Jai Hartnell

Jane Hartnell is an artist, puppet maker and community development worker. With a BFA (Sculpture) and a Diploma  of Small Companies and Community Theatre, she worked on numerous Melbourne based projects with a number of different groups until moving to Cambodia 4 years ago.

Jane first visited Cambodia in 2004 with the assistance of the Handspan International study and travel grant (auspiced by Polyglot), which allowed her to work with traditional Cambodian shadow puppet masters. She returned in 2005 as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development, working with local puppeteers in the area of cultural heritage management.

She is currently a VIDA working for Epic Arts/Cambodia, an NGO who assist the local disabled community using art as the vehicle. Meanwhile she continues to research traditional Cambodian culture, in particular their unique forms of puppetry. She is currently most excited about the wonderful young novice puppeteers she has chanced upon in the deaf community in rural Kampot, southeastern Cambodia.