Black Harmony Gathering 2010, Sun 21st March, Fairfield Amphitheatre #Melbourne #mysuburb

Multicultural Arts Victoria Presents…
Black Harmony Gathering 2010
1pm – 5pm Sunday 21 March
The Fairfield Amphitheatre
Heidelberg Rd, Fairfield (Melway 30 J12), Melbourne

Held in the heart of Aboriginal land under the gum trees, on the banks of the tranquil Yarra River, at the Fairfield Amphitheatre Multicultural Arts Victoria presents the Black Harmony Gathering; a unique event with the message say no to racism! With Indigenous and multicultural communities coming together in a spirit of reconciliation for Cultural Diversity week. This year the Black Harmony Gathering will launch the first Black Harmonies CD.

Black Harmony Gathering is a showcase for premium professional and talented emerging Indigenous, African and refugee
artists It is strongly supported by Indigenous and non-indigenous artists and communities alike. The Black Harmonies CD will cross the cultural boundaries to create a cultural revolution in the Australian music scene and features artists Kutcha Edwards, Peter Rotumah, Casey Atkinson, Tjimba Possum-Burns, Selwyn Burns, Ajak Kwai, Aminata Doumbia, Michelle Belesy, Joe Geia and Diafrix.

The Black Harmony Gathering will also feature a Cultural Stage led by Indigenous artists Koori Youth Will Shake Spears, Skye Taikato and Friends, Meriki Hood, Johnny Mac and more. With friends from our multicultural music and dance scene, the African Royal Drummers, Narasirato Pan Pipers from the Solomon Islands, Shiamak Bollywood dance group and the soul pumping vibes of African band Blak Roots. MC’s Shiralee Hood and Neda.

The day will be opened with youth forum Skillz at 12pm, a traditional Welcome to Country by Aunty Joy Murphy and a smoking ceremony by Robbie Thorpe, followed by the Black Harmonies CD launch and Cultural Stage. There is a Koori BBQ of Kangaroo and Emu sausages, cultural food stalls, children’s activities, workshops and a market place of Indigenous and African wares plus more performers. People from all cultures come together for the Black Harmony Gathering a positive community celebration that is very special and important for the community well being.

Black Harmony Gathering is proudly supported by City of Yarra, Victoria Rocks, Koori Justice Unit, APRA, Victorian Multicultural
Commission, Besen Family and Triple R.

www.multiculturalarts.com.au

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HatchMatchDispatch a new Australian site for births, deaths and marriage announcements

HatchMatchDispatch is a new Australian-developed website that will bring people together from all over the world to save and share their special moments in life. 

Founder, Geoff Drucker says, “HatchMatchDispatch is a site for births, deaths, engagements, marriages and more.  It is designed to allow people to share their life moments from new things happening (‘Hatch’), to them coming together with others (‘Match’) or chapters ending (‘Dispatch’).

“Other classified ad categories like cars, jobs and real estate have been huge successes online, but the difference with HatchMatchDispatch is that announcements are free. Touted as ’social networking’ around special moments.

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Electrosmog Festival – International Festival for Sustainable Mobility

Electrosmog Festival – International Festival for Sustainable Mobility
Various Locations :: March 18 – 20, 2010

Revolving around the concept of Sustainable Immobility, the festival will introduce and explore this concept in theory and practice. The festival aims to realise the fundamental promise of the information age that communication technologies can replace the need for physical mobility, and thus both contribute to ecological stability as well as a more rewarding both deep-local and translocal life-style. The festival asks audiences and presenters to travel no further than local/regional boundaries to attend.

http://www.electrosmogfestival.net/

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Free seminars on social media marketing by Keren Flavell #geekgirl endorsed!

Creator of wholesome media, Keren Flavell is offering free seminars on using social networking for promoting your social cause.

Hosted at CERES Environment Park (Melbourne) from 7PM – 8PM on Thursday evening (Feb 25th & March 4th) – contact Keren to reserve your place!

First session, will focus on how to set-up and use a Facebook Fan Page. The following week she’ll be talking about Twitter and other social networking sites.

Keren is committed to assisting people who are seeking to create positive change in our world. Be part of the magic.!!

http://wholesomemedia.wordpress.com/

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Get your kit off with Spencer Tunick – Opera House – March 1st, 2010. #naked #fb

Internationally renowned artist Spencer Tunick has revealed that he will create an
installation using thousands of nude Australians on the steps of the iconic Sydney Opera
House on the morning of Monday 1 March.

