A penny for your thoughts

Five months from now it will be zero at dawn and dusk. The moon will cast a stronger shadow than the sun, the ancient trees of Sturt Street will twinkle with lights and ice. Howling gales will blow from the south, chilling to the bones the people that shuffle from car to café, gathering over hot coffee and soup with friends. Woollen jackets, scarfs and gloves will pile next to papers, children swaddled and swathed. This town comes alive in winter.

Today I want to share an idea. Ballarat is full of heritage buildings – private homes and grand public spaces, laneways, crypts and chambers. These places serve as a critical cultural reference – a pointer to our past as we move to a vastly different future. We revere these places, as we should. But do we use these places?

I want these places to come alive.

Mid-winter, 8 pm Sunday night. You receive your text message inviting you to this month’s special location. You park the car and walk in the bracing air with your friend or partner, and move between buildings and down laneways. There are no signs, only a bare outline in your mind of where you need to be.

You hear laughing and whispering, an almost childlike excitement. A warm glow floods the laneway or landing, and you enter: one Ballarat’s secret treasures, hidden in plain sight, a building you have never entered, never been welcomed to. You hang your coat and get your bowl of soup, and then take your seat.

Tonight you will watch a classic film, presented by a student from the university or a visiting academic or one of your fellow viewers expert in this genre. They will frame the film for you, engage you in a short critical awareness, and then you will relax in the dark: warm, fed, contented, and two floors underground in Ballarat. Drinks are served; hot chocolate and gluhwein, and the film ends with discussions and sharing of thoughts.

Next month we move to a new film in a new location and we explore new friendships and new spaces. We bring alive some of our most adored buildings in a new way. We use spaces designed to be enjoyed, at an hour when they sit idle.

It’s a small idea, and I know someone who wants to make this happen in Ballarat. Would you support it?

My big idea:

Annual Thinker-in-Residence at the Mechanic’s Institute.

A renowned public thinker stays in Ballarat for two weeks a year, meets leaders and the community, runs a series of workshops, makes two key speeches on the thoughts and ideas shaping contemporary thinking in the world. The Courier runs regular articles charting the Thinker’s activities, promoting and provoking. At the end of the two weeks, the Thinker presents a keynote speech at a reception, and outlines the three final and best ‘new ideas’ – new ideas for our town to debate. The Committee for Ballarat takes on the role of driving the ideas. The community embraces innovation. Council is influenced, people are engaged, thing’s change. A new Thinker returns the year after and builds on the previous Thinker’s work.

What are your ideas, big and small? And what are you doing about them?