Bring Unspeakable to your community
Host a local book launch and I’ll contribute a community resilience workshop.
Richard Hil and I wrote Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Climate Catastrophe and its Consequences in Australia to open a conversation about where climate change is taking us, what its consequences may mean for Australia, and how we prepare for a future in which significant disruption is increasingly part of the landscape.
I would like some of those conversations to lead somewhere practical.
Over the coming year, I am therefore inviting communities and not-for-profit organisations to host local launches of Unspeakable. If you bring people together for a genuine local launch, I will contribute a three-hour community resilience workshop at no professional fee, normally commissioned from $3,000.
I am making the offer available for eight opportunities over the coming year.
How the visit works
The usual format takes place over an evening and the following morning, but changes can be made to fit your community.
Evening: an Unspeakable community conversation
You organise and promote a public launch of Unspeakable, bringing together people from across your community.
I envisage these as local conversations rather than conventional author talks. A local host can interview me about the book and connect its ideas with the experiences and questions of the community, followed by discussion with the audience.
I will bring copies of Unspeakable for purchase and signing, and stay afterwards for informal conversation.
The following morning: a three-hour community resilience workshop
The following morning, we turn the conversation towards your place itself.
Drawing on my experience through Plan C, Safer Future, Fire and Rescue NSW and more than two decades working around disasters and community resilience in Australia and overseas, I will facilitate a practical workshop exploring what disruption could mean locally, where vulnerabilities may lie, what capabilities and relationships already exist, and what people can strengthen, practically, but also socially and emotionally.
The workshop will be informed by the local context and by what I hear from people during the launch.
You provide
The local host:
Organises suitable venues for the launch and workshop.
Promotes the event locally and aims to bring together at least 25 people.
Helps invite a varied cross-section of the community to participate.
Nominates a local contact to coordinate the visit with me.
Contributes towards reasonable travel and accommodation costs. For community groups and small not-for-profits, I am happy to share these costs.
Promotes Unspeakable and lets attendees know that copies will be available to purchase.
I provide
I:
Participate in the public Unspeakable launch and community conversation.
Bring copies of the book for purchase and signing.
Meet with the local host beforehand to understand the community and local context.
Adapt my established community resilience workshop to that context.
Facilitate a three-hour community resilience workshop at no professional fee, normally commissioned from $3,000.
Who should participate?
I encourage hosts to bring together people with different relationships to their community.
Depending on the place, that might include neighbourhood and community groups, local government, emergency services, health and social services, local businesses, environmental organisations, First Nations organisations and people who contribute to their community outside formal institutions.
There is no prescribed mix. What is useful is having people in the room who bring different experiences, relationships and forms of local knowledge.
If I can’t come in person
Where distance, cost or timing makes an in-person visit impractical, you can still organise a local Unspeakable event and I can join remotely, including to contribute a one-hour online community resilience workshop at no professional fee.
We can agree on a format that makes sense for your community.
Books
For in-person events, I will arrange copies of Unspeakable for purchase and signing. The host promotes the availability of the book, while I take responsibility for supplying and selling the copies.
There is no requirement for the host or attendees to purchase a minimum number of books.
If an organisation would like to purchase copies in advance for participants, we can arrange this separately.
Practical details
The offer is capped at eight opportunities over the coming year and is subject to availability and mutually agreed dates.
For in-person visits, reasonable travel and accommodation costs are agreed beforehand.
The workshop draws on my established community resilience methodology and is adapted to the local context. It does not include extensive bespoke research, consultation or the development of a separate community resilience strategy or plan.
An enquiry does not constitute a confirmed booking. The visit is confirmed once we have agreed on the date, format and practical arrangements.
If you would like to bring Unspeakable to your community, tell me where you are, a little about your community or organisation, who you hope to bring together, approximately when you would like to hold the event, and why you think this conversation would be useful where you live.
If your idea does not fit the format exactly, you are still welcome to get in touch.
Enquire about hosting an Unspeakable community launch →