The Worst Song I Ever Loved, or: What Can You Do With A Writers’ Group?

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Every now and then, I get asked to run a writers’ group in whatever community I’m currently working in.

This is one of the most intimidating challenges for a stranger in town, because each group is its own unique beast. Some people go to these things because they’re working on their magnum opus and are seeking feedback; others want exercises to stimulate their creativity; still others want to write in silent company; and some will be simply be there for the social contact.

On a couple of occasions, I’ve found myself leading a three-hour group with participants ranging in age from 14 to 65, and trying to solve this riddle:

What do you do with the buggers for that long?

Well, just like when running immersive storytelling events for kids and teens, I start off by stealing an idea.

It’s like Newton standing on the shoulders of giants – I dig out something like Daniel Nester’s lovely writers’ course idea ‘The Worst Song I Ever Loved.’

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Dark Night and Wonderland

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librarykris's avatarlibrarykris

I’ve been waxing lyrical here and on Diligent Room about the cool things that people are doing for their communities at their libraries.   What is really exciting me is finding out the philosophy behind why they are doing it – their community is changing and they are changing with it. Seeing the kaupapa shared has made me think of Dark Night and LATE.
Dark Night was “a guerrilla festival of burlesque, literary, and cinematic events that question, celebrate, and challenge sex and sexuality on page, stage, and screen” at Auckland Libraries in June.  It’s the kind of event series that I would have loved to have gone to – sassy, fun, informative, entertaining, better than an author talk (which, btw, I love.) It was an event that promised to discuss ideas and society’s attitudes to those ideas. The fact that it was a number of different events across…

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Stepping into the Story: Interactive Storytelling at New South Wales Writers’ Centre

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Ahead of this Saturday’s Storytelling for a 21st Century Audience course at the New South Wales Writer’s Centre (NSWWC) in Sydney, I was interviewed for the NSWWC website:

What is interactive storytelling and how can immersive narratives enhance the storytelling experience?
Interactive storytelling means creating an event where all participants shape the outcome of the story. It breaks down barriers between the teller and the audience, so that people work together to develop a shared narrative. In some ways this is very traditional – oral storytelling always involves taking account of your audience, and even a book is never interpreted in quite the same way by different readers – but immersive narratives incorporate aspects of theatre, gaming, and play so that you can step into the world of a story and make choices with consequences for your character.

What makes a successful storytelling event? Is there one that you’re particularly proud to have created?
A successful interactive storytelling event brings satisfying outcomes which the organisers didn’t design or foresee. The recent zombie siege in Tullamore, NSW saw eighty people including police, firefighters, librarians and high schoolers immersed in a four-and-a-half hour survival scenario. Individual players took the outline they’d been given and came up with smart, in-character ways to carry out their roles, leading to moments of high drama which we never could have scripted – on one occasion, a zombie-bitten police officer had to be wrestled to the ground and restrained with his own handcuffs before he “turned”!

Your work uses popular culture to great effect, and you’ve run some diverse events, involving comics, time-travel, and zombies, among other things. What draws you to a narrative and makes you want to share it with others?
I like finding unexpected connections between the everyday world and the universe of dreams, stories, and fantasy. There’s an image from an event I ran in Auckland which captures this beautifully – a Rebel Alliance pilot from Star Wars greeting a man in a hoodie with a traditional Māori hongi – connecting the here-and-now of New Zealand’s multicultural traditions with Hollywood’s “galaxy far, far away”.

Popcorn? Connor Tomas O’Brien and Chris Cormack on the battle for libraries’ future

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Find an update to this blog debate at Popcorn Complacency: Supporting Readers and Writers at Australia’s Margins, on this site.

Today on the blog I’m joined by writer, web developer, and Australian creative-man-about-town Connor Tomas O’Brien plus Kiwi open source advocate (and fellow developer) Chris Cormack of Koha.

