“Castralien” – a fantasy of the 1940s, a German refugee’s vision of a world-encompassing internment camp where displaced persons are shuffled between Britain and its colonies.
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical brings together Queensland ghost towns, Sixties television, European wars, plus histories and fantasies of offshore detention.
“And this is how it works when crossing a border doesn’t feel like a crime…”
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical visits the midnight bakeries of Brisbane to tell a story of migration.
This weekend, join me for two events at the Brisbane Writers Festival.
On Saturday 10th September at 4pm, I’ll be on the Rules of Engagement panel with Kate Pullinger and Caroline Heim, talking about the shifting relationships between institutions, artmakers, scientists, audiences, and participants.
Then, on Sunday 11th September at 11.30am, join Ellen Van Neerven, Maggie Hardy, Tamara Davis, and Maree Kimberley for Science and Belonging, a special presentation by the State Library of Queensland.
Instead of the usual panel discussion, we’ll be running a Beyond Panels session which maximises your chance to talk to our guests.
Our panel of scientists and speculative fiction writers will talk about their work with Festival visitors before leading a discussion exploring the collisions, contrasts, and common ground between speculative fiction and scientific practice.
Find out more about Rules of Engagement and Science and Belonging at the Brisbane Writers Festival website.
Last month, I went up to Townsville in North Queensland with a team of staff from the State Library.
I worked with Townsville staff on strategy and innovation for a couple of days, then we invited around sixty people from across the region – and across the culture sector – for a day of workshops focussed on service innovation and professional development.
We discussed everything from robotics to scrub turkeys, David Bowie’s creative process to President Obama’s response to Muhammad Ali’s death, all the while thinking about how our organisations could better serve the communities we’re part of.
You’ll hear more about all of these projects in coming weeks, but for now here’s a report from attendee Sabine Carter.
Townsville was famously the setting for turn-of-the-millennium cartoon series The Powerpuff Girls – our team’s iPads are named after the lead characters Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup.
I’ll leave you today with Frank Black of the Pixies signing a Powerpuff-inspired song…
“Take only what you need…share what you have. The idea is not that radical. We teach sharing to our kids but it gets lost somewhere along the way.”
In this week’s Marvellous, Electrical, Brisbane activist Andy Paine tells of a life spent striving to live without money.
In Library Journal this month, Henrietta Verma discusses writers’ groups and gives a shout-out to The Worst Song I Ever Loved, a writing project I ran for the Parkes Shire Library in New South Wales.
Library Journal calls me an “Australian librarian”; I’m neither of those things, but will let them off as the project was devised for a creative residency in public libraries Down Under.
The Worst Song I Ever Loved was based on a university task created by Daniel Nester.
You can find out more about the project here at The Signal In Transition.
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical interviewee is Hesam Fetrati, an Iranian satirist based in Brisbane.
https://twitter.com/DrMattFinch/status/759213810062336001
The first of a three-part series: VW Beetles, artistry, engineering, and stories of migration at Marvellous, Electrical this week.
The Regatta Hotel, Toowong – Public Domain image by Wikipedia user Adz
“Every problem in life has a solution. A bouncer stopped me at the pub door once for wearing flip-flops. I had tape in my bag.”
“Take a walk around the block. Put silver duct tape around your feet and shoes, loop it over, make it look pretty. Come back wearing ‘silver sandals’, they’ll let you in.”
Meet the patron saint of Brisbane’s student drinkers in this week’s Marvellous, Electrical.
On my last trip to Rockhampton in Central Queensland, I was interviewed by Chrissy Arthur of ABC Capricornia. We talked about some of my projects in Australia and New Zealand, the role of public libraries in 2016, and this year’s upcoming Fun Palaces across Queensland and worldwide.
The best part was talking about how creativity isn’t determined by your pay grade – anyone can have a bright idea, and a role like mine is as much about listening to organisations and their communities as it is ‘thinking up cool stuff to do’.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 
.JPG){kind=link}
