Over the past 18 months we have been very fortunate to have Debby work with the Opportunities for Carlton Project in the City of Melbourne. Debby has conducted two effective grants writing workshops for our external stakeholders to assist them in writing successful grant applications. The workshops have been extremely successful in providing valuable knowledge to applicants including general composition, project planning, budgeting, evaluation and acquittals. Debby encouraged all participants to learn and think about the bigger picture of funding opportunities. She also shared her own stories, learnings and philosophy in grant making. Debby has a warm and friendly approach that makes people feel at ease and is highly attuned to participants. We look forward to working with Debby again in the near future.

Debby is an excellent communicator and presented a lively workshop that engaged and informed me very much.  This workshop has increased my confidence to be able to apply for grants. Grant applications are an unknown entity and fearful for me, so this workshop with Debby was very valuable and impactful for me at this important time as an emerging artist. I learned information about how to attack the budget and overall I’ve gained the knowledge, insight and skills to develop, complete and submit a strong and more competitive project proposal and grant application.

Hi Debby, We have some good news! We were successful in obtaining the Celebrating Place grant from the City of Moreland. We all just wanted to say a huge thank you for your assistance in writing the grant. Your advice was amazing, and I’m positive we couldn’t have done it without you! We are already looking to bigger and better things. You were such a great help with our grant, so we we’d love to get your advice to make it as strong an application as possible. Thanks again for all your help. Cheers

The Green Room Awards (GRA) are Melbourne’s premier peer-presented performing arts industry awards and Debby has been our business development manager for the past 2 years. In this role she has successfully secured and managed two major strategic partnerships with government agencies, and facilitated a new corporate sponsorship. Debby is highly skilled at identifying appropriate opportunities and managing relationships. Her work for the GRA has helped to strengthen the organisation and has greatly enhanced its sustainability and capacity.

Debby came to work with Polyglot when we were looking at a bleak future and needed a brave move to change our fortunes. She delivered over and above what we expected with determination, ambition and her incredible knowledge of the funding sector. Debby was with Polyglot for 10 years as grant writer, development consultant and business manager and also as a committed and wise friend.

Some of the artists met each other for the first time at the workshop and have since formed groups to support each other to take their ideas further or mentor each other.    Some important connections and networks have been established as a result and some of the artists have set up new strands to their arts businesses or taken the management and presentation of their business to a more professional level.

Thank you again for yesterday’s workshop. I very much enjoy discussing art practice with fellows. I found accord with many of the ideas discussed and was encouraged to hear them coming from other people. Debby is very strong in enthusing an audience with a will to go further.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day, and thought Debby was fantastic, has great ideas and I know everything we discussed will be helpful to my arts practice.

Debby has a warm and friendly approach that makes people feel at ease and is highly attuned to participants. She is a very engaging presenter. She wants to see more people out there doing it – achieving their goals.

Debby facilitated a community ideas workshop with residents of Strathmore. We decided to run a heart, head and hands activity asking residents to share their passions, knowledge and skills with their community. Debby was able to bring residents together with shared interests and energy to form new activities, groups and projects in a light hearted fun way. Best phrase of the night from one of the residents was ‘I’m your new friend’. Her warm friendly, let’s get this done attitude resonates with community and Council officers alike. We will definitely use her for future community engagement workshops.