MANIFESTO

An evening with Robyn Archer AO Thursday 31 March 2016

Watch the YouTube video HERE

On a recent research trip to Central and South America, in her role as a member of the Council for Australia and Latin America Relations (COALAR), Robyn Archer visited the inspiring coastal home of poet Pablo Neruda. The previous day she had explored the Museo de la Memoria in Santiago, and in the Isla Negra house she spotted an edition of Neruda’s epic poem Canto General. Since then her thoughts have roamed around the concept of the manifesto: Ginsberg’s Howl came to mind, and Dylan’s Hard Rain (which Robyn sings in one of her current shows The OTHER Great American Songbook) and her own O You Lucky Country which she wrote almost forty years ago, after her first trip out of Australia.

In this birthday lecture, the singer, writer, director, artistic director and public advocate of the arts approaches art and life in the spirit of a kind of manifesto. As we celebrate twenty five years of the University of South Australia, Robyn Archer reflects on the important things which might surface from a career which began in earnest, in Adelaide, over fifty years ago.

If the definition of manifesto describes a public declaration of the principles, motives and intentions of the issuer, we can expect to hear robust ideas about the place of art in our lives, and what we must do now to recognize, preserve and expand the essential role of artists in the twenty-first century.

Robyn Archer AO has concert performances through 2016 in Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne and Oxford, and is writing a new music theatre show which she will direct. She is currently Strategic Advisor, Arts and Culture, Gold Coast: Artistic Director of the Light in Winter (Federation Square): Deputy Chair of the Australia Council: Chair of NIDA's inaugural Master of Fine Arts (Cultural Leadership): member of the Council for Australia and Latin America Relations (COALAR). She is an ambassador for the Adelaide Crows, and patron of Adelaide’s Brink Productions and Restless Dance Theatre.

Presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre

While the views presented by speakers within the Hawke Centre public program are their own and are not necessarily those of either the University of South Australia or The Hawke Centre, they are presented in the interest of open debate and discussion in the community and reflect our themes of: strengthening our democracy - valuing our diversity - and building our future.

The copying and reproduction of any transcripts within the Hawke Centre public program is strictly forbidden without prior arrangements.