The artist is calling on all Australians interested in taking part to register immediately
at The Base to reserve a place.

Tunick’s installation, called ‘The Base’, will be one of the highlights of this year’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival. Participation in the art installation however is
open to all Australians, regardless of sexuality. All nude volunteers will be rewarded with
an official Spencer Tunick photograph of ‘The Base.

The US-based artist is the man responsible for gathering people by the thousand and getting them to strip, en masse, in the name of art. Using a sea of naked bodies as his medium, he moulds his groups of willing volunteers into abstract shapes, in various forms and locations, before capturing it on film. He’s attracted huge crowds the world round,
including 7,000 in Barcelona, and 18,000 in Mexico City.

Less is more - Spencer Tunick

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Blog: throw another tofu-burger on the barbie will ya mate. #Geekgirl on behalf of #tcktcktck

Tcktcktck invited me to write a blog on climate change. I knew immediately what I wanted to pen about – animals!

Have you ever tried to get your head around what it actually takes to feed the planet!? It’s something I find difficult to come to terms with.

Even my little shopping village of Northcote, Melbourne, Australia opened a new butcher the other day. Another one! You’d think 4 existing butchers plus all the restaurants in the area would provide enough meat.

I’ve become more educated lately on the nature of food production, and films like Food Inc are a good start to understand the process from pasture to plate.  Although, I still don’t quite understand who is feeding, farming & processing the 60 billion animals we kill each year.

It’s horrific that most of this is inhumane and, to be quite frank, not producing animals that even taste good. I’m not a vegetarian (yet) but I have massively reduced my consumption of meat and although I try and stick to the MOOS principle (Meat Only on Sunday). I have a lot of reverence for what I eat, and I am conscious of what it takes to get my food on the table.

I know most people eat meat for the flavour and texture. And my smart vegie friends know a lot of tricks developed by Asian food producers who provide some meat-tasting alternatives. Unfortunately, most of this is soaked or prepared in soy sauce and as a Coeliac I can’t go there. But, there must be a huge potential in coming up with an alternative to meat, which tastes like meat, but ain’t. As much as the electric or hybrid cars are being driven (excuse the pun) by an industry that has to, perhaps rather than wants to. There’s a huge market in developing electric sheep, too.

As Copenhagen (COP15) rapidly approaches I would think that food production especially animal production would have to be high on the agenda. But, if ordinary folks like me can’t persuade the masses to re-think what they eat, what about politician turned good guy Al Gore, musician Moby or even PETA pet Pamela Anderson?

Australia needs to take part on a moral and uber-logistical stand on this issue. We can no longer farm or export meat in an inhumane fashion. Even if we do get our farming processes to the point it is compassionate, we need to become sustainable: that means all of us need to reduce our consumption of animals! “Throw another tofu burger on the barbie will ya mate”, might have to become our new national saying!

So, consume less & be informed more!

My personal top ten
1) stop live animal exports (join the Humane Chain)
2) make choices that respect animals; don’t eat them – or at least buy free-range, organic etc
3) moderate your meat consumption
4) support organisations that are compassionate re: ‘farming’  like Campaign for a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW)
5) support organisations that also protect our marine life like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd
6) keep having a go at growing your own food and find out what and when to plant
7) read labels when buying food and insist that labels reflect ingredients like palm oil
(de-forestation is destroying the natural habitats of Orangutans)
8)become a volunteer join local organisations that protect animals and wildlife (Wildlife Victoria)
9) keep informed of campaigns and if need be, write or tweet our Australian politicians

10) On Dec 12, 2009 join the world for a global day of Action

With much love & respect, RosieX

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To my Japanese friends you know I love you. Have a #whale of a good time.

With the historic change of government in Japan, Greenpeace is intensifying its efforts to bring whaling to an end. The new Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has already shown he is more concerned about Japan’s international reputation than his predecessors. Join over 140,000 people and send the new Prime Minister your Origami Whale, asking him to end the corrupt whaling industry once and for all.

Send your Origami Whale

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Nancy White in Digital Habits. Stewarding Technology for Communities. Monday 16th Nov, Melbourne

Technology has changed what it means to “be together” for teams, groups and networks. We can now connect and interact across time and space, co-create and share our creations across the globe. This also means we face a dizzying array of tools and platforms which seem to morph and change daily. We all seem to use the tools in different ways, creating gaps and friction in our groups. What’s a person to do? Consider technology stewardship, the practice of scanning for, choosing, implementing and supporting useful practices using technology in a community. Nancy White will share a few frameworks and stories, then we’ll open the conversation.

