I have over the last few months been tentatively working on my new website. This combined with the all consuming nature of working on the National Young Writers' Festival in the last few months has resulted in me neglecting this blog, we have grown apart.
I miss using blogger for many reasons, but it just doesn't offer me multiple pages on top of the blog functionality, which is what i'm after.
Wordpress hints at greatness well beyond blogger, but it is often clumsy and confusing. I need to take some time with those online tutorials i think.
So I'm going to endeavor to post to both this blog and my new one for a while, ideally I'll find a way to syndicate the content across both rather than doing it manually, but no luck so far.
I wish I could transfer those of you who "follow" me over easily, it would make it feel homely, the closest thing Wordpress offers is a function that shows you when other people have linked to you, which is pretty neat, but not as sociable.
I now have my first ongoing work in Melbourne, which is extremely exciting to me. The job is as one of the Events Assistants at Glen Eira City Council.
This weekend there will be the following workshops and "In Conversation" talks: Researching for the Writer with Meg Mundell; Writing For Children with Nicolas Brasch; In Conversation with Howard Goldenberg; and In Conversation with Shane Maloney(my fiance David is excited about this one).
The photo above is part of the Carnegie Library building. Spending all of last Sunday there made me curious about whether the suburb's name was related to the philanthropic Carnegie Foundation, here is the answer discovered on the wikipedia article about Carnegie, Victoria.
"Originally called Rosstown, after William Murray Ross, a developer. The name was changed in 1909 to try and distance the suburb from the connotations of failure brought about by Ross' sugar beet mill project which never began production, and the Rosstown Railway. The name Carnegie was chosen in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to secure funds for a library from the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie"
Carnegie just had no luck in the early days apparently. They got their own back almost 100 years later but building an impressive Library and community centre.
In December last year I accepted the position of Co-Director for the National Young Writers’ Festival, taking over from Nic Low and joining Queenslanders Amy Ingram and Daniel Evans.
It has been 6 years since I worked on a festival in any capacity greater than being a project assistant, so signing up to run a festival again has me wondering why I keep making events; something in me is compelled that’s for sure.
Every few years when I have the emotional and creative strength I just need to take on a new scale, but why the National Young Writers’ Festival? I get confused and embarrassed when people start discussing the nitty gritty of Australian novelists, playwrights, or poets, I only know about Australian comics. However I believe I know Australian comics very well and zines also to a slightly lesser extent, and it is because of this that I love the National Young Writers’ Festival, it is the premiere festival for Australian Comics.
I also have affection for Newcastle, despite the sub-tropical plants and balmy pacific ocean it feels like a Tasmanian town: physically beautiful with its beaches, dramatic headlands and hills, clock towers, churches, and old jail; yet it is awkward, self conscious, and angry.
I’m looking forward to getting to know Newcastle, and I’m looking forward to crafting a kickass program with Amy and Dan with additional guidance from The Lifted Brow founder and editor, Ronnie Scott.
Already from our first meeting as the new team good ideas are on the boil, ideas that will respond to what is happening culturally, socially, and economically in Australia, ideas that won’t be shy to question and debate, and ideas that will ask what the festival needs as it hits it’s tween years.
To all my friends and colleagues, have a good new year.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself. "
October has been a big month of travel for me (with large periods of no Internet access). The first six days I spent in Alice Springs at the biennial Regional Arts Australia conference, then I was on Flinders Island for a week and then King Island for two weeks.
I'd never been to Alice Springs before, and it surprised me in many ways. Firstly the landscape isn't nearly as flat as I anticipated, with dramatic red rocky hills framing the town, and secondly this was the first time I had been exposed to a strong and everyday indigenous cultural presence in a community, limited as this experience was by the context of a conference.
Alice Springs left me filled with confusion, sadness, and hope about who we are as Australians.
On the art side of things I met some amazing people, it was particularly good to meet other youth arts workers at the impromptu lunchtime YPAA (Young People and the Arts Australia) meeting.
Primarily by the end of the 4 days of the conference I simply felt stronger in who I am and what I do because I had spent this time surrounded by 950 people who care about the same things I do.
I made this brooch as a Secret Santa gift for a colleague at Tasmanian Regional Arts. It is the best thing I've made in years.
Materials: blue anodized safety pin, white plastic flower shaped button bound to pin with blue anodized wire; two silver wires suspended from pin ending with pink star-shaped shell beads and a silver plated heart bead with burred star motif.
"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet."
Franz Kafka, quoted from the album sleeve of B(if)tek's 2020 CD.
One of the inspirations I had last weekend was discovering the latest series of Scary Girl toys. I had always like the style of these toys by Nathan, but this series, City Folk, really struck home with my imagination, so I braved the world of blind box toys (it's like a lucky dip) and ended up taking a doctor character home from Pocketspace. This little doctor wasn't one of the toys I really wanted, but on reflection he seemed appropriate. I feel like I need a doctor with a trailer full of fire at the moment and of course the Shadow Tall story is still preoccupied with the hospital scenes.
Well, enough with the talking about it, I'm off to do some drawing now :)
