Responding to the urgent matters of our time has been a constant driver for Antidote festival, which announced its first speakers for the two-day talks and ideas event last month.
We’ve already been blown away by the headline speakers coming to Sydney Opera House in August, including former Sonic Youth frontwoman Kim Gordon, Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Christopher Wylie and Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson.
Now Antidote has announced a brand-new panel talk calling attention to the urgent need to halt climate change. The panel features Climate Now co-founder Kyle Pope, conservationist Tim Flannery, and CNN Indonesia anchor Desi Anwar. Walkley award-winning journalist Kerry O’Brien is chairing the discussion, which will ask whether the media has failed in its reporting and how it should approach the topic of climate change now.
More new names on the bill include Cantopop singer and LGBTQIA rights activist Denise Ho, who will appear in conversation with Vice UK editor Zing Tsjeng; American international attorney Kimberley Motley, the first foreign lawyer to practice law in Afghanistan; and Peter Greste, who will moderate the panel talk My Crime is Journalism.
There’s another new panel discussion that will focus on the economics of disability. Speakers include Worimi man and CEO of First Peoples Disability Network Damian Griffis, and disability and human rights activist Samantha Connor.
City of Sydney councillor Jess Scully will address alternative models of housing and home ownership on stage with author Peter Mares (Not Quite Australian: How Temporary Migration Is Changing the Nation), social geographer Louise Crabtree and Jeremy McLeod, founder of Nightingale Housing.
Nayuka Gorrie, Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer, joins the Guardian’s Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam, and Eualeyai/Kamillaroi woman, academic and host of ABC Speaking Out Larissa Behrendt, for a panel talk about the Aboriginal Massacre mapping work done by Newcastle University.
ABC Local Radio host Myf Warhurst will moderate a conversation on art and rebellion with rock icon Kim Gordon, and TV presenter and actor Faustina Agolley will chair the panel Because Self Care about our addiction to pop culture, as well as speaking with activist DeRay McKesson.
They’re also throwing in a couple of new workshops – check out the free Auslan (sign language) workshop hosted by the Deaf Society, and learn how to brew your own cuppa using native ingredients at the Native Tea Making workshop hosted by Sharon Windsor of Indigiearth.
Antidote takes place from Aug 31-Sep 1. Tickets are on sale now, from $20 per session.
Did you hear? Sydney's home to the first ever Indigenous rooftop garden dedicated to native plants.