‘Where do you get your ideas?’

It’s a common question, asked of all kinds of writers and storytellers – and of musicians, artists, journalists. Their answers typically involve some combination of curiosity, hard work and practice. Often, a simple prompt or idea becomes the seed of something unexpected and engrossing.

This event marks the opening of applications for Signal Boost – the Wheeler Centre’s new podcast mentorship and development scheme. Applications are open until 17 June 2020. (Update: the application deadline has been extended to 22 June 2020!)

Becky Sui-Zhen, Daniel Browning, Jess O'Callaghan, Helen Zaltzman, Elizabeth Kulas and Ivy Shih

This year, applicants will be asked to share a creative response to a theme – 'public'. To show us how it’s done, we’re inviting a range of accomplished audio makers to share stories, pitches and short audio samples interpreting the theme ‘float’.

Hear from an outstanding group of audio producers: Helen Zaltzman (The Allusionist, Answer Me This, Veronica Mars Investigations; UK), Daniel Browning (Awaye!), Jess O’Callaghan (Audiocraft, The Party Room, Background Briefing, RN Fictions) and Elizabeth Kulas (Planet Money, 7am, Reply All) – plus musician Becky Sui Zhen, and 2019 Signal Boost pilot participant Ivy Shih.

Together, they launch Signal Boost 2020, toast the open-ended power of audio storytelling and celebrate the act of creating great ideas from small beginnings. Hosted by Wheeler Centre audio producer Beth Atkinson-Quinton. #TWCSignalBoost

The 2020 Signal Boost programme is supported by the Ian Potter Foundation and LOM.

Sally Warhaft, left, and Joshua Wong

Joshua Wong was still a teenager when he rose to international prominence as a leader in Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, protesting increased Chinese Communist Party intervention in the city’s electoral system. 

‘That’s the transformation of Hong Kongers … Before last summer, nobody could imagine more than 2 million people taking to the streets. […] But we did it. Almost one-fourth of the population [stood] up against the regime of Beijing.’

A lot has happened since. Wong has served two prison terms and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He's co-founded a new political party, Demosistō, and written a book, Unfree Speech. All the while, the protest movement in Hong Kong has simmered on, boiling over last year into extraordinary mass protests and brutal police confrontations.

With Sally Warhaft, Wong talks about the evolution of Hong Kong’s democracy movement and the impact of COVID-19. Assembly restrictions enforced due to the pandemic have hampered demonstrations and possibly cleared the path for more authoritarian rule in the city. In mid-April, more than a dozen high-profile pro-democracy activists were arrested.

How does Wong expect these arrests to impact Hong Kong's legislative elections in September? What effect might a weakened United States and an emboldened China have on the One Country, Two Systems principle that grants Hong Kong special autonomy?

Wong reflects on these questions and more. 

#TWCFifthEstate

See also   The Fifth Estate: Joshua Wong: Unfree Speech  /  Activism

With Joshua Wong and Sally Warhaft

  The Fifth Estate: The World’s Largest Party: China  /  Australian politics   What’s That Sound? Activism Today  /  Activism

With Tess Lawley, Gary Foley, Amelia Telford and 2 others

Clare Wright, left, and Rebecca Traister, at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne — Photo: Emily Harms

‘The stories aren’t simple. They’re nuanced. And it’s our job to insist on that nuance – and not let everything get turned into a t-shirt.’

Rebecca Traister

Rebecca Traister is an American journalist, polemicist and New York Times-bestselling author who writes at the intersection of feminism, politics and culture. Her latest book, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, investigates the potential and complexity of women’s anger as a political and social tool – both historically, and in the reinvigorated contemporary women’s movement in the West. How have women’s expressions of emotion been framed to delegitimise or condemn them? How can conflict and tension within and between factions of the women’s movement make the broader collective stronger?

Traister tracks the transformative force of female fury (and its suppression) through abolition, suffrage, temperance; through the labour and civil rights movements, and from now into the future. Are our perspectives on women’s anger changing? How can women use their dissatisfaction to progress their rights?

In April of 2019, Traister joined Clare Wright in conversation at the Athenaeum Theatre.