VAT People
Director: Nicola Pauling
As a trained actor, with over 18 years stage experience, Nicola Pauling now directs her craft towards to the empowerment of young people and their communities. Believing the art of performance and the challenge of dramatising our own personal stories can positively transform the disengaged and the disempowered, Nicola has taken her work from the estates of London, to the villages of war-torn Uganda, to the prisons of New Zealand.
Nicola carries the art of storytelling into her work as a writer. In 1996 she graduated from the New Zealand Broadcasting School, starting out as a journalist at Radio New Zealand. Five years later Nicola was producing for BBC World and Reuters in London. She left a successful career in news to concentrate efforts on her primary passion: using drama to educate and unite. She continues to employ the skills she honed in the newsroom assisting young people to create original scripts that tell their own stories. Nicola also works as a freelance travel writer for The Dominion Post.
In 2005 Nicola helped establish Voice Arts, a trust committed to the education and empowerment of at-risk youth via the arts. She is Trustee and current Director.
Trustee: Doug Pauling
Douglas Pauling has been working in the electronics industry for more than 30 years, the last 20 in computers and communications.
Formerly with Motorola and Jardine Matheson he was a founding partner of Barson Computers Australasia Limited, which became a public company in 1985. He was Managing Director of both Acorn Computers New Zealand and Acorn Computers Australia. He is now Managing Director of Air Affairs Limited, is on the board of Ingersol Company Ltd and a trustee of the Treasure Our Young (TOY) Foundation.
Doug lives in Auckland.
Trustee: Heather Timms
As a practicing actor, director, writer and educator Heather is largely drawn to the space where theatre and politics meet. An advocate of the power of people’s stories to create personal, educational and social change, Heather has traversed vast landscapes with her work; the slums of Nairobi, the quietness of Kerala, the urban scenes of the UK, Australia and Aotearoa and more recently in New Zealand prisons and remote Maori communities.
Heather’s use of drama to educate and create change has been expressed in many and varied ways; through her work with communities at risk to generate performance projects, her choice of works to direct, selected areas of practice based research, the development of unique arts based programs in varied contexts that are inclusive and challenge thought & action and within the Maori community with Te Rakau Hua O Te Wao Tapu.
Heather has been involved in theatre in England, India, Australia and now New Zealand and worked within tertiary training & education, secondary education, community, youth and the professional theatre sectors.
Trustee: Gill Ross
Gill Ross NZRN, BA (Art History).
Gill’s background in community service includes assertiveness training for young women, rehabilitation of the elderly with an emphasis on the regaining self reliance, promoting self belief and reliance with the chronic mentally ill and the development of a significant comprehensive community health project in Canterbury.
In recent years her involvement with TheNewDowse Art Gallery and the completion of her BA in Art History have added an arts dimension to her overall skill base. This background in empowerment of individuals, plus her interest in the arts makes her an enthusiastic supporter of Voice Arts Trust.
Trustee: Dan Slevin
Dan has worked for over 20 years in the New Zealand live entertainment, cinema, arts and events industries gaining considerable skills and experience in general management, project management, marketing, sales, fundraising, sponsorship, technology and customer service.
He is a former Chair of the Wellington Community Arts Council; founding trustee of the Fringe Arts Trust; former freelance publicist, production manager and producer of independent theatre; electronic ticketing systems expert and consultant; former General Manager of the Paramount picture theatre and ZMFM radio DJ. Dan considers himself to be an evangelist, provocateur, enabler, facilitator, supporter and yogi for the arts and artists.
He currently runs his own strategic communications consultancy.