the housing organisation National Shelter.
Dr Dwyer has wide experience in tax and superannuation, advising Australian and international clients, including governments, on tax policy.
He has worked as an adviser in the Treasury and Prime Minister's Department of the Australian Government, as private secretary to an Australian senator, and advised on legislative drafting in Australia and overseas.
Dr Dwyer is a member of the Taxation Institute of Australia, Australian Tax Research Foundation, Australian Business Economists, and is a life member of the American Economic Association.
Past member: National Tax Committee, vice-chair ACT Chapter Committee of Financial Planning Association of Australia, ACT Law Society’s representative on the Australian Taxation Office’s Legal Practitioners’ Forum.
I want to give back to society, which has given me a fair bit. Working in the Pacific, you realise the way to bring people out of poverty is through health, and especially through literacy. The New Literacy Programme is evidence-based, unlike a lot of programs. It can be expected to change people’s lives and affect the economy positively.
Michael is an economist. He has been a manager within the Macroeconomics, Modelling and Federal Financial Relations Branch of the Australian Capital Territory Treasury since 2013. Michael has worked as an economist at OECD Paris, was director of national accounts for New Zealand, and as a manager in the International Finance Division at the Australian Government Treasury.
He has given his support to community organisations and NGOs for many years and continues to. We were honoured when he offered to help TNLP, by advising and assisting the Director Katherine Beauchamp since 2017. Michael is a kind, generous, energetic, cheerful person, who sums up situations swiftly and astutely and gives practical advice and guidance. He asks for nothing in return but we insist on giving him our gratitude and occasionally a bag of wine gums.
The New Literacy Programme initiative which Katherine Beauchamp started is a great one that I am happy to support. Its new, innovative approaches to learning, language and literacy are significantly more engaging and therefore more effective than other teaching tools.
Matt is a mechanical and systems engineer with extensive experience in IT and all things computers, who loves footy and cricket. He is Canberra born and bred and currently works with Nova Systems.
For many years Matt has provided TNLP with invaluable IT supports and advice to keep systems running smoothly, rescuing the digital contents of The New Literacy Programme© from Katherine Beauchamp on several occasions, despite her skill at effortlessly bringing them down. His genius, patience and kindness come in equal measure and are highly valued by us all.
Language, Literacy and Teaching
I’m a committed supporter of The New Literacy Programme. It is a joy to see the dedication to helping others acquire the life-changing skill of literacy.
Eleanor McMillan is the best friend any student could have. Her Scottish blood rises if student rights and best teaching practice are not top of any educational agenda. She is indefatigable in her loyalty to students, and highly trained to help them.
Eleanor has deep expertise and wide experience in speech pathology, classroom literacy and other teaching, assisting individuals with learning difficulties, understanding the needs of students in learning language, reading and writing; also in student engagement, inclusion and wellbeing (using trauma- and neuroscience-informed educational practices), and building teachers’ capacity to meet students’ needs in both ‘mainstream’ and flexible learning situations.
To be able to apply all these skills is exceptional in itself. To continue to do so while conflicts have raged between different schools of persuasion about how to teach English is astonishing.
Since 2007 Eleanor has played key roles in education in the ACT: as a teacher at primary and secondary schools and in the ACT Education Department, focussing on literacy, numeracy and inclusion. She also worked as a Speech Pathologist in education in the ACT and in Mackay, Queensland. She is currently an Executive Teacher at an ACT government secondary school, leading their interventions to improve literacy and numeracy, disability education, professional learning, pedagogy, curriculum and assessment, reporting, and case management - among other areas!
In 2017 she was invited to assist the NSW Department of Education in developing a Speech Pathology in Schools Resource Kit. She has also presented to many Australian conferences on speech pathology. In 2014, she published Accepting the Challenge Leadership Program for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Inquiry Program.
Eleanor’s numerous awards include:
Certificate of Excellence in Educational Leadership in Literacy Improvement, Australian Council for Educational Leaders ACT Branch, 2014 and Judge for Speech Pathology Australia’s Book of the Year Award 2013 Teachers Quality Institute Teacher Registration, ACT.
Somehow, she also found time to look into TNLP’s work and has been advising us for many years. We are honoured to have Eleanor McMillan approving our research base, technical work and teaching materials. (For example, see her review of Learning the Speech Sounds of English and other phonemic awareness resources in the Speech Sounds Suite kit of the Reading and Writing Prep Step.)
