From Q+A to the Wheeler Centre: Erin Vincent’s high-wire act

As a former journalist, it’s a strange feeling for Erin Vincent to have the tables turned on her and be the subject of an interview.

It’s something she may have to get used to as the new chief executive of the Wheeler Centre.

Vincent took over the job just over two months ago in what is somewhat a change of pace for the former executive producer of the ABC programs, Q+A, Insiders and Breakfast.

Wheeler Centre chief executive Erin Vincent has lunch at Carlton Wine Room. Credit: Simon Schluter

After years of wrangling guests and hosts on live television, Vincent is unfazed by the roster of events she is in charge of at the Wheeler Centre.

“People think of Q+A as a TV show, but it’s also a live event with an audience every week,” she says as we sit down to lunch at a Melbourne institution, the Carlton Wine Room.

One of her favourite live television moments was when ABC News Breakfast floor manager Jo Sumic miscalculated timing, realised at the last second he was going to be in a shot and dived behind Michael Rowlands and Virginia Trioli on the breakfast couch.

“It all just happened so quickly and so suddenly that Virginia just lost it and Michael, too,” she says. “They both just lost it laughing, but I remember Virginia really just could not compose herself.”

Vincent was in the control room and radioed down to the pair to tell them they had to let the audience in on the joke.

“I’ve learned the audience actually really loves it when things don’t go to plan,” she says. “Executive producers don’t always love it, but the audience gets a kick out of it.”

Vincent is expecting more of these types of moments at the Wheeler Centre and says the “high wire act” of producing Q+A was good preparation for her new job.

She’s keen to talk about her plans over lunch at Carlton Wine Room, which is one of Vincent’s favourite restaurants.

Vincent is enough of a regular that she can confidently pick off a list of must-order items from the menu.

Dishes are to share and to start, there are some of the biggest scallops I’ve ever eaten, fat and white and wobbling on their shells, topped with aioli and spring onion.

Scallop tostadas at the Carlton Wine Room. Credit: Simon Schluter

As we scoop them into our mouths, Vincent says there are “a lot of synergies” between her former role as an executive producer and the top job at the Wheeler Centre.

“It’s in the space of connecting audiences through ideas and stories and conversations, so I saw a lot of common ground,” she says.

However, she has no plans to add more political programming to the Wheeler Centre’s line-up.

“As someone who’s come from a news environment, which isn’t always something that people feel like waking up to every day, depending on what the news of the day is,” Vincent says. “I am kind of looking forward to tapping into that more uplifting side of live events and that sense of escape that you can have when you go and listen to a public talk on something you’re really passionate about.”

Vincent does want to see the Wheeler Centre find a bigger audience under her tenure whether that is through touring the program beyond the centre itself next to the State Library or putting more events online.

Erin Vincent is enough of a regular at the Carlton Wine Room to have a list of must order dishes. Credit: Simon Schluter

The typical Wheeler Centre audience is “a radius of inner-city Melbourne, train-connected Melbourne”, Vincent says, and she wants to expand that.

Vincent tells me about her career trajectory over a serve of one of Carlton Wine Room’s signature dishes: a thin, crisp piece of fried bread topped with creamy ricotta, pickled cucumber and an anchovy.

It’s a winning combination of sweet, salty and sharp.

Anchovy and fried bread is a signature dish at the Carlton Wine Room. Credit: Simon Schluter

She studied journalism at LaTrobe University and was one of the “first crop” of journalism students there before beginning her career in the library at Channel Nine, the owner of this masthead, before moving to Mildura and Ballarat with WIN and then eventually onto the ABC.

Vincent switched from reporting to a chief-of-staff role and then executive producer mainly because she “needed the change”.

“I would sort of look at people who had done reporting their whole career and I had great respect and admiration for that, but I think I instinctively knew that wasn’t going to be me,” she says. “I kind of gravitated towards the bigger picture, towards the shaping of programs and coverage.”

We’re interrupted by the arrival of a pair of duck and pork croquettes, which are shaped in oblong bricks rather than the standard ball shape and topped with dark brown dollops of tangy Gentleman’s relish.

“I know croquettes sound a bit boring but these are so good,” Vincent says. She’s right.

I’m keen to talk to Vincent more about her time as executive producer of Q+A, and Vincent says she’s used to this – “people love talking about Q+A”.