• What is community technology stewardship?
• What inherent tensions does a steward work with in a community?
• How can we explore a community’s activity orientations as a way of making decisions around technology?

Agenda

6:00-6:30 Networking with other thinking collaborators (over drinks and nibbles).
6:30-7:15 Nancy White: Digital Habitats
7:15-8:00 Informal conversation amongst the group to explore the ideas and concepts.

Venue

RMIT Graduate School of Business, 300 Queen Street. Melbourne
Lecture room 158.1.2B (Ground level – just behind reception).
Ample metered street parking nearby in Queen Street (between La Trobe and Little Lonsdale).

RSVP: by email to melbournekmlf@gmail.com

About Nancy White

Founder of Full Circle Associates, Nancy helps organisations connect through online and offline strategies. Nancy is an online interaction designer, facilitator and coach for distributed communities of practice, online learning, distributed teams and online communities. She has a special interest in the NGO/NPO sector. Nancy blogs as well as teaches, presents and writes on online facilitation and interaction, social architecture and social media. She is co-author with Etienne Wenger and John Smith of Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities.

Nancy confesses to online interaction, learning and chocolate addictions. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two grown sons.

More information about available workshops via KMLF – Melbourne Knowledge Management Leadership Forum go here.

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Earthsharing Film Competition

Entries are now open for Earthsharing Australia’s 2009 film competition entitled “I Want to Live Here: The war on creativity.” Artists and film makers are asked to respond to issues of gentrification and the difficulty creative communities have when rent increases cause them to move onto cheaper suburbs.

Entries close 4 November

For more information visit http://iwanttolivehere.org.au/

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Melbourne Fringe Festival, people and walking tours

“People’s Tours”, are a set of unique audio and walking tours of Melbourne’s local history, starting on Saturday 26 September.

For the first time, walking tours are being done “live” as part of the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival as three walking tours every Sunday of Fringe, and one “sit-down” tour at the launch.

The launch is 7 pm  – 9 pm at Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne on Saturday 26 September and entry is free.

At the launch there’ll be an introduction to the “People’s Tour” project, an overview of the 13 tours done so far, and then to kick it off, Tour #1 Irine Vela of The Habibis tours the hits, failures and challenges of her life as a working musician in Melbourne.

We’ll visit Irine when she first became entranced with Cat Stevens and his music, and her excitement of hearing the Bouzoukis in his song Ruby My Love. We’ll hear the first song Irine wrote as a bitter sixteen year old, One day I’ll Kill Myself, and follow her life’s journey as she discovers that choosing a life in the arts transgresses a taboo for a Greek-Albanian girl.

And if you can’t make it, you could put on your walking shoes and explore the lesser known histories of Carlton, Brunswick or the Maribyrnong River…

Tour #2 Stencil artist Tom Sevil (Civilian) takes us off the beaten latte track of Lygon Street and into its back alleys to find remnant political graffiti and street art from the 70s to 2009. Sunday 27 September, 1 pm – 2.30 pm. Meet at Readings Bookshop, 309 Lygon Street, Carlton. Find out more…

Tour #3 Making Modern Melbourne author Jenny Lee explores the long history of a short river, the Maribyrnong, in a tour that covers the indigenous history of the area, the old explosives factory, and the river’s changing landscape to the current McMansion invasion. Sunday 4 October, 3 pm – 4.30 pm. Meet at Lily Street Park, Essendon West. Find out more..

Tour #4 Activist and author Iain McIntyre takes us back in time to Brunswick in the Great Depression, when thousands of Melburnians thrown out of their homes. Tour the sites of some of Melbourne’s fiercest anti-eviction battles (now the sites of some of Melbourne’s fiercest real estate battles). Sunday 11 October, 1 pm – 2.30 pm. Meet at Brunswick Town Hall, 233 Sydney Road, Brunswick. Find out more…

Walking tour tickets are $10, pre-sold only and available at Melbourne Fringe Festival website: People’s Tours. The sit-down launch (Tour #1) is free.

The tours are co-produced by 3CR Community Radio and Jane Curtis, and funded by the Local History grant program of the Office of Public Records.

People’s Tours co-producer http://peoplestour.net

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