Blak & Bright Festival 2024 program announced
Blak & Bright Festival has announced its 2024 program, with the festival to run from 13 to 17 March in Naarm/Melbourne.
The biennial First Nations literature festival will this year feature ‘an almost entirely free program’, with 80 First Nations artists to appear at over 30 events across city venues, with many to be live-streamed.
Billed to be the festival’s ‘biggest iteration yet’, the 2024 program ‘celebrates the multifaceted expressions of First Nations writers, with a program ranging from songs to essays, oral stories to epic novels, plays to poetry’. Events fall under the theme ‘Blak Futures Now’, which ‘underscores the urgency and contemporary relevance of Indigenous voices in literature, emphasising the significance of these narratives in today’s world, whilst expressing optimism for the future’.
Among events in the 2024 program, filmmaker and musician Leah Purcell will deliver the keynote; followed by a panel featuring Daniel Browning, Gregg Dreise, Helen Milroy, Julie Janson, Kirli Saunders and Mariah Sweetman, as they ‘share 12 images that define their stories’. Across the full program, events will cover topics such as activism, LGBTQIA+ writing, young adult literature, pitching, craft, colonisation, First Nations women’s experiences, spoken word, song, and theatre.
Other featured artists in the program include Carly Sheppard, Kamarra Bell-Wykes, Kim Scott, Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko, Allara, Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, Maylene Yinar, Monica Jasmine Karo, Debra Dank, Elijah Money, Gary Lonesborough, Nazaree Dickerson, John Morrissey, Tamala Shelton, Waubgeshig Rice, Raelee Lancaster, Evelyn Araluen, Melanie Saward, Stone Motherless Cold, Susie Anderson, Graham Akhurst, Laniyuk, Aretha Brown, Hayley McQuire, Clint Hansen, and Jane Harrison.
Harrison, who is the festival’s director, said: ‘This year’s festival is a space for the exchange of ideas, the celebration of resilience, and the envisioning of diverse Blak futures. We are open to all audiences and want Blak stories to be shared and valued within the community. Join us for a transformative journey, in person or online, and experience the future of the millennia-old tradition of storytelling.’
This is the fourth Blak & Bright Festival. The biennial festival operates ‘with a foundational belief that Blak stories are relevant to everyone and for everyone’, and it ‘seeks to build and broaden the readership and audiences for First Nations writing and storytelling and get all audiences excited about First Nations narratives’. The first Blak & Bright Festival took place in 2016.
More information is available on the festival website.
Category: Local news