Connor is the director of the EWF Digital Writers’ Festival. He came to my attention after a Twitter conversation which led to his article “A very quiet battle” for the journal Kill Your Darlings. In it, he addressed sci-fi author Ursula Le Guin’s argument that publishers are deliberately making it untenable for public libraries to loan e-books to their patrons.

Connor Tomas O'Brien at Kill Your Darlings

“That’s probably true, and actually not very surprising,” Connor replied, suggesting that “ebooks and public libraries fundamentally just don’t mix”:

After all, if we accept that one of the core roles of the public library system is to make work freely available, and to make that work as convenient as possible to access… well, it’s already extremely easy to acquire ebooks freely and easily online without paying a cent. If we ignore the copyright implications, the torrenting website The Pirate Bay is, in a sense, like a modern day Library of Alexandria […D]igital lending systems are so complex, restrictive, and counterintuitive that it’s far more convenient for somebody with a limited income to pirate an ebook than rent it from their public library. The Pirate Bay, though illicit, offers a superior system of unrestricted free digital access to written work than any public library in existence. (For reference, here’s a breakdown of a typical library’s ebook checkout restrictions).

It’s hard to see things improving. Public libraries were established to facilitate the distribution of physical objects, not digital files. The conceptual framework for lending – involving one patron visiting a physical space, removing a book from the collection for a limited period, then returning it for others to enjoy – breaks down when it comes to ebooks, which can be accessed anywhere and endlessly duplicated.

Connor acknowledged that “The public library […] is nowhere near obsolete. In some cases, it’s more important than ever”, but without giving examples of what he expected the library to do in this brave new world. And when he signed off the article like this:

For now, there’s not much to do, really, but grab the popcorn and sit back and watch as publishers and librarians battle it out (very, very quietly, of course).

Well, of course this got my dander up. I was minded of Edward Burke’s “All that is necessary for the triumph of Evil is that good men do nothing.” If people complacently munch popcorn while public libraries ail and the smallest, most disadvantaged communities lose their free point of access to human knowledge and culture, they’re actually helping a deeper slide into inequality across the nation.

So I got in touch with Connor and asked him to talk through his ideas about the future of public libraries – and to bolster my limited technical knowledge, I talked also with Chris Cormack of Koha, an open-source software developer who spoke at this year’s Auckland Libraries Youth Hui. I won’t deny I’ve got a soft spot for Chris ever since I found out he arranged for the Māori hero Maui to attend his son’s birthday party – the kind of parenting that chimes so well with the spirit of playful learning.

The following interview comes from stitching together e-mail discussions with Connor and Chris. Connor ran out of time because of his work with the Digital Writers’ Festival, but I hope interested readers will be able to pursue the issue further online – you can find Connor online as @mrconnorobrien and Chris as @ranginui.

After reading Connor’s article, I asked him: “Aren’t the systems around e-book lending only so complex because publishers are trying to enforce unenforceable, outdated business systems? It’s so easy to publish an ebook now: aren’t publishers trying to create an artificial scarcity, because the traditional business model was based on scarcity of the physical text? I’ve heard it argued that libraries should directly value and reward authors for the work that they do, rather than the distributors who might be increasingly irrelevant. Rather than the problem being libraries, isn’t the problem a publishing business model which places intrinsic value not on the work, but on its transmission?”

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A brief round-up on All Hallows’ Eve

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I’m just back from Manila after flitting around Australia and the Philippines for a couple of weeks, running various events for libraries and art galleries. 7 flights in 8 days…that’s more than enough!

Zombies are people too - a survivor tries to escape the zombie hordes in Tullamore with a disguise
Zombies are people too – a survivor tries to escape the zombie hordes in Tullamore with a disguise and some pro-zombie sentiments

On the 10th and 11th of October, Parkes Shire Library ran our biggest and best zombie roleplay event to date, working in collaboration with three local schools, police, firefighters, and student volunteers from Charles Sturt University. We had two days of around 70 people taking part in a 4 1/2 hour unbroken zombie-fighting roleplay with real emergency services. You can see video from the news coverage at the ABC website. 

