Jan Cattoni

Jan’s professional career spans the disciplines of filmmaker, academic and paediatric intensive care nurse and she has woven these into a kind of hybrid career in ethical filmmaking and co-creation. Jan is a creative practice researcher, and in her doctorate, she explored the importance of telling difficult stories in the documentary context for the storyteller, the viewer, and the filmmaker. The outcomes of this research were a broadcast documentary (After Maeve, SBS RTE Ireland) and a framework for filmmakers working with on-screen vulnerability. Jan has also developed a replicable model of collaborative scripting that enshrines agency in character and narrative creation and this model has been applied in many different settings to create authentic content. Jan is currently a chief investigator on the ARC Discovery project, Future Stories, co-creating virtual worlds with young people with life-limiting conditions in hospital. Jan currently teaches Screen Production at CQUniversity in Cairns, drawing on over 10 hours of broadcast credits primarily as a writer director. At the heart of Jan’s work, is the belief that storytelling can change lives and that we all deserve to see our life experiences reflected back to us in the stories we consume.