Looking for startling stories set in Sydney’s past?

The Imaginative Recreation Project has collected, curated and shared little-known stories from Sydney’s past and built awareness about the art of crafting stories from archival material.

In 2023, we offered writing workshops and masterclasses designed to inspire and support new, emerging and experienced writers to invent stories drawn from the archives.

In 2024, we added eight new audio stories to our Sonic City Sydney series and stage a live performance.

 

audio stories

In 2024, we produced audio stories selected from this callout and they are now featured on our Sonic City Sydney website and the GeoTourist mobile phone app.

Thanks to the authors and sound designers as well as curator, Ariella van Lunh, Martin Gallagher (Echidna Audio), assistant producer, Zoe Hercus and web designer, Bettina Kaiser.

 

 

on stage

 

RATS – creative development showing + community discussion

7pm, November 8th, Glebe Town Hall

‘What lengths will we go to, to keep our community and spaces safe?’

Set in Surry Hills, RATS re-imagines Sydney’s first ‘known’ queer bar. The play is an exploration of the complex relationship between the queer community and the police in the late 1930’s Australia. With dwindling numbers of gay and lesbian bars, RATS asks us to remember and revaluate the importance of queer spaces for community.

The play also explores the role of women in Australia, the power struggle of gender, what it is like to not fit the lesbian binary of ‘femme’ or ‘butch’, and the independence that being a sex worker gave women in the 1930s and how these themes resonate today.

  • Written by Laneikka Denne and directed by Julia Robertson.
  • Performed by: Mikey Sakinofsky, Shayne, Jim Williams, Craig Baldwin, Madelaine Osborn, Dominic Lui

RATS is inspired by scenes from Fiona Kelly McGregor’s novel Iris, which dramatised a clandestine Sydney 1930s nightclub colloquially known as ‘Black Ada’s’, or ‘The Avenue Club’. This space was run by a Black/Blak Australian whom research suggests was likely to have been Samuel Roy Pearce aka Ray Sayles (1898-1976).

This showing involved the performance of the working script and community discussion about themes, the writing and the storytelling mode, with the goal of improving and further developing the work.

A SPINELESS WONDERS | RACREATE Co-production. Produced with the support of the City of Sydney Creative Grant for the Imaginative Recreation project.

workshops

Ekphrasis and the Archives: Writing Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction, A masterclass with Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington.
WHEN: Saturday, Oct 21, 10.30-12noon
WHERE: Customs House Library Meeting Room, 31 Alfred St, Sydney

 

 

The Memory Place, Writing personal history through the objects we love with Caroline Reid.
WHEN: Sunday, Nov 11, 10am-1pm,
WHERE: Tote Building, Zetland.

 

 

callout for submissions – closed

Submissions to the Imaginative Recreation project may be inspired by your own personal archives, family history or experiences. Or you could start exploring the City of Sydney archives available through such sources as City of Sydney Archives, Sydney Cultural Walks (PDFs and app), Dictionary of Sydney, Sydney Oral Histories, Museum of Sydney, Pride History Group Sydney, State Library of NSW, Trove.

You can submit your work in the form of written words (Word doc) or an audio recording (such as mp3).

If your submission is selected, you will be invited to work with our curators to prepare your work for publication as an audio-story on the Sonic City–Sydney website.

Deadline: Midnight, Sunday 17 December, 2023

No entry fee. Selected writers will be paid $200.

Word limits: 450 to 500 words or 2-3 mins of audio recording

Submissions will only be accepted via this link.

This project is curated and presented by Spineless Wonders and Echidna Audio. We would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the City of Sydney Cultural Grants Program.

We acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this land and pay our respects to the Elders both past and present.

 

Got a question? Email us at info@shortaustralianstories.com.au