100 Thousand Poets for Change have Unlimited Poetic License
On the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, artists and performers are bullied and proscribed by bureaucrats from local and state government agencies. They are also limited in their opportunities to express themselves because of inflexible, incompetent and ignortant laws and regulations that discourage anything other than officially funded and sanctioned events, especially when it comes to busking, live music, grassroots community events and other less conventional kinds of performance.
The Sunshine Coast is a region of outstanding environmental significance, part of which is designated a UNESCO biosphere, which has a quality of life and community amentiy which attracted many creative people to move here in the first place. Many of those same creative people are frustrated with the status quo imposed by government, local authority and by wealthy retirees who confuse lifestyle with profit growth and property values, and who complain whenever anything different happens, insisting that such events should be controlled, closed down, and kept away, let alone out of sight and mind.
This region’s participation in the global event 100 Thousand Poets For Change is a creative challenge to the status quo, intended to encourage the people of the Sunshine Coast to empower ourselves through poetry, stand up for our rights and to express the issues we feel are important and inspirational in our lives.
We don’t need a permit to be poets because we issued ourselves unlimited poetic licence from the beginning!
The Sunshine Coast has a number of pressing issues including:
* high vulnerability to climate change as a subtropical coastal region of Australia.
* rapid population growth and overdevelopment causing degradation of the environment;
* political conflict on issues such as climate change between those who advocate action and those who deny that climate change is anything but conspiracy theory &/or propaganda.
* disenfranchisement of connection with local councils through enforced amalgamations into a regional entity in 2008;
* economic vulnerability and hardship through lack of affordability in housing and over-reliance on the seasonal cycles of tourism, property & retail sectors;
* an exodus of young people to the big cities like Brisbane & Sydney through lack of local employment, education & creative opportunities and a mass media fed perception that young people are to be feared;
* a greater need for health and social support for the increasingly high proportion of retirees and elderly resident in the area;
* opening up awareness issues of equity, social justice, peace and sustainablity, not just in our community, but for the great world as a whole, to interact with in positive & purposeful ways.
The poets and creative people of the Sunshine Coast QLD Australia welcome the chance to participate in 100 Thousand Poets for Change. This is an event for peace and sustainability that brings together people at the local level on a global basis.
On Saturday 24 September 2011 the Sunshine Coast will be changed by the powers of poets without permits and with unlimited poetic licence!
Hamish Danks Brown a.k.a. Danksta Downunder
