Welcome Lil, haere rā Annie
We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Lil della Porta into the role of Marketing & Communications Lead at Nelson Arts Festival. Some of you may know Lil from her work at Arts Council Nelson already, and we are thrilled to have them join our team.
Lil describes herself as a ‘comms all-rounder, having a knack for social media content creation and a passion for effective brand development.’ Lil has designed imagery and video content, built websites, and led successful re-brands with large organisations.
Lil is a marketing and communications specialist with over a decade of experience in media production, digital marketing, strategic communications and events production. Experienced in building authentic audience engagement through storytelling and branding; they have a creative and collaborative style for marketing and communications success.
Lil’s life and career spans across England, Scotland and Aotearoa, and a broad base of experiences from being a producer for the BBC, a news producer for RNZ (yes, they have worked with Suzie Ferguson), a Senior Communications Advisor for DIA and the Marketing & Communications Manager for New Zealand Young Writers Festival.
These varied and rich experiences are matched with an artistic, energetic and animated Lil when you meet them. A warm and engaging personality, they love the festival world and can’t wait to get stuck into this year’s mahi.
As we are welcoming Lil into the team, we are also saying haere rā to Annie Pokel, who is leaving her role as our Head of Marketing, Community & Partnerships at the end of this month. Having started with the Festival in 2019 as Mask Carnivale assistant, Annie has since held a variety of responsibilities whilst working with the Trust and Festival, and most significantly, built wide ranging and deep relationships with our many communities in the region – be that sponsors, partners, community groups and artists. Annie has established successful festival initiatives such as Night Vision and Tune Up and led the festival’s growing visual arts programme; built our collaboration with the Pasifika Arts & Culture Collective; grown our whānau of festival partners and seen our relationships with key community partners go from strength to strength. Annie certainly won’t be a stranger to the festival and we are pleased for her as she is moving on to an exciting new opportunity with Objectspace, the leading gallery for design, craft and architecture in Aotearoa.
We look forward for you to meet Lil in the coming weeks as we finalise our programme and will reach out to you about our partnership agreements for this year. Don’t forget to mark Friday 22 August in your diaries – our 2025 Nelson Arts Festival programme will launch on that day.