Eleanor’s commitment to TNLP also helps place our work in perspective for professionals, parents and other important people in the language and literacy fields, where new research findings, programs, and contributors proliferate and where choosing the right way forward is challenging for parents, schools, training bodies and policy makers.
Jennifer Winch
B A (major Eng. Lit.) QU; M Teaching (Primary), Grad Dip Media UC; M Children's Literature and Literacy; Major, English Teaching University of Newcastle.
English literature and Literacy, Poetry
Jennifer points out that while there is copious research focused on reading deficits, there should be more research on how a good reader evolves and what contributes to embedding effective reading habits. She has helped TNLP across the years with advice on aspects of teaching practice, reference books for children’s literature and literacy, and contributing suggestions for ways to respond to poetry.
Video journalism, Peacebuilding course design, Social media
Picture: Diane McDonald Photography
I recognise an honest passion and commitment in Katherine Beauchamp, at levels needed to bring a project like this to fruition. I respect her work as an investigative researcher. I wish I could persuade her to make her literacy work into a PhD thesis - as others have also suggested - but recognise her priority is to get TNLP, built on those R and D findings, to those who need it without delay.
Flavia has 15+ years’ professional experience in humanitarian, factual media. She has documented communities, subjected to long-time conflict, including in Australia (indigenous and CALD communities) and internationally. To train refugees, in western Uganda, for GIZ Uganda, she designed her own peacebuilding curriculum, which accommodated both a trauma-informed approach and the limited formal education of some of her learners.
Flavia’s interest in course design is to explore innovative approaches to engage the target learners more effectively. Her experience adds value to TNLP, in terms of the possible trauma of TNLP Helpers and Learners and their limited access to formal education. Katherine and Flavia are exploring social media business models and ways to adapt the TNLP curriculum to future video outputs and how to maximise engagement via social media.
The New Literacy Programme has come this far on love, the talents of hundreds of volunteers and the dedicated investigation and creative thinking of its founder. The research is thorough, providing major clarifications of how English actually works. It opens doors to fast joyful learning, and new easier ways of teaching - and not just by teachers. It changes people, gives them confidence, heals lost connections and creates good new ones.
TNLP needs to be made ready to reach its target audience of anyone wanting or needing English, and anyone who'd like to help. The potential impact of this programme is almost impossible to imagine given that English is by far the most in demand language today.
Charlie is an organiser, facilitator, trainer, poet, campaigner and therapist-in-training, deeply involved in the climate justice movement since 2008. They started and grew highly successful grassroots movements such as the fossil-fuel divestment movement, Stop Adani and The School Strike 4 Climate. They co-founded Tipping Point, worked as a climate adviser in Parliament, worked as campaigns director at 350.org Australia and as a policy adviser across the environment movement.
Charlie also worked as a research adviser on responsible regulation, peace and restorative justice with Regnet ANU in 2008-9, was a soccer referee, and literacy tutor with TNLP. They were for some years a prolific writer and illustrator of our teaching materials, stories, books, a major compendium Handy Words, posters, cartoons, 800+ pages of worksheets, and was lead author of our award winning, worldwide acclaimed Helpings: Real Food for Young People by Young People. Charlie is currently a senior adviser for our young people's adventure novel, Nature Rules!
Kimmo Vennonen
Sound designer and engineer, composer; Grad Dip Music, ANU; ANU Visiting Fellow 1995-1998
Recording, editing
I am struck by Katherine Beauchamp’s commitment to the journey and enjoy her high standards, which transcend the technical and embrace the need to connect with everybody, especially children and young people. We have a duty to engage with our cultural heritage in a literate and respectful way, without ever getting stodgy. TNLP succeeds in this, crossing generational boundaries with ease.
Kimmo works for many of Canberra's dance and theatre companies and music festivals, on music and audio projects, including innovative speculative radiophonic pieces, free improvised jazz, filmic theatre designs, dark art rock to harmonic drone scapes - and more.
He has recorded for The New Literacy Programme™ across nearly 2 decades, including live performances of over 80 musical pieces for children by a troupe of over 30 TNLP volunteers aged 3 to 83, resulting in the 2 volume Everywhere a Woof Woof! A panel of volunteers doing 8 different English accents he edited into the unique educational tool: Learning the Speech Sounds of English. His work is meticulous and miraculous.
Ist Prize MEAA Green Room Awards 'Creative and Innovative Sound Design' (Melbourne's Premier Performing Arts industry awards) 2010; Contributor, “Collaborations” with Jim Denley; Prix Italia for the Australian Broadcasting Commission1991
http://kvp.net.au/kimmo.html
Music Ambassador to The New Literacy ProgrammeTM
Picture: Dovile Sermokas
All the people at the core of TNLP are philanthropic by nature. TNLP is the most user-friendly, affordable, comprehensive, inspiring and effective way to introduce language and literacy I’ve ever seen. I can't wait to promote this programme globally.
