Multicultural Australia in partnership with QPAC is excited to be hosting Changing the Conversation: Creating Belonging Through Storytelling, the final event in a new series of thought-provoking discussions exploring key issues in our increasingly multicultural society.
Facilitated by Michelle Law, and featuring a panel of experts, this discussion will explore how we share and tell stories, and how our stories shape us as a nation, as a community and as individuals.
We recognise the power and importance of storytelling and is a particularly powerful tool for marginalised and stigmatised groups. Storytelling can be beneficial for the person sharing their experience, for their community and for society. Sharing personal stories is a powerful way of generating empathy, understanding and solidarity; challenging bias, assumptions, and prejudice, and driving commitment to and understanding of opportunities for human rights-based reform.
Join us in November for this thought-provoking finale for the Changing the Conversation series in 2023.
Event Details:
Thursday 16 November
6.30pm – 8pm
QPAC Concert Hall
South Brisbane
Click on ‘Book Now’ to be directed to QPAC ticket sales – it’s essential that tickets are pre-booked.
About Changing the Conversation
Bringing together thought leaders from academia, government, business, and the community to engage in robust discussions about multiculturalism in the Australian context, and facilitated by renowned writer and host Benjamin Law, this series explores issues of who and where we are as a nation and what we need to do to create a society that better reflects and cares for all its people. Changing the Conversation: Creating Belonging Through Storytelling is the final of four events in this series to be held in 2023.
We look forward to you engaging with this conversation.
Who are the speakers?
Michelle Law is a writer and actor – working in print, screen and stage – currently based on Gadigal Land. Her works include the plays, Single Asian Female (La Boite Theatre Company), Top Coat (Sydney Theatre Company), and Miss Peony (Belvoir St Theatre); the television shows Homecoming Queens (SBS) and Safe Home (SBS); and the book Asian Girls are Going Places (Hardie Grant). Her awards include two Australian Writers Guild Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award, and the Arts & Culture 40 Under 40 Awards, which celebrates the country’s most influential Asian Australians. Michelle is also a widely published freelance author and a prolific speaker who regularly appears on panels and at festivals.
Dung is a lived experience anti-racism Story Telling mentor, educator and advocate, and Co-Founder of Our Race, a social enterprise made of story holders, practitioners and researchers who educate and advocate for ethical story telling. Growing up in Ipswich during the 80s and 90s where she witnessed and experienced racism regularly instilled in Dung a strong sense of social and racial justice. Dung has used her lived experience as one of her greatest strengths as both a driver to fight for justice and to encourage others to value lived experience as the highest form of expertise. She demonstrates this through her work at Our Race which she co-founded and serves as a director and Story Partner.
Papua New Guinean-Australian soprano, Heru Pinkasova, weaves her stories through reimagined Papuan folk songs, en route the classical canon to create soulful operatic cabaret. Following celebrated performances in Three Marys, an opera by Andree Greenwell, The Beginning of Nature (ADT), Hot Brown Honey, Showboat and Songs My Aunties Taught Me, Heru has lovingly curated a collection of melodies that are part opera, tradition and comedy, and one hundred percent remarkable. In addition to providing insights on the Changing the Conversation panel, Heru will deliver a special performance to conclude this year’s series.
Omid Tofighian - Panelist
Omid Tofighian is an award-winning lecturer, researcher and community advocate, combining philosophy with interests in citizen media, popular culture, displacement and discrimination. His publications include Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues (Palgrave 2016); translation of Behrouz Boochani’s multi-award-winning autobiographical novel, No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (Picador 2018); co-editor of special issues for journals Literature and Aesthetics (2011), Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media (2019) and Southerly (2021); and co-translator/co-editor of Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani (Bloomsbury 2023).
See why previous attendees love the Changing the Conversation Series:
“An amazing night where I heard inspiring speakers and listened to a future that filled me with hope for a new direction.”
“…extremely worthwhile. Some extremely interesting speakers from across the age range. I am looking forward to the next event.”
“…the Multicultural Australia panelists were brilliant.”
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