 Thank you for good morning. It's it's wonderful to be here on what is recognisers Ngunnawal country My name is Gabriel journey Jones. I haven't got my information up there, but it is in the brochure I'm here from creative women down under base has been based in Sydney for the last 10 years to tell you a bit about this initiative So I would like to first acknowledge the traditional owners. I grew up here in Canberra I was never taught the truth about this land and it was that it was never ceded that it was stolen Genocidal cost to the traditional owners. I didn't even know the names of the different tribal groups and language groups that this land was taken from so I just like to acknowledge Ngunnawal Negambri, Ngaragu people And I'm encouraged as a woman with Maori and African-American bloodlines that more truthful black store histories of Australia are Increasingly being available to us to learn from and to pay our respects and to teach our children. So last weekend I Had the pleasure of meeting Eve Ensler Creator of the vagina monologues and the 1 billion rising campaign to stop violence against women and girls In her talk at antidote at the Sydney Opera House Eve said many wonderfully inspiring things two of her points sum up The intention of creative women down under Firstly, she said that everybody needs a posse a group a community to go out with and resist to resist Depression and to fight for our rights Georgina Abraham's co-founder of creative women down under and I Decided in 2006 that we wanted to organize our own posse of women to share creative adventures with Because nothing like that existed in our area in the inner west you could basically go out to a pub You could go out to gigs, but you couldn't really yeah create Intentionally create community for women wanting to do creative things so Georgina and I are both social workers Or we were responding to the idea that accessing our creative expression and providing opportunities for other women to do the same Would give much needed respite and rest from battling every day with life our rights constant vigilism constant vigilance and activism We see creativity as a very necessary antidote to life stress Eve Ensler's second point is the reason we see creativity as one pathway back to happiness She said when women are in trauma one of the first things to go is joy and we need creativity to reconnect and resist So there is a strong link between activism and resistance which begins with first reconnecting creatively with oneself We wanted creative women down under to offer tools for women to relight their fire after trauma Everyday life and professional fatigue so many of us are burnt out working in the human services field Or anywhere that actually requires us to be completely present and to give all that we have and that we are in the provision of support to others So the resilience of creative women down under relates to our persistence of will Over 10 years to continue organizing events and sharing information for the benefit of women's creative community as a voluntary extra initiative to our lives which includes raising two young children and caring for our elders and Working and pursuing our own creative projects I'm a poet and a drummer and I apply the lens of Intersectional feminism to my work and I often encourage truth-speaking about the complex structural layers of oppression that we deal with as women I Am looking forward to the publication of my first poetry collection called spoken medicine That'll be out in November by gin and eric press who were actually based in Canberra for a long time before they moved to Adelaide And I've got a special poem to read at the end of this if there's time so I'm gonna race through Okay, so what exactly are we about so I've got this little postcard out here We're quite creative for so pretend sense of office work you get your own business card So this has got it's out at the front desk and it's just got a little bit about us and how you can contact us What we do basically our vision is to connect women and creative expression We spell women with a Y to clearly identify ourselves as feminists And we're also highly supportive of other queer women So we began 11 years ago by inviting friends to our events and using creativity as a basis for Building personal resilience to help us all rest and reconnect with ourselves and others We didn't have a strategic or business plan. We organized events. We just thought women would enjoy our actions were simple But consistently thorough to invite an artist or a writer to teach a group of us some of their skills For an afternoon for an evening Whole day or a weekend we then arrange a venue and send an email invitation to our friends and networks Put a flyer online and promote it regularly and all of the money would go directly to the artist So we weren't paying for insurance. We weren't paying for great Yeah venue high that sort of thing the artist got the money It's one of the things we noticed that women weren't a lot of women were volunteering their time They weren't even getting paid to share their artwork sometimes and so we wanted to address this as well So over the last decade we moved from small visual arts drumming poetry workshops of about six to ten women to regular house concerts Averaging about 70 attendees and we liked the idea of using homes So that it was an accessible inclusive venue that it would be child-friendly or if not child-friendly If the event wasn't child-friendly we could get childcare to the house for women So and our largest event was held in 2011 with over a thousand women joining us at the Sydney Opera House for lesbians in the house concert This was a 20-year reunion from something that was organized in 1991 to rally the rally the troops, I guess and We had over a hundred lesbian musicians Artists on stage was five hours long and we included Oslin interpreters and one of them is in the room today I just found out so yeah to shout out to Taylor over there so we we invited lesbian interpreters to come and and Provide for us at the event so that people so it was as accessible as possible. That was great So as a social worker my background is spending over a decade working in disability organizations. I work in terms of policy and strategy around making Organizations helping them to comply with what they need to do so accessibility has been a huge thing for us at creative women so Okay, I'm just gonna flip over so all together during that time We've held 31 major events for women including festivals we can retreats the concerts I mentioned a workshops in mixed media drawing sculpture water color painting We've held a lot of creativity support groups. I don't know if anyone has heard of the artist way Julia Cameron, so we've heard a lot of those and yeah We just we've been doing it because we love it and I've sort of applied to come and talk about it today Just to give you an idea of the topic. It was resilience over 10 years We just keep on going because we see the benefit of it we do operate outside of Regulation or donor funding frameworks And there I did want to mention lesbians incorporated. That's one Organization that's been