Fire and regeneration through fire were celebrated this week at a preview of The Universe Alight, one of the main features of the upcoming Silver Linings Festival.

Julia Hobba, the creative producer of the festival, says The Universe Alight is the centrepiece of the Silvery Moon Festival taking place as part of Silver Linings and will feature the Sun, a large fire-orb illuminating 50 masks cast from the faces of the Tuggeranong community. It will be accompanied by a smaller Moon, a light-orb.

Members of the community can take part in workshops run by Kate Llewellyn and Polly Crowden throughout October to build masks and other items for the event, with frames built by Tony Steel.

"We were using a couple of the masks that have already been made," Hobba says.

Hobba says the festival will celebrate the past quarter-century of Tuggeranong Community Arts Association's activities under its current chief executive Rauny Worm and such former directors as Domenic Mico and Evol McLeod.

Tuggeranong Community Arts Association was incorporated on March 13, 1990. Over the past 25 years it has encompassed a broad range of artistic and cultural interests, operating out of the Isabella Plains Community Centre and, from 1998, out of the Tuggeranong Arts Centre.

Another festival activity encouraging community participation is Shore Dancing, with local dancers leading one-hour weeknight tutorials in the Tuggeranong Arts Centre car park in Nepalese, Filipino, Middle-Eastern, Bollywood and Brazilian dance styles that will then be performed in a session on November 7.

"After each weeknight dance tutorial will be costume workshops staffed with professional costume designers," Hobba says.

Alison Bogg and Christiane Nowak will give conceptual, material and practical advice on incorporating some silver element into a costume to wear for the final performance.

Accompanying Shore Dance is a program of associated cultural events including a presentation by SBS Bollywood Star personality G-Luv on his experiences, Zak and Reefa's Bollywood Funeral performed by Vivek Sharma and film screenings from the cultures represented (both on November 5).

Another cultural group being represented is the gay and lesbian community with a Queer Literary Lounge on November 4 featuring Benjamin Law, author of Gaysia. There will also be a performance by the Canberra Gay and Lesbian Qwire accompanied by big band In Full Swing and Drag & Dress Up Karaoke led by drag queen Tammy Pax (both on November 6).

Hobba says the organisers wanted to comment on a Canberra Times report from May describing Tuggeranong as the "fattest, laziest area" and devised a satirical response to it. On October 31, the Phat'n' Layzee Picnic will showcase some of the many sporting clubs and activities in which people participate and will lay out a spread of desserts from Nepal, the Phillippines, Brazil, the Middle East and India. There will also be a life drawing workshop, a philosophy workshop with a cinematic bent, a zine and badge making workshop and a screening of The Big Lebowski with Jeff Bridges as the Dude, whom Hobba describes as "the laziest character in film history".

There will also be performances by Fresh Faced Funk , the Young Choreographer Initiative by dance program Fresh Funk and a visual art installation from the Messengers Program, which since 2000 has been an arts-based early intervention program for young people experiencing early signs of mental health problems

And to end where we began, with fire: The Fire Did Not Beat Us is an exhibition about the 100-year evoluton of the ACT Rural Fire Services, including on November 7 a talk by ACT RFS chief officer Andrew Stark on the theme of Regeneration Through Fire.

And there's more to discover: see tuggeranongarts.com. Most activities and events are free.