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Flick nurtures creativity, wellness and community at Zoe Dojo, a converted school building in Southern Tasmania

A practitioner profile

Prepared by The Resilience Canopy Team
Published 15 October 2026

Intro

When it comes to community projects, converting a neglected building into a much-needed creative space in Southern Tasmania is a tall order. But Flick isn’t someone who does things by halves.

Her work as a performing artist and community arts worker has taken her all over the country and the world. Perhaps it’s this distance that helped shape her deep connection with the Kunanyi mountain and her forest and rivers that Flick has now returned to.  

“As I've gotten older, I've really realised that this place is an anchor for me… and I feel blessed to have a deep relationship with a place in that way.”

Flick's background

After the 1967 bushfires destroyed the previous building, the Zoe Community School was built in the foothills of Kunanyi/Mount Wellington in Ferntree, Tasmania. It was spearheaded by Gregor Lash and inspired by the philosophy of A.S. Neill, founder of the UK’s Summerhill School, which advocated alternative education beliefs, encouraging children to be autonomous and to develop their own way of thinking, being, creating.

Flick was one of its students. She recalls a very creative curriculum, packed with theatre, woodworking, nature play.  

When the school closed in the mid-90s, a group of ex-Zoe students did what they had been taught to do: do what you believe is right.

They intercepted the sale and created an incorporated group to care for the building, with the hope being to open a similar school again.

But over time, battling regulations and resourcing, the building morphed organically, into an arts hall, a dwelling for forest activists and creative families, an anarchist library… a lot of different incarnations. It fell into a state of disrepair.

How Flick took on zoe dojo

On one fateful day in 2023, Flick happened to attend an AGM where they were discussing the future of the building. The equation was simple: sell the site unless someone wants to do something with it.

“I had just come out of doing some deep nature connection training, and because I've worked a lot with children and always done creative practise with kids, I was inspired to try and get some kind of nature school programme happening,” says Flick. “So I took it on, without fully realising how much work there was to do on the building.”

Flick has spent two and a half years fixing the place up. She has worked with different builders on the roof and floors that had fallen out. But she has also learned and done a lot of the repairs herself. To say she has put in the hours would be an understatement.  

“It's been a very personal journey,” she says. “It might sound strange, but I really developed a relationship with the soul of the building, like the building itself feels very alive.”

Flick’s vision for Zoe Dojo is for it to honour the legacy of the school – alternative learning, radical creativity, nature, connection and healing – and at the same time answer the call of what the world is needing: a place to gather, grow, and co-create across generations, where art, nature, and care can weave together and nurture the regeneration of people, place, and culture.  


"It’s about looking for ways to find the medicine we need for our times. I feel like Zoe Dojo offers a path that is a path forward or a way to find ways of being and healing and creating."
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— Flick, Zoe Dojo

How Flick took on zoe dojo

Zoe Dojo is an all-encompassing, eco-centric idea based around four key pillars: learning and education, creative arts, health and wellbeing/healing, and nature.

As for the name, Flick decided to keep Zoe from the original school name, partly because she liked that ‘Zoe’ means life. The etymology of the word ‘dojo’ has a Taoist context referring to a space of learning, a holistic, spiritual place to learn ‘the Way’ as it's known in Tao, about life.  

Since Flick took on the building, Zoe Dojo has grown into a grassroots arts and wellness collective that supports each other, through workshops, events and therapeutic practices all grounded in creativity, connection, and a deep respect for the earth.  

Flick is thrilled to have established some of the programmes she’s dreamt of. Seasonal residencies in the Mountain Studio. 23 different alternative practitioners have come through the space offering everything from Māori cultural medicine to breath work, tea ceremonies to craniosacral haircuts. A beautiful group of older meditators use the space on Monday evenings. A shamanic group do their journeys there.

Flick refers to the process as ‘emergent’ and ‘pretty cosmic’.

“There have been times when it's been in a real flow. I'll just think who I need or what sort of support I need and that person comes in at the right time and then this thing is happening. Like, ‘Oh, we need to find someone who can paint a mural’. And all of a sudden, there's this exact right person that happens to be in Tasmania.”

Flick's engagement with The Resilience Canopy

Connecting with The Resilience Canopy may be the latest in the line of ‘pretty cosmic’ happenings. By journeying through our Six-Step Community Engagement Model, Flick and Zoe Dojo hope to build on this momentum.

According to Flick, Ferntree has a large neurodiverse population, as well as elderly people, families, and a few recluses. Most people really value nature. She believes Zoe Dojo can support and benefit the community.

Flick has also noticed that a lot of the people coming to use the studio or the art play days are not necessarily locals either. Some travel from nearby areas like Kingston, channel, Huon Valley and Hobart.

One way to build momentum is for the Mountain Studio to support alternative practitioners, who are generally not as well resourced, especially when they've just come out of training or don't have a big client base. This keeps their fees lower, which means their services are more accessible to the community, while enabling them to gently grow.

Flick has also been in conversation with some homeschool parents (Tasmania has the highest rate of home schooling in Australia) around creating affordable spaces where kids can come and learn and be creative, and families can come for support.

With the Canopy’s support, Flick plans to establish a committed core group to handle the governance side of things and to enable more ripples, like getting some of the kids’ programmes going, providing studio space to help groups create, adding more artist residencies, and of course, the upkeep: fixing the deck, the roof.  
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“The next chapter is starting to emerge. There are new shoots happening.”  

But to do all this requires volunteers, community support, and funding. Towards the end of 2025, they held a fun Christmas pantomime event that raised over $2000 for the roof. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“It's been a real struggle trying to work out the financial side of it,” says Flick. “Yet it seems to keep going. Whenever I reach a point where I'm like, ‘I don't know how to keep going. What do I do?’ Something comes in, someone comes in, and I'm better off just thinking what I need as opposed to how do I do this?”

Looking ahead...

Another string to the Canopy’s bow is attempting to match partners with community projects. And the hope is that, with the Canopy and the cosmic forces on her side, Flick can keep developing Zoe Dojo’s ecosystem of arts and wellbeing and learning and intergenerational components, where different ages of people support each other and work together.

“I've got this idea of a grandparent's council as well as a youth council. I don't even know if council's the right word. But yeah, there's lots of dreams and imaginings. And then there's these things that just magically seem to come about when you think them. You've got to be careful what you think sometimes!”

So far, the forces have aligned for Flick. Are you the next in line to keep her flow going? If you’re looking for a way to support creativity, wellbeing, nature and community connection in a tangible way, get in touch with her here.