Spun Stories (July 2020)

On Thursday 16 July, FOJAM hosted SPUN STORIES - The Untold, a storytelling event on ZOOM featuring Deborah Cheetham AO, Liv Steigrad, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Mahla Bird, Edie Shepherd, Imbi the Girl. Moderated by Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg.

Our lives, our cultures, our days, are composed of many entangled stories. Are we a sum of the stories we choose to tell? Do we choose to tell different people different stories? Amidst a global pandemic and protests for social justice around the globe, we asked these six unique individuals from our local community to tell their untold stories. In the spirit of the original Knitting Factory on New York’s Lower East Side, and the much loved podcast and live story slam, The Moth, SPUN STORIES - The Untold was a raw, intimate and provocative evening of tales and sharing. And don’t worry, if you missed it, you can watch the recording here.

 

Spun Stories (Aug 2020)

Our popular storytelling slam event Spun Stories - Is this my story to tell? was to take place at Howler, Melbourne on Wednesday 11th August with a fantastic line-up of storytellers. Due to the news of Lockdown 6.0 in Victoria on Thursday 5th August we are very sad to say that we will be cancelling the event, after having already rescheduled it once from June. It was sold out. People were excited. Artists were ready.

Five artists, storytellers, thinkers and performers will tap into the subject matter of ‘Death of The Author’ and dissect ongoing questions around authorship and cultural appropriation. 

  • Who has the ‘right’ to tell which story?

  • Are we only able to tell stories that we have experienced ourselves?

  • Is it ok to try and embody another character and tell their story as an act of empathy and compassion?

  • Can we separate the character of a person from the work they create?

This year’s lineup includes writer, journalist, broadcaster and descendent of Holocaust survivors, Ramona Koval; acclaimed queer Jewish writer, researcher & online editor at Archer Magazine, Alice Chipkin; proud Birpai-Thungutti man, writer, journalist and senior editor for News Online at NITV, Jack Latimore; celebrated producer, artist, multi-instrumentalist and sometimes rapper, Joelistics; and multi-award winning Zimbabwean writer and performance poet, Thabani Tshuma.