Canberra is a city often left behind when it comes to our independent literary scene. We're one of the few major cities, in fact, that doesn't have an annual writers' festival.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
So close to Sydney, and only a flight away from Melbourne, the thinking seems to be that we can travel to writing events quite easily – why would we need our own? Cohorts of local young writers make the pilgrimage to the National Young Writers' Festival in Newcastle each year, and even more head to the Sydney Writers' Festival to catch big name author talks and seminars.
It's been five years since the last readers and writers' festival held by the ACT Writers' Centre. Since then, there was a one-off Spring Poetry Festival, but little else to engage literary audiences and artists in Canberra.
That's all about to change. March 2015 heralds the launch of a new, unique writers' festival – Noted. Running alongside the annual You Are Here arts festival, Noted will bring three days of experimental literary events to Canberra. There will be traditional spaces like workshops and Q&A sessions, as well as more out-there events such as pop-up poetry performances, collaborations between writers and sound artists, guerrilla writing meet-ups and more.
The festival was founded earlier this year by a group of artists and writers in Canberra who saw the gap in our events programming for something text-based, and a little left-of-centre. Yasmin Masri, one-part of rip publishing, and Duncan Felton, founder of Grapple Publishing and part of literary collective, Scissors Paper Pen are two of Noted's producers, alongside Andrew Galan, Farz Edraki, Lucy Nelson, Ashley Thomson and Chiara Grassia.
When asked how the idea of Noted came about, both Felton and Masri are stumped for a minute – there have been so many conversations about starting a writers festival over the past few years, they can't pinpoint just one.
"I think it came out of the Gorman arts residencies, people bouncing off each other there," Felton says. In September this year, Gorman Arts Centre launched a pop-up residency, The Project Space, and selected a group of writers and artists to use one wing of the arts centre for short-term residencies.
It was a fertile ground for building new ideas, and the topic of Noted first came up there.
"I would also say that the vast majority of people who are part of Noted produced events for You Are Here, and it was really great in giving us confidence in our abilities as producers," Masri says.
The festival is supported by You Are Here through funding and venue support. Despite this partnership, Noted is independently curated with some crossover events. The festival is seeking additional partners, and is hoping to be able to expand and evolve in coming years.
Noted is unlike other writers' festivals, in that it largely eschews traditional event formats.
"It's a space for people to try experimental approaches to writing, and writing-based events, that maybe wouldn't really fit into general operations for any of the small press groups here," Masri says.
"I like the broad definition of experimental," Felton says."For some people, 'experimental' is just finding new audiences, and finding new ways of doing what you already do."
So it won't all be bizarre spoken word and magic realism, but there also won't be any author talks or seminars.
"We're trying to open up opportunities for people to be part of the action or get really close to people producing content in a new way," Masri says.
Will this be alienating to audiences who might enjoy the occasional panel discussion, or look forward to local author talks?
"Noted sits in a spectrum of what happens in the writing community in Canberra. So, for example, when the Emerging Writers Festival did their roadshow in Canberra, it was very much the traditional panel model [of events]," Masri says. "I definitely think that events done by them or by the ACT Writers Centre fill that more traditional spectrum of what people want in terms of their writing-based events. So what we're doing is saying, well at the moment there's this other field of events which aren't being catered to, so we want to go into that niche and build something there."
The festival is broken into three streams of events: "Take Note" is the professional development stream, and includes workshops and Q&As with industry professionals on topics like performing and publishing deals; "Notification" is the digital stream, with innovative events using digital technologies to reach wider, national audiences; and "Notice" is the live stream, with performances and audience-centred events. Each stream will cater to a different audience, but the festival producers hope to engage people who might not generally attend literary events in Canberra.
Masri and Felton each have their own favourite events which they're excited for. The launch event for the festival is "Canberra Lit-hop" which plays on the idea of a bar hop but with words instead of beers.
"We're going to take over part of Canberra and have a bunch of literary events happening throughout the evening, and encourage audiences to move from venue to venue. And each venue will be presented by a different lit group based in Canberra," Masri says.
Felton is keen on a launch extravaganza event, which sounds like it's part cattle-yard style auction, part swanky book launch.
"At 'Launch All of the Things', we're going to be basically launching all of the things. We're going to be gathering together all sorts of publishers, text-based artists, even musicians, people who have something to spruik, basically, and make them all do something creative to grab people's attention, within a very short space of time in the same place. I think it's going to be a really fun way to just smash everything together and see what happens," he says.
It all sounds pretty exciting – innovative, different styles of literary events to invigorate our already burgeoning literary scene. The ACT Writers Centre is keen to get involved in the festival, and don't seem fazed by the idea of a group of independent artists taking over a space that was traditionally held by them.
"I think there is definitely a want and a gap for a festival in the ACT literary community. It's fantastic to hear that You Are Here are including a literary stream to their festival," Kelli-Anne Moore, Director of the ACT Writers Centre said. "We would definitely like to be involved if we can. We are just about to see if we can bring something to the table."
Despite this positive response to the festival, I can see one glaring issue that is likely to rear its head. Much like You Are Here, Noted is produced by a group of writers and artists who all know each other, are friends even. Won't this lead to a cliquey vibe, and form a barrier to artists who might want to get involved?
"It's certainly something we're conscious of, and we're really trying to actively work with people who we might not have even met, or be aware of, or encourage people to come to us," Masri says.
"It might be inevitable in the first year that there's some element of that, but part of the purpose of the first year is to get people interested, and to show them why this is something they could be involved in in future years," Felton says.
At the moment, Noted are calling for writers and interested parties to contact them and discuss potential events ideas, or proposals with them. When asked what they want to achieve through the call-out, there's one clear goal:
"We want to hear from people that we've never heard of before," Felton says.
You can find out more about Noted, and submit to the call-out on their website at notedfestival.com. The festival will take place from March 20-22, 2015.
