Maleny Arts Council presents......

The 2012 Artist Talks

The first of this Series is “Maleny – the Book Town”

Maleny has long been recognised as a town of books, writers and readers. It has new and old bookshops, many celebrated authors and writers, a population of avid readers, and the Outspoken writers’ festival. Is Maleny a Book town?    What is a Book town?

Book Towns are usually small, rural communities that have brought together bookshops, events – such as book fairs and festivals - and initiatives centred on writing, reading and publishing.

In practice, many of the businesses concentrate on selling second-hand, antiquarian or specialised books and associated items, as well as businesses promoting the practice of traditional book arts that include calligraphy, binding, paper-making and printing.

Writers associated with film, travel, gardening, cooking, photography and artists are drawn to the town.    Book Towns have evolving identities as they become magnets for new forms of cultural tourism and sites for preserving the memory of traditional print culture and also embracing new technologies.

The first book town was established in Wales in 1961, and since that time the book town phenomenon has steadily escalated, not only across Europe but to every major continent worldwide, including Australia. Queensland does not have a Book Town.

This forum will address a range of questions community members may like answered, including:

• What criteria are required for a community to call itself a book town?

• What national and international comparisons exist?

• Would the book town concept contribute to the sustainability of current businesses or organisations?

• How would the book town concept be of benefit, and inclusive, of the wider Maleny community?

Australians increasingly take pleasure in and participate in a wide variety of cultural experiences, and progressively in the South East Queensland region, there is diversity and vitality of arts and cultural practice.    In terms of Queensland’s growing involvement in national and international literary culture, a sustainable Book Town development might be taken as an opportunity for Queensland to express its literary ‘coming of age’ through showcasing its literary heritage and its breadth of contemporary writing talent, and for Maleny to be at the centre of this.

Come, listen and contribute to a panel discussing these questions on

Tuesday 13 March at 5.00 for 5.30pm
RSL sub Branch Hall Maleny,   1 Bunya Street

The panel will be chaired by Professor Jennifer Radbourne, author, researcher and consultant to the arts, formerly Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University in Melbourne and national President of the Australasian Association for Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.

Panel members are:

• Jane Frank, arts manager, academic and researcher in Book Towns around the world, and former Vice President of the Queensland Arts Council.
  
  
• Steven Lang, prize-winning author, entrepreneur, conservationist, and Director of the Maleny extended writers’ festival “Outspoken”.
  
• Sue McCleary, coordinating librarian of the Maleny library with its rich resources for writers and readers, and currently developing a program to celebrate the 2012 National Year of Reading.
  
• Anne Brown, owner and manager of the bookshop Rosetta Books in Maleny which is part of Independent Booksellers network, and very committed to shaping readers in Maleny.
  
• Professor Joanne Scott, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Business at the University of the Sunshine Coast, social historian, teacher and researcher in oral history, and winner of a National Film and Sound Archives Fellowship in 2010.
  
• Chris Francis, co-owner of Maleny’s oldest bookstore the Maleny Bookshop with its second-hand and antiquarian books, a remarkable book memory and a passion for unique books and their readers.
   

At this forum we will discuss, as a community, the opportunities that being a Book Town would deliver to the community and the region, not only economically, but for enabling enhanced engagement with literary culture, the strengthening of our regional community and for showcasing the area’s rich cultural heritage, including its stories and our different ways of telling them.

Tickets $10 at Maleny Bookshop, 41 Maple Street, 54943666

Enquiries Joan Benson, 54942708 joan.benson@bigpond.com