As a founding member of InCite Youth Arts, Virginia Heydon has worked with Jenine Mackay since 1998 to grow community and cultural development (CACD) practice in the Central Australian region. Virginia has a Certificate of Art, Hornsby TAFE, 1996 and Diploma in Arts, Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education, 1999. Majoring in Visual and Performing arts, Virginia has pursued the dual relationship between art forms to develop projects exploring multi-arts approaches to creative expression. As a young woman, she performed with cutting-edge Sydney performance groups One Extra Dance Company and Kinetic Energy and was a founder of Blackwattle Studio, 1980-85. Collaborating with Ronaldo Cameron and Theatre Unlimited, 1979–85, Virginia performed overseas and created seminal environment/site-specific CACD works. She has worked in communities across Australia coordinating, directing and performing in festivals, parades, community theatre events, and schools, and has extensive production skills.
Virginia played a key role as dance mentor and Advisory Committee member for the seminal Mapping New Territory project 2003, partnering with the disability sector to deliver an arts program for people with disability. This saw the beginning of Arts Access Central Australia (AACA) 2004-2013. AACA amalgamated with Incite Youth Arts to become Incite Arts, 2013. Based in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Virginia is the enduring ‘face’ of Incite with collaborations continuing on new projects in 2022.
