Yarra Libraries is partnering with Here Studio to host the next Melbourne Pecha Kucha event.

Launched in Tokyo in 2003, Pecha Kucha Night has become a massive celebration with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world. Each Pecha Kucha Night is run by a city organiser. In Melbourne, the organisers are Here Studio, an interdisciplinary design practice run by Ammon Beyerle. At the core of Here Studio’s practice is a social principle of participation and the studio use art, architecture, design, and events to activate change in the urban realm. 

Pecha Kucha is based on a simple presentation format. Each speaker must present using 20 slides with 20 seconds allocated per slide and a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds to communicate a point and contribute to the heated debate that we have curated.The reason for the format: Architects and creative people talk too much. Pecha Kucha is about getting to the point! The traditional Pecha Kucha Night is an informal and fun gathering where creative people get together and share their ideas, latest projects and thoughts using the 20x20 format. However, in the proposed event we have made some adjustments and it has a more pronounced communal approach. Ten leading spokespeople and emerging speakers from Yarra have been invited to come in and speak to a theme that we have set with the intention of instigating discussion, argument and activate interaction.

The title of the theme is – A protest Against Forgetting 

The session is about us, the local, and is a refusal to forget the past as it is a resilient and important part of our shared present. Held in the bright upstairs communal room that opens out to a beautiful rooftop garden at the new Nth Fitz branch, delicious food will be provided through Alphington garden Women’s Group, drinks, and fun will be on tap.

Presenters

David Nichols

David Nichols is a lecturer in urban planning at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is Cultural Sustainability in Rural Communities: Rethinking Australian Country Towns (co-edited with Catherine Driscoll and Kate Darian Smith). Last year he published Dig! Australian rock and pop 1960-85 and in 2013 Trendyville (co-authored with Renate Howe and Graeme Davison). He co-presents the fortnightly podcast This Must Be the Place and is a frequent guest on 3RRR’s program The Grapevine and Overnights on 774.

Liz Conor

Liz Conor is an ARC Future Fellow at La Trobe University. She is the author of Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women, [UWAP, 2016] and The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s [Indiana University Press, 2004]. She is co-editor of Aboriginal History, a columnist at New Matilda, and has published widely in academic and mainstream press on gender, race and representation. She is also a community campaigner, founding and convening the Coalition Against Sexual Violence Propaganda (1990) on media portrayal of sexual violence, the Stick with Wik (1997) campaign on native title, the Mother’s of Intervention (2000) campaign on maternity leave, and the guerilla theatre troupe The John Howard Ladies’ Auxiliary Fanclub (with Zelda Da, 1996) and most recently the Climate Guardians (with Deborah Hart).

Nic Low

Nic Low writes satire and apocalypse, politics and wilderness. His first book Arms Race was an Australian Book Review and Listener book of the year, and shortlisted for the Readings Prize and Queensland Literary Awards. He's currently writing his second book, an indigenous history of New Zealand's mountains, told through walking journeys.

Jason

Jason is a proud Yorta Yorta man. Associate Producer Malthouse Theatre, Producer of Blak Cabaret, and Associate Producer of The Shadow King. Co-Producer and Programmer of Smith Street Dreaming. Associate Producer of Leaps and Bounds Festival. Events and Festival Officer City of Yarra, Founder Melbourne Comedy Festival’s Deadly Funny program. Producer Reconciliation Comedy Gala. Producer Is Racism the New Black. Producer BlakWiz. Producer Hip Hop Hooray – Deadly Style.  Jason was the recipient of the VIPA 2012 Uncle Jack Charles Award and the British Council’s National Indigenous Leadership Award.

Mare Maticevski

Mare Maticevski is a Community Programs Librarian at Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library and a Convenor of the Public Libraries Victoria Network Multicultural Services and Programs Special Interest Group. She brings a background of teaching and community arts to her role and a passionate advocacy for diversity. Like many she loves to be creatively engaged. She identifies as a migrant with shifting identities.

Gracie and Katrina Lolicato

Gracie and Katrina Lolicato love a good chat. 

After studying documentary photography at Photographic Imaging College in Hawthorn, Gracie moved to Wangaratta to take on a position as photographer with North Eastern Newspapers, where she had the privilege of photographing everything from community fundraisers to the commonwealth games relay, horrific bushfires, abhorrent crimes and the Wangaratta Jazz Festival. It is here that she developed a strong interest in looking at and recording the everyday life experiences of Australians across class, gender, ethnicity and age. She applied the skills learned on the job to her work as a portrait photographer before moving back to Melbourne and returning to study Visual Arts at NMIT and then Sociology at La Trobe University. 

Katrina, on the other hand, worked as a myotherapist and small business owner for nearly a decade before returning to university in 2007 to formally feed her interest in history and archaeology. She now holds a Bachelor degree (Honours) in Archaeology (Latrobe), a Master of Cultural Heritage (Deakin) and is currently undertaking a PhD at Deakin University, where she is investigating the potential for community museums to enact social benefit. 

But one day, in 2012, while walking through the old Tyabb packing house, their passion for old things, and chatting converged. The Foundling Archive began as a collection of photography, film, and small personal objects that had been discarded or relinquished by their original owners. Today, this small organisation it is a growing bank of experience - of the lives and perspectives of ordinary Australians.

Arnold Zable

Arnold Zable is a writer, novelist and human rights advocate, and one of Australia’s most-loved storytellers. His award-winning books include Jewels and Ashes, The Fig Tree, and three novels, Café Scheherazade, Scraps of Heaven, and Sea of Many Returns. His most recent book is Violin Lessons. He is the author of numerous columns, stories and essays, and co-author of the play Kan Yama Kan in which asylum seekers tell their stories.

 Bookings essential. You do not need to bring a ticket to this event.