As a respected artistic director with significant experience creating collaborative community and mainstage productions in South Australia, the United States and Southeast Asia, Pat Rix has worked for over thirty years with people from diverse backgrounds and organisations to build inclusive, respectful relationships across social, geographical, and cultural divides.

In 1997 Pat founded Tutti Ensemble to give people the opportunity to live out their dreams through music, theatre, and performing to audiences. By 2002 Tutti had become an internationally acclaimed model of integrated arts with a truly unique voice in Australian music theatre. In 2004 with Pat as Artistic Director, the ensemble grew into Tutti Arts where for the first time, learning disabled and neurodiverse artists attended professional full day programs in the visual and performing arts. By 2008 Tutti offered a full week program which included creative technology and screen, and today as a leading Australian multi arts organisation, Tutti is also home to three very successful disability led collectives – The Sisters of Invention, Company AT autistic theatre, and Sit Down Shutup and Watch Film Festival.

Pat’s passion and commitment has supported disabled and neurodiverse artists to make work that enables connection with peers across the world. She believes that connections made through making art nurture positivity which is central to human happiness to our understanding of others; and key to making communities and nations work.

Recent Awards

• In 2017 Pat was awarded the Adelaide Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Arts.
• At the December 2021 Arts South Australia Ruby Awards Pat received the Premier’s Award for Lifetime Achievement which recognises ‘an extraordinary South Australian who, through a lifetime of outstanding service, has made an indelible contribution to Australian arts and culture.’
• In August 2022 she received the Australia Council Ros Bower Award which acknowledges the achievements of an Australian artist who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to community arts and cultural development.
• In October 2022 Pat was the recipient of the 2022 Adelaide International Film Festival Bettison James Award which recognises Australians’ who have contributed a lifelong body of work of high achievement and community benefit.’
• Pat has previously undertaken the role of ADCSA Ambassador at the following councils: Holdfast Bay, PAE, Barossa (Tanunda and Nuriootpa) and Adelaide Hills (Mt Barker) as well as the areas around Clare, Jamestown and Melrose.