That event was the culmination of about a month’s work creating immersive theatre and learning activities in country libraries; you can find out more under the Finding Library Futures tag at this site. As the zombie dust settled, I spent a week training librarians around the region before flying to Sydney during the bushfires, which give the city a rather unnervingly apocalyptic skyline:

Sydney skyline - image via @peteresho's Twitter account
Sydney skyline – image via @peteresho’s Twitter account

The next day, I was off to Manila’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design to give a talk and run another day of events. This included activities like making storytelling dice with comic-book panels on each face:

Teens make comic book storytelling dice at Manila's MCAD art museum
Teens make comic book storytelling dice at Manila’s MCAD art museum

The kids were very cool but it was pretty intense work – in fact, just walking down the street was pretty intense! Tho’ I’ve been to bustling cities in Peru and Indonesia, this was another level of wild traffic, wealth disparity, and sheer volume of humanity. Five minute taxi rides generated impressions that will take a long time to process. I felt privileged to be invited to work with the talented staff at MCAD and the youth museum Museo Pambata.

On my last night in the city, I went to a gallery launch but ended up sneaking off with another artist, Leeroy New (designer of a Lady Gaga dress, not the infamous meat one), to see his exhibition Gates of Hell, which I found utterly wonderful:

Leeroy New as Buddha encased in expanding foam
Leeroy New as Buddha encased in expanding foam

Leeroy’s transgressive, playful, pop-cultural take on the sacred had an impact as soon as you entered the room, yet when you ventured beneath the carapace of oozy foam which encased many of his holy subjects, there was a serious engagement with the numinous and transcendent. Gates of Hell reminded me of one of my favourite novels, Toby Litt’s troubling, surrealist fairytale-for-adults Hospital. With its psychopomps and defiantly rebellious bodies, its unyielding but indefinable laws of magic, It’s one of those flawed yet lingering novels – see this Telegraph review for a decent skewering of the flaws – which, despite it all, I can’t recommend enough.

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I loved Leeroy’s work for recalling the grotesquerie of Bosch as much as the claymation splurge of the British 1980s cartoon Trap Door. Gates of Hell marked a perfect balance between pop culture and traditional spirituality, those two rival paths towards a world beyond the everyday. No wonder Lady Gaga had Leeroy make wearable art for her.

After escaping the Gates of Hell, I chaired an evening panel on monsters in children’s literature for the New South Wales Writers’ Centre (you can see a great write-up here from panellist Nyssa Harkness) before finally flying home (my 7th flight in 8 days)…

To recover from all that adventure, I spent a long weekend in a darkened room with too many comics and now I’m back in the game. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s big interview/discussion piece on e-books, publishing, and the future of libraries…

Update: just to round off the festivities on this ghoulish night, you can find a six-minute recording of my piece There’s No Terror In The Carelessness of Flesh online at Soundcloud. Strictly NSFW – an adult exploration of blood, bodies, desire, and dismay. Happy Hallowe’en!

Finding Library Futures, 5: “I Was Elected To Lead, Not To Read” – Thoughts On Library Leadership

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Part 5 in my series on Finding Library Futures.

In my travels, I’ve met some incredible and inspiring library leaders. Managers and specialists delivering incredible stuff: people like Hamish Curry, the Melbournian library superhero who gets kids making Ned Kelly armour in his library, or Adrienne Hannan in the New Zealand capital Wellington, a children’s and youth specialist whose role outside traditional management structures gives her freedom and flexibility to innovate. But sometimes libraries’ own bureaucracy impedes them: sometimes, even when the media, local communities, and local politicians, too, are supporting libraries’ attempts to be audacious, internal process can be an obstacle. So – here’s three thoughts on a style of leadership which will let libraries be the sword-hand of literacy and the major cultural player they so clearly ought to be in the new Information Age.

