Welcome to Lalor Library, one of Melbourne’s hardest working Libraries.

Situated in one of the most disadvantaged suburbs in Victoria, this local library is far from being the silent, dusty, bound up old institution of the past! This is a community hub and a place that ‘fills the gaps’.

It’s where people go for entertainment, tutoring, friendship, a creative outlet, personal and professional development, to access the internet and printing, language classes, job seeker and social services information and sometimes, just a safe and comfortable place to wait or rest. In this place, knowledge, information and works of the imagination are freely available to all. And the library provides the setting to observe the resilient community in action.

This project was developed in partnership with the City of Whittlesea. How do people who share the same postcode become a community? How are connections made between people? How do little, ordinary moments become opportunities for cooperation, perhaps even friendship? Do people feel the limits of their neighbourhoods? Do people living in less resourced suburbs feel their disadvantage?

Wogs, Dagos, Post-War migrants, New Australians, Zips, Marios and Marias, I-Ties, Multicultural Australia. This episode we meet heaps of Italo-Australians to subtly address these labels, some embraced, some forgotten and some derogatory by asking the question: Can we define ourselves? Is it possible to document the commonalities of experience and of culture and to start to trace the transition from migrant group to diaspora?

together, we create a collage that in some ways might confirm your impressions of Italian-Australians and in others, may also challenge it.

This is not a nostalgic gaze into tradition, nor is it a definitive contemporary document, but rather an introduction to the idea that it is possible to be both Australian and Italian, and it is possible to feel like you are neither.

Welcome to Lalor Library, one of Melbourne’s hardest working Libraries. 

Situated in one of the most disadvantaged suburbs in Victoria, this local library is far from being the silent, dusty, bound up old institution of the past! This is a community hub

and a place that ‘fills the gaps’. It’s where people go for entertainment, tutoring, friendship, a creative outlet, personal and professional development, to access the internet and printing, language classes, job seeker and social services information and sometimes, just a safe and comfortable place to wait or rest. In this place, knowledge, information and works of the

imagination are freely available to all. And the library provides the setting

to observe the resilient community in action. 

How do people who share the same postcode become a community? How are connections made between people? How do little, ordinary moments become opportunities for cooperation, perhaps even friendship? Do people feel the limits of their neighbourhoods?

Meet Phylis Read.

Phylis spent her childhood as an 'inmate' at Ballarat Orphanage. She has dedicated her life to making sure the abuse she and many other children endured is not lost within the bureaucratic debates about significance.  She wanted to tell us why she felt so strongly that the buildings of the former Ballarat orphanage site- a place where children were abused, tortured, raped and enslaved should be saved from development and made into a museum or memorial. We travelled to outback South Australia in June 2018, where she lived with her daughter and her house birds to listen to her perspective.   

In the absence of a site to remember what can people do? Be a part of the remembering. Help us build a memorial. Send images of your favourite plants to aussiesarcup@gmail.com

This episode is part one of a four-part series. This project is funded by Public Records Office Victoria. With very special thanks to Nicky Stott from 3CR and Christian Bianco at Terra Firma sound.

Art as heritage activism.

Meet Erin.

Erin lives in Ballarat and makes films. She wants audiences to listen and to empathise with the people who's stories she documents. When it comes to saving Ballarat orphanage, Erin wants us to stop the bureaucratic bullshit, and listen to those for whom this hell hole was home.

Erin agreed to chat with us over coffee, on a windy winter's day, in Ballarat.

DO SOMETHING! Be a part of the remembering. Help us build a memorial. Send images of your favourite plants to aussiesarcup@gmail.com

This episode is part two of a four-part series. This project is funded by Public Records Office Victoria. With very special thanks to Christian Bianco at Terra Firma sound.

Meet Raffy - student, bartender, future Australian. She'll respond to calls from our Prime Minister for temporary visa holders to 'go home' and explain why its just not that easy.

So, this episode we arc up about our Australian hospitality. Just a few weeks ago, these young 'global citizens' were our cash cows in a globalised economy. Now, it seems being a local is the difference between security and falling through the cracks.