Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about literature. Specifically, I want to talk about the UNESCO City of Literature listing for Hobart, and LitFest, a festival hosted by the Salamanca Arts Centre that celebrates all things literature in Hobart.
First, the UNESCO City of Literature gong that Hobart got several years ago means that we join cities such as Baghdad, Barcelona, Grenada, Lahore, Melbourne, Rio and Seattle. It is part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network. UNESCO is the United Nation’s educational, scientific and cultural organisation. The Creative Cities Network is basically a program to recognise cities in seven creative fields: craft and folk art, design, film, gastronomy, literature, music and the media arts.
When it comes to Cities of Literature, there are 53 cities all around the world, in 39 countries and on six continents. In 2003 Hobart was added to the list. It is because we meet seven set criteria. Things like:
- the quality, quantity and diversity of publishing;
- the quality, quantity and diversity of education programs about literature;
- that literature plays an important role in our city;
- that hosting literature festivals and events is a feature of our city;
- that there is an existence of libraries;
- that there is an involvement in the publishing sector; and
- there is active involvement in traditional and new media promoting literature.
It is fabulous that Hobart got that gong because we have a long history of literature. I remember the name that is etched in my brains as a child, the bookshop Ellison Hawker. I used to go with my father to Ellison Hawker’s farm at Kempton, and he was one of the booksellers here.
Obviously, we have the State Library and at the moment we have an incredible facility being developed at MONA, which presents the exciting future for literature going forward. We also have some incredible independent bookstores like Fullers, the Hobart Bookshop, Cracked and Spineless, that sells second-hand books and has a fantastic second-hand and Tasmanian section, and we have your average commercial retailers.
When it comes to publishers, we have some incredible publications: Tasmania 40⁰ South has been around for a long time, and ISLAND magazine is a great community-based production that is delivering four editions a year of writing and the like.
We obviously have a long history of Palawa storytellers in this city and in this state. We have some really interesting emerging artists and platforms for people such as the recently-established zine fair where you have people like Jon Kudelka and Josh Santospirito leading the way with zines, the new creation, really quite funky and quite interesting artistic and literature creations.
We have writers both historical and contemporary, and we are incredibly lucky. Amongst our writers we have Vogel Award winners, Stella Prize winners, Commonwealth Writers Prize winners, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award winners, a Booker Prize winner, and the Baillie Gifford Prize winner. It is people like Ben Walter, Richard Flanagan, Katherine Scholes, Sarah Day, James Dryburgh and that absolute treasure of our literary scene, Pete Hay.
Art and literature is important for something that is close to my heart, for conservation. The Tasmanian Land Conservancy publishes books like Breathing Space, Bob Brown publishing books on Recherche Bay and the Styx Self-drive Guide – really important tools to get people out there.
Closer to my heart, my wife, Stephenie, is an author. She wrote a book called The People’s Park about the Domain and land use conflict at the Domain. She wrote a biography on Claudio Alcorso called Colour and Movement. Claudio Alcorso was the person who established Moorilla which is now MONA.
The LitFest is hosted by the Salamanca Art Centre. It is on until 12 April, just this weekend. On Thursday last week I went to the opening to hear Peter Timms give a really meandering presentation about how we became a city of literature and how we compare to other cities. There have been talks, play readings and other things. On Saturday it concludes with an indie author book fair. I encourage people to get along there, and while we celebrate literature here, I want to finish with a sobering statistic and remind people that the Grattan Institute showed that 62 per cent of adults have a proficient literacy level. It is not good enough. We need to do more and organisations like 26Ten do a fantastic effort in that space.
