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Keynote Speaker, MC and Facilitator
Location
International
Date
2017 - present
Keynote: Giant Thinking
How large, unlikely ideas get delivered. Drawn from thirty years of making festivals, theatre and public events: commissioning Philip Glass's final Piano Etudes, bringing Macklemore and Ennio Morricone to Australia for the first time, and closing a city centre for three days so that 1.4 million people could walk with giants.
Keynote: Leading the Next Generation
How to attract, motivate and keep the people who could work anywhere. The Giants project required bringing together Indigenous communities, government ministers, corporate sponsors, the armed forces, every branch of the emergency services, French artists who barely spoke English, and a city that was deeply sceptical. I have spent my career learning how to bring people together across divides, including the divide between generations. Your organisation probably has a few.
Keynote: Arts, Creativity, and Attention
As we grow cynical of generic content, the thing that still cuts through is messy human creativity: moments that catch you off kilter, that make you react or feel before you have time to think. I have made work for more than seven million people, and have learned a fair amount about what makes them put down their phones.
As MC and Facilitator
I MC conferences, and I love the work. I have hosted events on six continents, from a breakfast for 200 oncologists to rooms full of High Court judges, tech founders and banking leaders. I keep the energy up from nine in the morning to nine at night, and I make links between speakers rather than reading their introductions off a card. I also design and chair roundtables and panels, so a keynote and the discussion after it feel like one conversation.
What People Say
"Vision and leadership are best judged by impact and legacy. He reads the room, or the city, perfectly. Then he reimagines it. Then he inspires everyone to join the journey."
Laura McGillivray, CEO, Norwich City Council
"He really challenged the audience, but not as some kind of rah rah motivational speaker, rather as someone who is out there doing it."
Andrew Horabin, Keynote Speaker, Professional Speakers Australia
"Jonathan is the best MC and one of the best keynote speakers I have seen in the twenty-four years I have been doing this."
Ian Stephens, Speaker, Trainer, Author
The Giants
In February 2015, 1.4 million people came out over three days to walk with giants through the streets of Perth, Australia.
Two marionettes, one 11 metres tall and one 6, each weighing several tonnes, operated by a team of several hundred people. Some people wept. Many followed the giants for miles. The city centre came to a standstill.
The moment I remember best came afterwards, when a woman stopped me in the street and said: "I have lived here forty years and I have never spoken to my neighbours. This week we all stood outside together and watched the giants walk past. Now I know their names."
Behind the Giants were several hundred people, most of them under thirty, most on short contracts, who delivered it because they believed in it. For fifteen years I led organisations of twenty-five that became two hundred every season and then disbanded: young, mobile, overqualified, free to go anywhere. Most came back. My job, as chief executive, artistic director or producer, is to make things like this happen with people like that. As a speaker, I help other leaders do the same.
Recent Engagements
- MC, HP channel partner summit, Sant Cugat and FESPA Barcelona (May 2026)
- Opening speaker, International Festival of Arts and Ideas, Yale University
- Keynote, UNESCO Yangtze Culture Forum (Nanjing)
- TEDx, Ten Traits of a Successful 21st Century Arts Festival (Perth)
- Closing keynote, NAB Bank (Melbourne)
- Keynote, Festivals Academy (Uganda)
- MC, Culture Business Fundraising Conference (Sydney)
- MC, The Road to Mondiacult, UNESCO (Latin America and Caribbean)
- MC, HP International training conference (Barcelona, live global broadcast)