1. Library leaders need to be librarians.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not talking my role out of existence – outsiders to library service have a value in stirring the pot, bringing in new ideas, cross-pollinating between librarianship, education, theatre, creative writing, marketing, etc – but I truly believe that the people at the head of a library organisation need to have walked the floor, stacked the shelves, held their own on a desk shift, and put contact plastic on a few books in their time. Read more →

Finding Library Futures, 4: Delivering the Literacy Smackdown – Big Box Battle

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Big Box Battle monsters pose in their cardboard city
Big Box Battle monsters pose in their cardboard city

Last time on the blog we were discussing Parkes Shire’s time travel roleplay activity for schools, Time Travel Detectives. In it, a time portal had been opened from a polluted future Earth. Insidious, bug-like creatures were trying to cross timelines and usurp the present, but Parkes kids were able to go after them and capture them in specimen jars…

In the follow-up school holiday activity, ‘Big Box Battle’, another time portal presented a rather bigger challenge. Our young heroes found themselves wrestling Godzilla-like monsters in a knee-high cardboard city. Like our live action teen zombie roleplays, which you can see news coverage of here, this was a chance for kids to physically enter the world of an adventure story.

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Finding Library Futures, 3: Time Travel at the Speed of Pop Culture

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This article looks at Time Travel Detectives, my recent youth activity for Parkes Library in New South Wales. For more on the concept of storylining a public library system’s youth offerings, see TimeQuest – A Scientific Romance for Libraries.

Poster from Parkes Library's Time Travel Detectives event with Matt Finch

Let’s start with science. Australia’s new government might have decided there’s no need for a dedicated science minister, but scientific research is not going to simply stop in Australia. We need to encourage children and young people to develop that sense of wonder which impels scientific research around the world.

I’m currently based in Parkes, New South Wales. It’s a quiet rural town, but one which played a vital part in putting a man on the moon. Its radio telescope, celebrated in the movie The Dish, helped Neil Armstrong to make that giant leap back in 1969.

Invited to make school holiday activities for the September vacations in Parkes, I wanted to find something which respected the town’s history and scientific traditions, but also offered an adventure that looked forward as well as back.

My work is based on storytelling and immersive play. In creating a science-themed activity, I don’t seek to duplicate the work of science educators, but rather inspire and intrigue audiences with an adventure that would get them thinking about the scientific method and the practice of disciplined observation.

Spirit Box
Spirit Box

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Finding Library Futures, 2: We Built This City – Embedding Stories in a Community

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In part one of this blog series, I took a look at TimeQuest, the citywide programme which I devised for Auckland Libraries’ school holiday programmes – an opportunity to embed storytelling, adventure, and literacy into the life of an entire city.

The TimeQuest team created a simple storyline which all Auckland’s library branches could use as a leaping-off point for their own activities over the holidays. We might have been imposing a half-dozen lines of text, but there’s a real difference between this imposition and the various ‘One Book, One City’ programmes which have gained ground around the world.

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Finding Library Futures, 1a: A Love Letter to Auckland

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Auckland Libraries - Timequest
Auckland Libraries – Timequest logo

I wrote the recent Auckland Libraries school holiday programme TimeQuest as a love letter to the city – a science fiction romance with time-travelling heroes using libraries to save the heritage of New Zealand’s largest conurbation. Creating the activity, I thought about what I might go back in time to save from Auckland Libraries. My experience with both the library system and the city itself was intense, challenging, and ultimately rewarding – but along the journey, there were days where I might not have been sad to see Auckland blown into the time vortex!

Even in those toughest times, I found things to make me cherish the city. Places and people and even items on the library shelves. In one such case, it wasn’t a book, but a song. A song which belongs to pop culture in general, and Auckland in particular: that Australasian underdog which is still only slowly recognising how awesome it is and how much greater it could yet be.

This song, set on Takapuna Beach, alludes to the death of songwriter Don McGlashan’s brother at the age of 15. In it you find pop, melancholy, honesty. It belongs to specifc people, and specific places; it speaks of birthday parties and city politics, but also reaches out to touch something beyond everyday life. In four minutes, it gives me everything I love in a piece of art.

So…if you were on Auckland’s TimeQuest, saving your cultural heritage in the face of apocalypse, what one item would you rescue from your library?