Dished Up, fundraiser for Melbourne Womens Circus

DISHED UP, a Women’s Circus fundraiser with performances by members of the Women’s Circus community and guest appearances by Miss Flee, DanceSister and Cath Jamison – Woman of Deception.

There will also be a silent auction with some great items to bid on – belly dancing classes, people accommodation, pet accommodation, artworks, books and much more.

When: Saturday 12 September.
Doors open 7pm for 8pm show
Where: Women’s Circus, Drill Hall, 395 Barkly Street West Footscray (cnr Gordon St), Melbourne, Australia
Tickets:$15 (at the door) so get in early to ensure a good spot
Parking: Free parking available on Barkly Street or its short walk from West Footscray Station

Chris Badenoch, from Masterchef Australia and BeerMasons present Party for Strays

If you love animals and you love to party you have the power to save their lives.

Our resident foodie, frontman and MasterChef contestant, Chris and the chefs from The Court House Hotel, North Melbourne, have whipped up a night of boutique beer and mouth watering bites for your partying pleasure.

Join in this Party for Strays and help the Lort Smith Animal Hospital give stray, abused and abandoned pets a second chance at life and help reduce pet euthanasia (currently 200,000 animals a year in Australia.)

Door prizes, competitions, DJs, sensational beer, fine food and excellent company.

It’s time to party with a purpose!

Thursday 10th September, 2009
@ 7pm
The Court House Hotel
Cnr Errol and Queensbury Streets
North Melbourne, VIC
BeerMasons Party Team
info@beermasons.com

Register for this event

Oncologists rock out to raise awareness for gynecologic cancers.

N.E.D. (an acronym for No Evidence of Disease) is a rock band with a purpose: composed entirely of six musically talented gynecologic cancer surgeons hailing from all four corners of the U.S.  The doctors are full time, practicing surgeons, researchers, and professors who moonlight as musicians in hopes that their music can improve the quality of life of patients and anyone potentially touched by women’s cancers.

New York-based Motema Music spearheaded the production and recording of their album which will be released on September 8th to coincide with the first annual Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month (United States). Producer Mario McNulty (David Bowie, Linkin Park, Ziggy Marley) worked closely with the band to create these first-class recordings. The music and lyrics are original, written by members of the band who worked together primarily through video conference.

Sonically, N.E.D.’s  EP blends a wide range of folk, arena, and indie rock, and demonstrates pure female vocals likened to Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary and Christine McVie.  Lyrically, the music brings a fresh and sympathetic approach to issues of life and death faced by cancer victims and their families. Net proceeds from the sale of the CD will be donated to the N.E.D. Cancer Foundation in association with the Gynecologic Cancer Foundation (GCF) to support public education about gynecologic cancers and to fund promising research projects and programs.

More info on N.E.D.

SYDNEYtwestival 2009 Tweet.Meet.Give

Saturday, September 12 is the date!

Hello, Sydney! Welcome to another round of Twestival; this time it’s for your favourite Australian charity.

Cities around the world are banding together in a new way, raising funds for local charities, and the call-out to nominate Australian charities starts now!

Earlier this year, SYDNEYtwestival raised a total of $1485. It was an amazing night, which resulted from the inspired effort of the many volunteers and supporters.  Plus, nearly a 100 people who turned up to make the night such a success.  So, now it’s time to do it all over again …

Nominations for a charity are open now and a vote will be held on Sunday, 30th August.

More info from SYDNEYtwestival

Melbourne browncoats host Global Charity Event for Equality Now. August 30th

As part of the global “Can’t Stop the Serenity” event, Melbourne brown coats are screening Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” at the VCA Federation Hall in Southbank. 234 St Kilda Road, Sunday August 30, 2009. Doors open 11.30 am.

Tickets: $15 pre-paid or $20 at the door.

All proceeds are being donated to Equality Now, a international human rights advocacy group.

Website: www.melbournebrowncoats.com

Global Charity Event “Can’t Stop the Serenity” returns to Melbourne on 30 August

For the 4^th year, fans of popular television and film writer/director Joss Whedon are gathering worldwide to raise money for Equality Now, a charity dedicated to promoting the human rights of beleaguered women and girls.

Tens of thousands of fans, geeks and gamers around the world will participate in “Can’t Stop the Serenity” fund-raising events to benefit charity organisation Equality Now.  Over $250,000 has been raised since 2006, and this year we’re aiming to add another $150,000 to that total.   On Sunday, 30 August it will be time for Melbourne fans to join in.

Melbourne’s event features a screening of cult sci-fi film Serenity and web sensation Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, as well the opportunity to win some extremely awesome prizes in the live auction, raffle and costume competition. Prizes include items signed by Serenity cast and creative team. It will be held at VCA Federation Hall (Victorian College of the Arts, 234 St Kilda Road, Southbank) from 12-4pm (Doors open at 11:30am). Tickets are $15 advance online (plus booking fees) or $20 at the door (cash only).  Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to celebrate the works of Joss Whedon and raise money for a vital cause – Equality Now.

The story of Firefly and Serenity is an interesting case in popular culture. The Television series Firefly experienced a short run from September to December of 2002, before being cancelled mid-season due to low ratings and artistic disagreements with its creator, Joss Whedon.  Not content with the show’s release on DVD in 2004, fans known as Browncoats grew in number across the globe, thriving on any content related to Firefly and bolstering DVD sales enough to merit creation of a movie epilogue to the series in 2005: Serenity.

Most fan stories usually end there, but inspired by Whedon’s passion for the underdog and his fiery post on Whedonesque.com in response to the senseless “honor killing” of young Du’a Khalil, his fans continue to go above and beyond to focus their enthusiasm and community into a force for good.

