Profile

Penne Thornton is a multidisciplinary creative producer working across performance, exhibitions, public programming, artist development and community engagement.
Penne has a research focus on collaborative, place-based practice and is an advocate for social justice and equity in the arts.





Image by Leiko Manalang-Frequin



Email
pennethornton(at)gmail.com


Select Projects

>A People’s Guide to (North) Geelong
>Duwa
>Anything & Everything
>WiCLA


Platform Arts Projects

Performance
 >Death Warmed Up
 >Texture of Absence
>Paradise Lots
>Slip
>The Director
 >Bodies of Water
>Maps of the Heart
>Pictures and Ghosts
Artist Development >Neighbourhood LAB
 >infinity ensemble
>金山 婆 Gold Mountain Wife
 

Publications

 > Collective Mothering
> Local Word














Neighbourhood LAB 

Artist Development

Co-presented by Making Change and Platform Arts.

Platform Arts, Djilang/Geelong
Produced By Penne Thornton

Supported by Creative Victoria

Images by Penne Thornton and Leiko Manalang-Frequin
2023/2024Interdisciplinary Cohort

Neighbourhood LAB is a long-form artist development program designed to build capapcity and community for a regionally-based artistic cohort. Six artists in residence across the G21 region collectively explore and interrogate the key challenges and enablers of maintaining a regional arts practice. 

Supported by Next Wave in partnership with the Centre for Reworlding, Rogue Academy and Public Assembly. 


Monster High

Creative Development Performance

Director Jackson Castiglione
Producer Penne Thornton
infinity ensemble members: Poppy Goodman, Zara Nawaz, Harriet McNicol, Eza Bakker-Graham, Saskia Ellis-Gardam and Elm Macpherson

Images by Sarah Walker, Lucinda Godwin & Melinda Chapman
2023infinity ensemble

infinity emsemble return to the rehersal room following the successful seasons of Anything & Everything at Substation and RISING to devise and test ideas for an immersive participatory performance set in a high school.

A test audience was invited to a previwing showing to experience the work in development. 



Ham Hop the Gold Mountain Wife

金山婆
Creative Development

Co-writer, Composer & Musician Jun Bin Lee
Co-writer Chi Vu
Co-Producer & Musician Bingyao Liu 
Co-Producer Penne Thornton
Artist Lauren Cheok

Archival images suppied by Jun Bin Lee
2024Small Ripples Theatre

小涟漪掀起大风浪.


Ham Hop was a ‘gold mountain wife’ who moved from China to Australia in 1910 to begin a new life in Geelong. The project was inspired by the article "Exception or Example? Ham Hop’s Challenge to White Australia," written by social historian Kate Bagnall in 2021. The article is one of a few published pieces that centre’s Ham Hop's perspective as a migrant woman. 
This project went on to a second development season as part of the Creative Engine Program at the Geelong Arts Centre in 2025 with the name Gold Mountain Wives.金山婆






 I acknowledge the life systems of land, river, sea and atmosphere and the Waddawurrung people’s as the First People’s on whose sacred Country I live. This land was never ceded. I give respect to all First Nations people’s, their elders and rising generations