It’s the ABC program that audiences love to hate, but it’s fallen from prominence over recent years with the show last month recording a metro audience of 205,000, a sharp decline from 468,000 in a COVID-19 lockdown-boosted 2020 and 408,000 the year prior.

During her time as executive producer, Vincent had to deal with a shift in timing from the show’s traditional Monday night slot to a Thursday night and a changing roster of hosts from Hamish Macdonald to Stan Grant, Virginia Trioli, David Speers and more recently Patricia Karvelas.

“The period I was there went from a period of things being the same for quite some time to really a period of pretty constant change,” Vincent says. “I loved working with them all. I really have the greatest respect for and loved working with Stan [Grant] ... and now the show’s with PK [Karvelas], it’s in excellent hands.”

Duck and pork croquettes at the Carlton Wine Room. Credit: Simon Schluter

Vincent was the executive producer in May when Grant quit the show, citing exhaustion from the torrent of racist abuse to which he has been subjected on social media.

“I’m not going to go into that,” Vincent says when asked about the experience. “With respect to Stan, I think he just deserves privacy. He said everything he needed to say. But obviously, it was difficult to watch him go through that and to see it end that way, of course.”

Another challenge was the COVID-19 pandemic which hit in Vincent’s first six weeks in the job when she went from producing the show in a studio with an audience of 250 people to just 10 people in the studio and questions sent over video link.

“As much as it was not an ideal way to do the show, it did open us up to having the conversations about how every different state was living,” she says.

A hangover from that time is that Vincent says she can still picture exactly what every epidemiologist had on their bookcase.

At the Wheeler Centre, Vincent is still dealing with the impact of the pandemic.

“It’s been through a really difficult few years with COVID like all arts organisations, so I think this is a really critical moment now for us to put our heads together and map out what we want the next few years to look like,” she says.

Vincent says audiences at the Wheeler Centre are “approaching” pre-COVID-19 levels.

“They’re not quite there yet, but they’re sort of slowly but surely getting back there,” she says.

The Wheeler Centre sold 17,629 tickets last year, down from the 29,220 tickets it sold in 2019.

This year, the Wheeler Centre has sold 13,142 tickets to date, but the figures are not strictly comparable with the centre changing its model from mainly free tickets to “pay what you wish” or paid tickets.

″⁣We’ve come out of COVID and into a cost-of-living crisis and I think we’ve got to be very, very aware of that,” Vincent says. “I think the cost of living is going to be a big financial barrier for people and how they choose to spend their time and money and I think that’s something we’ve got to be really aware of as we program the year ahead.”

Stracciatella and potato focaccia at the Carlton Wine Room. Credit: Simon Schluter

Vincent says post-pandemic audiences are more discerning with their time and how they spend their money.

“They’re also craving uplifting, still thought-provoking, but uplifting events,” she says. “I think that that’s kind of what the Wheeler Centre does really well. Actually, I kind of think that is the sweet spot.″⁣

We share another dish of the Carlton Wine Room’s house-baked potato focaccia, which we tear apart and tip into a bowl of creamy stracciatella cheese.

Vincent is a guarded interview subject, perhaps wary after her years as a journalist.

She declines a glass of wine in favour of a non-alcoholic gin and tonic and answers questions carefully to avoid saying anything that could court controversy.

When asked about the issues posed by R.F. Kuang’s novel, Yellowface, Vincent cuts herself off mid-sentence.

“I think Wheeler has a pretty good history of having diverse voices and bringing out diverse voices. They, by their very nature, help bring in different audiences,” she says. “I also think … well, I’ll stop there.”

Writers’ festivals and centres around the world are grappling with issues over who is a storyteller. Audience members famously walked out of American novelist Lionel Shriver’s keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival, and Vincent’s response on this issue is also carefully measured.

“I think, in terms of who gets to tell stories, I think that will always and always should be a case-by-case conversation,” Vincent says “I don’t subscribe to one blanket rule on it.”

Even a question as to who she’d like to see next at the Wheeler Centre is something she has to carefully consider — Vincent doesn’t want to give competitors any ideas.

“I’ll have every other live-events organisation trying to move in on the names,” she says.

Finally, as we get ready to leave, she has an answer — footballer Sam Kerr.

“Sam Kerr, if you’re at home, eating breakfast, there’s an open invitation to have an event at the Wheeler Centre,” she says.