In 2009, Melbourne is among the 50+ cities that are holding a public screening of Serenity to raise funds and awareness for Equality Now. The entire net proceeds go to charity, and no one is paid for their time, including this year’s Global Organizer, Anne Barringer. Anne and her Global Team bring it all together by coordinating participating cities across the US, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

Melbourne Event Website: http://www.melbournebrowncoats.com

Global Event Website: http://www.CantStopTheSerenity.com

Equality Now: http://www.EqualityNow.org

Serenity: http://www.universalpictures.com.au/title/serenity/

Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog: http://www.drhorrible.com

Artists Raise Funds for Disadvantaged Kids in Melbourne

Australia’s leading artists including Lisa Roet, Ken Whisson, Sally Smart, James Smeaton, Kim Westcott, Mike Nicholls, Emma Davies, Geoffrey Ricardo and David Larwill have this year donated outstanding art in support of Artists for Kids Culture’s (AKC) annual art exhibition and auction. Artist for Kids Culture raise funds from their annual art auction for arts activities for at risk kids living in disadvantage in Melbourne’s housing commission flats. This year’s art exhibition and auction will take place from 1 – 8th September, 2009 with the exhibition opening held at Brightspace Gallery on Tuesday 1st September and the art auction at St Kilda Town Hall on Tuesday 8th September.

Over the past 14 years AKC has raised over 1.2 million dollars from its annual art auction that it has used to fund programs for disadvantaged kids. More than 600 individuals and groups have been assisted to enable them to participate in music, sport, dance and art classes as well as school camps and cooking workshops.

Artists for Kids Culture

Art Exhibition

Opening – Tuesday 1st September 6 – 8pm Exhibition – Wednesday 2 – 6th September Brightspace Gallery, 8 Martin Street, St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Art Auction

Tuesday 8th September St Kilda Town Hall, 99 Carlisle Street, (Corner Carlisle Street and Brighton Road) St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

The Cove Movie and the Dolphin Research Institute

IN LESS than two weeks, an annual event that environmental activist Ric O’Barry calls a genocide will begin. By the time it ends in March, as many as 23,000 dolphins will have been ”harvested” in Japan.

The lucky few will be shipped off to aquariums around the world, to spend the rest of their lives performing. The unlucky ones will be brutally slaughtered, their carcasses butchered for sale in Japan – often deliberately mislabelled as whale meat – or merely dragged out to sea and left to rot.

This grim scenario is laid bare in a documentary, The Cove, which follows the efforts of Mr O’Barry and his colleagues to reveal what goes on at the Japanese fishing port of Taiji.

More from Karl Quinn’s article at The Age

Other links:

• Petition – www.takepart.com/thecove

• www.thecovemovie.com

• If you’re on Facebook, check out The Cove group – lots of daily updates and comments from people around the world about the movie and reactions

Dolphin Research Institute -  1300 130 949

savejapandolphins.org

Please support this urgent campaign with a donation.

Your support will:

• Help us reach people around the world with our campaign to end the slaughter of dolphins and whales in Japan.
• Support the work of Richard O’Barry and the Save Japan Dolphins Coalition in Japan, to educate and inform the Japanese public about the dangers of eating dolphin meat and the need to stop the slaughter.
• Help us reach the Japanese public through targeted media campaigns and screenings of “The Cove” movie.
• Stop the captures of wild dolphins around the world and trafficking in live dolphins.

http://www.savejapandolphins.org/donate.php

TwitCause helps nonprofits get discovered on Twitter

Let’s hope this catches on.!!

TwitCause helps nonprofits get discovered on Twitter and enables passionate people to support the causes they care about.

Since the early days of the Facebook Platform, Causes has been one of the most popular apps. It’s also big on MySpace, and the company behind it recently announced that they had raised some $10,000,000 for various causes in two years. It makes sense; it’s using the social aspect of these platforms to spread the word on good initiatives. A new venture, TwitCause, from Experience Project, wants to extend that idea to Twitter.

And it’s possible that this idea could work even better on Twitter, given the built-in viral nature of the service. Basically, each week on Thursday, TwitCause has a new cause they support. They ask that you follow the TwitCause Twitter account and then retweet the cause to show your support for it. These tweets contain a link to go back to the site where you can find a place to donate money if you choose to, using PayPal. The number of retweets and the money raised so far are all shown in real-time on the page, as are the most recently tweets about the cause.

Source: TechCrunch

Victorian Bushfire Appeal Auction check out Nip and Tuck couch by Deborah Kelly

Mixed Media 0.O Deborah Kelly’s Nip & Tuck: Tooth & Claw investigates female agency, complicity …

Deborah Kelly’s Nip & Tuck: Tooth & Claw investigates female agency, complicity and representation by transforming the KLIPPAN into a feminine explosion of hair, skin, painted nails and silk knickers. The work is an extension of her ongoing paper montage series begun in 2007.

Deborah is a Sydney-based artist whose works have been shown in streets, skies and galleries around Australia, in the Singapore and Venice Biennales, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of the art gang boat-people.org, who have been making public work around race, nation, borders and history since 2001. Most recently, she instigated a distributed participatory memorial for the Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June 2009.

Deborah Kelly gratefully acknowledges the invaluable collaboration of Bec Dean and the production assistance of Aung Phu Ya, Richard Manner and Ada Stanton.

Proceeds from the IKEA Home Project Sofa 2009 Auction will be donated to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal to support the rebuilding of homes. (SN:Deborah Kelly) (120107-17)

Dimensions in cm: 188 (L) x 88 (D) x 66 (H)

Weight: 25kg (approx)

The countdown is on!