going for about 20 years giving funding to lesbian projects without Needing an ABN without needing to have a charity status. So just give props to them You can I can give you that information if you've got a project. They fund up to $1,000 blocks. Yeah, so we found they're quite useful actually Georgina was instrumental in setting that group up So I might be going popping off track here Yeah, so we're completely unfunded and we run the events because we're passionate about it all we want to do is gather women for our creative adventures and Challenge women's oppression along the way by finding our own voice through creativity As I said, we didn't want to become a legal entity. A lot of people have said why don't you incorporate then you can get funding as a charity status, but all that seem to Be operating in a patriarchal setting that we didn't want to get involved with and we just want to gather women at the lowest possible cost for them and accessibility so I'll flip over here and I guess I mean I've in the program it says it's a collective It's a collective of two but we are really so I don't know if we can really be called a collective But we certainly have had a lot of support by a lot of close friends along the way So we haven't been doing it by ourselves with all the way along That's been yeah building community and people in getting involved in helping us Okay, so last weekend. I'm just giving a quick example of one of our events in detail While I went to antidote at the Sydney Opera House Georgina ran our 22nd women's retreat So sometimes we'd actually have to a year It's women only so it's one of our few things that only women can go to the rest of the things Children are involved, but it's a special time for women to just gather without kids and It was the first time I could go in eight years because we have our sons eight Um Yes, I was great to get back to that space and just talking about how we can build community We had 68 women at pennant hills on green guy land in New South Wales They come from local and interstate areas and they got to practice yoga meditation make music share poetry and enjoy Community we had a really very special guest speaker venerable rabbina court and she was passing literally passing through at that time And we've had long connections with her and she came in and gave a one-hour talk Which was really inspiring. She's a Tibetan Australian Tibetan Buddhist nun who is an activist in prisons around the world So she came along inspired everyone and that's just like a little example We try to do things that add some extra meaning to things because of that connection. So essentially our feminist utopia centers on thinking and planning creatively about making Extra meaning for connections I guess by collaborating with our friends and networks and our mutual supporters and not relying on and not waiting for funding opportunities Which may also impose restrictions on our initiative so we can do what whatever we like, which is great So in saying that yeah, we donate the time of and cost of our online presence our website and social media We're passionate about the information that we circulate. We love to find things like today's event and Promote that and try to get people coming along So I'm just gonna skip through because I've got that was basically the key thing So we're all about like we get people to tell us what's happening And we try to tell as many people about it as well and we try to support things Research projects to spy coming along and participating 10 lessons and challenges for you to feminist utopia gatherings from creative women down under number one if you organize it they will come but don't rely on Facebook event RSVPs for your catering lists like cut that by a third forget about it And be build the community with the people that show up small numbers are fine Number two if you're passionate about it go for it create with whatever resources you have do not wait on funding bodies To make your creative adventures a reality Three when working with a small group of two a collective of two We found it's a lot easier to have one person as the project leader and they make the last call and there's no blaming Okay Well, you can blame that person for Be completely thorough in your planning. So planning should be 50% of what you do Five you don't need to do everything yourself except help if it's available and ask if you need to I think many of us raised with the idea that we should need to be Independent and do everything ourselves forget that that's not gonna work You know, I think in a trying to get out of patriarchal frameworks. It's yeah, it's good to be vulnerable Number six developing your networks offline and in real life takes time So don't give up up and keep reaching out to people sometimes it feels a bit embarrassing like I reach out I've started up a poets of color sort of collective that we're trying to get together and Yeah, it's hard to just reach out and say do you guys want to do this and everyone's busy and so anyway, it's it's yeah What I'm trying to say is Just keep reaching out and and hope for the best with building number seven build a reputation of Reliability if you say you're gonna do something then do it and try not to cancel events unless you need To eight develop trust inclusion and belonging with your within your initiatives by being trustworthy inclusive and welcoming Don't just say it actually do it like people know before you have an event that you're actually, you know Caring about the fact that you're on indigenous land and caring about the fact of what's gonna happen in the space That's people know that it's a safe space number nine be explicit about common values and shared goals when you work with creative project partners and Ten be aware of self-censorship take time to reflect on your level of participation in creative communities Give what you want to in the spaces that you choose and be happy to rest when you need to because it can get tiring engaging creatively so Yeah, we've got a little bit of time for the pie. I think it's only about one minute. Okay, so that's a snapshot. I wrote this in 2008 at a drum camp in New York at the Catskill Mountains So my passions are drumming poetry and women's community. It all comes together in this piece Which is coming out in my book. So the happening is happening mesmerizing energy of women dancing Spirited sounds dancing out of the hall flying through the fire skimming across the lake drums serenade each other Heartbeat drum the pulse 24 hours in the zone Never alone like the voice of women which will not drown in patriarchal oppression the voice of women through percussion carries our survival celebrations drum circle communion creators of community strength ritual and beauty the voice of women in the rhythms and the silent spaces in the pause for Effect applause and respect of course. We expect our intentions to woman fest Anchored in moments like this as monuments to the rich deep connections within ourselves Sustained honored and upheld by our sisters with drums We choose the happen and during busy lives because we've gathered this way since the beginning of time Thank you