Sydney events this week | Online profiles and platforms | Solidarity and advocacy as humanity and care
Plus... my latest governance article is now available online
I hope you are all navigating this impossible time as gently as you can. This enews includes some upcoming events in Warrane/Sydney, some thoughts on the possibilities and responsibilities of building an online profile, my latest governance article out from behind its paywall, and more…
Warrane/Sydney launch of Public. Open. Space.
It feels surreal and uncomfortable to speak of things like book launches when the state of the world is breaking so many hearts.
But I’d love to see any Sydney pals at this weekend’s launch of Public. Open. Space., which will take place at Better Read Than Dead in Newtown on Sunday 19 November 2023 from 3pm. Join me for a conversation with David Ryding, Director of the UNESCO Melbourne City of Literature Office, and a guest reading from Gamilaroi poet Luke Patterson.
You can book a place on the Better Read Than Dead website. Tickets cost $5 (or $35 including a copy of my little green book). The event space is wheelchair accessible via a stair lift, or you can contact events@betterread.com.au with any additional access requirements or questions.
Online workshop on building your author brand
I will be running an online workshop on building your author brand for Writing NSW next Monday evening from 6.30-9pm AEST.
Find out what options are available to you, how to use different platforms to your best advantage, and how to balance your writing time alongside the time you need to spend building your brand as a writer.
It’s nearly sold out, but you can still book a place on the Writing NSW website.
On profiles and platforms
Preparing for my Writing NSW workshop made me realise how much my approach to my own brand and online profile has changed over the last several years.
That feeling has been exacerbated over this last awful month, in which the social media spaces I have held in such esteem have become sites for both community making and lonely making, action and distraction, truth-telling and shadow-banning, finding and losing of trust.
It’s been a timely reminder that our online profiles are political - regardless of whether we using them to share political content or politicise our silence. Social media platforms - like all forms of communication - are political. Having the option to engage in an issue or not is political. Having a platform - however big or small - is also a privilege, and a responsibility. Check out my latest ‘and another thing’ vlog for more.
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Beyond the governance gaps
Did you know that most of the practices we’ve associated with boards over the decades are actually entirely optional?
The governance traditions and training that have evolved around existing not-for-profit legislation have reinforced our understanding of unquestioned ‘best practice’ governance. However, these familiar, ‘business as usual’ recommendations are based on colonial, military and patriarchal structures that are often antithetical to contemporary not-for-profit or community-engaged work, and are not keeping pace with the ways in which the sector continues to evolve.
However, until we can imagine and implement something new, we’ve got to make the best of what we’ve got. We need to know what those rules are to bend them, so some of this starts with unlearning. While we think we know why things have always been done, there’s more room for innovation than we’ve been told.
Huge thanks to Meanjin for publishing this provocation. You can now read the rest on my website.
Solidarity and advocacy as humanity and care
Those of us lucky enough to be safe in the world right now are bearing witness and using our bodies, energies and words to advocate for those who are not, navigating our own grief, guilt, fury, fatigue and whiplash from the constant change of emotional focus between micro everydayness and macro global heartbreaks, while clumsily trying to articulate what we feel and what we need at a time when none of us are our best selves.
Because there’s so much that needs advocating for, so many calls for liberation - all of which are interconnected: Palestine, The Congo, Sudan, West Papua, Voice/Treaty/Truth, religious hatred, war crimes, human rights, women’s rights, trans rights, queer rights, disability rights, femicide, racism, misogyny, book bans, the fact that the world is on literal and metaphorical fire.
My thoughts and care are first foremost with those on the front lines of these crises and their communities. If there is anything more practical I can do for you, I’m here. My thoughts are with my fellow allies too. It’s right that our voices and grief aren’t centered right now, but it’s grief all the same.
How we channel that grief into advocacy can take many forms. You may be donating, marching, writing emails or calling your reps, you may be educating yourself, sharing information or having hard conversations with your friends, family and children, or calling in strangers IRL on online, you may be amplifying Palestinian and Jewish voices, calling out media bias, changing who you follow, listen to or support, boycotting or blockading, walking out or shutting down, advocating through art making, or bearing witness in ways that are safe and accessible to you.
Go as gently as you can. Take a breath, a beat, a break to take care of yourself. But if ‘ally’ is a verb, we cannot stay away. Because silence supports the status quo, doing nothing is a failure of our duty of care, and we are all complicit in the things we don’t help change. Even small actions can make a big difference.