Based in Dublin now, Lina performs in many countries. She is a member of four-time Grammy Award winning ensemble The Eighth Blackbird, 'a new breed of super musicians' according to the LA Times. She receives praise for her work, from Rolling Stone magazine to the Melbourne Age, performing chamber music, orchestral and new music with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Welsh National Opera, Tokyo Experimental Festival, Bang on a Can and more. Lina has received many merit scholarships as a student and many merit awards since. She has contributed much musical expertise and many teaching ideas and Learner activities to The New Literacy Programme, not the least being her Trash Band.
www.linaandonovska.com
www.eighthblackbird.org
The New Literacy Programme that Kate Beauchamp and her team of fellow volunteers are creating is so thoughtfully and expertly crafted to develop language and literacy for all ages. I think it’s a wonderful program, full of Kate’s passion, commitment to excellence and love. I have been more than happy to advise, and contribute drawings and paintings for this program, as well as to contribute my art and craft activity ideas, to help make TNLP an inspiring, fun and helpful tool for children.
Tiffany is an artist working mainly in the medium of painting. She works in Canberra as a visual arts educator, concentrating on still life and our connection to nature. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Canberra and interstate, and received a number of prizes and scholarships including the QANTAS Foundation Encouragement of Australian Art Award, The University Medal (ANU, 2006), and a Spanish Embassy Young Australian Artists' Travelling Scholarship.
Tiffany lectured at ANU’s School of Art and Design, and for nearly two decades was an after-school art and craft educator at Ainslie Primary School. She has contributed to The New Literacy Programme ©™ for many years, including a folio of superb black and white drawings to illustrate the young people's adventure novel Nature Rules! a stand-alone book and serialised reader for The 26 Friends Reading Course.™ We are privileged to have her contribute her wonderful art and craft ideas created across these years. They will further enrich our classes.
TNLP is an exciting, innovative and engaging literacy programme relevant to a wide cross-section of the community from early childhood to adults learning English as a second language. It has been a privilege to contribute artwork to the Programme.
John Pratt is a graphic artist working across a range of media including printmaking, collage, drawing, artist books and projections in public spaces. Through a series of exhibitions he has been exploring the impact of human presence in natural and constructed environments.
As part of his research and creative output, John has also worked as a senior lecturer in the print media and drawing department at the ANU School of Art. He has exhibited regularly, including 15 solo exhibitions and group exhibitions. As well as his own studio practice he has a deep commitment and engagement as coordinator and tutor with community projects, in particular with programs that focus on creative practice and visual inquiry.
Brad Mound is the Director of Mound Media, a multimedia business specialising in graphic design and website development. Brad has been involved with TNLP to help develop and design the newliteracy.com.au website, the Helpings: Real Food for Young People by Young People cookbook, our main catalogue and TNLP's various publications.
TNLP Consultants
Brad Mound Mound Media design, TNLP website, TNLP catalogue
Dorothy (Dash) Cook editor, media, writing
Nikolai Drahos writer, researcher, technical assistant
Nicky Moffat technical assistant, research, Director's assistant
Hilary Talbot sculptor, maker, visual artist, Canberra, spiritsdancing.com puppets
Kimmo Venonnen K V Productions, sound engineer
Lexi Sekuless Productions and Mill Theatre at Dairy Road, actor, producer, voice over artist
Flavia Abdurahman video journalism, peacebuilding course design, social media
Andrew Schuller publishing consultant, narrator
Yamini Suresh Research Director, Nature Rules! - TNLP reader and adventure novel
Dr Jonathan Banks Support, Nature Rules!- TNLP reader and adventure novel, science, organic food growing, farming
Angelica Widnyana administration, organising big data, advising the Director, developing TNLP games
Joshua McHugh composer, musician, pianist, singer, recitation, teacher, puppeteer
Michael Sollis The Gryffen Ensemble, composer
Franki Sparke artist, illustrations and cover design for Everywhere a Woof! Woof!
Paul Summerfield artist, cover designs, illustration
Dianna Nixon voice actor - Learning the Speech Sounds of English, Artistic Director, Wild Voices Music Theatre; Managing Director, Music Theatre Projects Ltd;
The late Oliver Baudert OBE presenter - Learning the Speech Sounds of English, actor, voice
