by Kel Butler

Anyone who listens to the Writes4Women podcast would know that very early on we were funded by Writing NSW and Create NSW to make a sister podcast called Writes4Festivals. As writers and massive festival fans, Pam and I wanted to take the incredible conversations that were had at our regional writing festivals and make them available to everyone. Since then we have recorded 6 festivals and released dozens of episodes but recently the reasons why we feel compelled to do so has changed.

Initially Write4Festivals was just another way to support our Australian writers and writing community, especially in regional areas where it can be a very isolating gig. After attending and recording session after session, panel after panel, this past couple of years it has become obvious that writing festivals are not just for writers or about writing, they are an integral part of our most important cultural and political conversations. Conversations that everyone should be hearing not just the creatives amongst us. In fact when I sit in these rooms full of like minded people listening to panels deconstructing subjects like race, equality, gender, sexuality, colonialism and the treatment of First Nations Australians, climate change and domestic violence I am equally inspired and infuriated.

Inspired by the intelligent minds doing the hard work on these subjects. Infuriated because I know that the rooms of people absorbing their messages are already converts to the cause.

Writing festivals are a reflection of where our country is at any given moment. They put a megaphone to the national and global social issues that our governments are either creating, exacerbating or ignoring completely. They provide a safe space for those effected and marginalised by the masses. A space to speak freely and offer an alternative experience of the world, in the hope it may trigger the right kind of empathy in enough peopl, to create real, systemic change.

But often “the right people” aren’t in these rooms, making them vibrate with applause at the end of each powerful panel. “The right people” are living their lives outside of these spaces deliberately, not interested in alternative views of the world because doing so may make them reconsider their own. No one likes to feel uncomfortable and for “the right people” these very conversations are about as uncomfortable as it gets.

Conversations that ask us to consider things like white, colonial privilege or demand we check our language and the impact it has on others. Conversations that question the role of religion in a modern world or our attitudes to sex, sexuality and gender. Conversations that say Climate Change is real and we might need to give up our convenience and consumerism. Conversations that ask us to question our judgements and ditch our entitlement. Conversations that ask us to be personally accountable for a change. Conversations that make the unconscious conscious in an irreversible way.

These conversations are not the ones “the right people”- the people making policy, deciding where the money goes and making choices on behalf of us all right now (and the voters who back them) - WANT to hear but they are the conversations that NEED to be heard if we are ever going to turn a world driven by fear and hate into one fuelled by hope and compassion. So how do we take these conversations out of the bubble of the converted and into the broader public arena where “the right people” can’t avoid them anymore?

I don’t have any big answers to this because those who want to look away will BUT there will be those who don’t and we need to make it easy for them not to.

For now, all I can do is record these festivals and turn them into a podcast that anyone, anywhere can access, share and hopefully put in front of others. That’s the least I can do and maybe that’s the answer right there - working out what the least we can do is and just doing it.

The Writes4Festivals podcast has released sessions from:

• The Feminist Writer’s Festival

• The Mudgee Readers Festival

• The National Young Writer’s Festival

• Storyfest

• Scone literary Festival

• Wollongong Writer’s Festival

Each has a distinct focus and flavour but all have a powerful social thread weaving throughout their themes and conversations. Great for writers, readers, thinkers and activists. Even better if you are none of those things.

You can listen to all of the Writes4Festivals episodes at www.writes4women.com/writes4festivals OR subscribe where yay get your podcasts. You can also follow on Facebook @Writes4Festivals.

The True Power of Writing Festivals