Key Highlights & Insights From Speakers & Delegates At Newkind Conference 2020
What happens when almost 500 Indigenous Australians, social entrepreneurs, activists, changemakers, academics and purpose-led people come together to learn, share and teach? During Newkind Conference, this year held in beautiful Marion Bay, Tasmania, Impact Boom interviewed over 37 people to hear their key highlights and takeaways in an effort to advance the conversation beyond the gathering.
In its fifth year, Newkind Conference didn’t disappoint. Covering topics such as Indigenous culture, social enterprise, activism, spirituality, creativity, sexuality and innovation, the zero-waste gathering was a melting pot for learning, connecting and rejuvenating.
It’s important to note the huge effort of Director Erfan Daliri, the wonderful speakers and dedicated volunteers, in making the conference a success.
Some of the key themes to emerge from our interviews and conversations during the forum included:
The importance of community
Discussion in a safe environment
Living zero-waste and supporting the natural environment
Managing personal health; both mental and physical
Cooperation and embracing Indigenous practices and culture with Business
Sustainable business practices
Methods to enact activism in modern society
37 speakers, delegates and guests from around the globe share their key highlights from the 2020 Newkind Conference.
(listen to the podcast for full details)
A huge thank you to the wonderful Impact Boom team who were on the ground: Carlie Daly, Tony Fox, Misha Pomothy and Davinia Vella provided strong team support during the week.
Erfan Daliri, Director of Newkind
What continues to blow me away is the desire and motivation that people continue to show in wanting to create a better world. You can go through your days at work and through family life and not realise, but there really is a strong desire underlying everything that we do to want to be a part of change, and to want to be able to create goodness in the world. When you're bringing people together in a space like this, it really is enlivening and it fills you with hope to see how strongly people feel about justice, inequality, sustainability and equity and bringing that density together really does make my year. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone back here again in January 2021. We're already starting planning on it and I'm really, really excited about that.
Zara de CLerk
I'm a visionary artist and I've been here at Newkind for the first time now and I'm so inspired and almost overwhelmed about the knowledge here and the different views and the different perspectives. For me it brought a broader perspective on things and I feel like Newkind ticks a lot of boxes in the sense of creativity, innovation, business, spirituality, sexuality and music. I would say [these are] points that we need to touch on in society or in our daily lives more and so it's been a full journey and a lot of inspiration and insights. I’m definitely joining next year as well.
Alex Felina
My takeaway from the conference is more the awareness and the environment and the practicality of even simple things like our waste and how much waste we have, and being aware more of our everyday actions.
Tom Dawkins, StartSomeGood
I just love Newkind for the diversity and quality. The people who are here are just really amazing people looking to come together and figure out better ways to make a difference. I think doing so in Tasmania with a real acknowledgement that we're on Indigenous land in a beautiful location, just creates something very special. We're not in a conference hall, but we're also not just partying and getting away from it all with it. We're deeply engaged with the wider world thinking about how we can make a bigger difference. That's what it's all about for me in terms of the practical experience. I spend a lot of time in the kids space because I'm here with my kids. But that too is a delight meeting other parents, who like us, are willing to bring their kids to something like this and kind of unify or combine this experience with their families and expose the kids to it. That's been wonderful for them too.
Iris Olivet Llach
My highlight was hearing a lot of songs from the
Indigenous people here and learning some of their stories.
Nina Sackprasith
My highlight of Newkind is gaining lots of insight on my own emotional wellbeing, and how to take better care of it. Also gaining inspiration from other people who have rediscovered their purpose or are discovering the journeys in what they're going to be passionate about and what causes they're fighting for.
Dan Clabski
It's the second time that I've been here and once again, it's proven to be an incredible connector of human beings and it seems to always create this inter-web of beings with which opportunities and possibilities just open up in terms of working together. Super stoked to have been here again this year.
Dr. Julia Benkert, Swinburne University
I'm a lecturer in management at Swinburne University of Technology at Hawthorne in Melbourne. I've been hearing of Newkind for a number of years actually. And it was this year that I felt a clear intention that really drove me here. I'm teaching business students system thinking, sustainability and business ethics and I feel it has always a number of new ideas, new initiatives that I can feed into that. I see my work as a vehicle for social change and I feel Newkind is a big vehicle for social change. I don't have one favourite keynote or workshop, but I really feel like this connects people in a vitally important way. I feel I haven't come across a platform that does connect people from all walks of life, different expertise, backgrounds, parts of society in a similar way, and I feel Newkind is really adopting a unique position in that. That's why I would love to see it going forwards. I actually had a vision today of Newkind becoming a global movement. My idea is that 10 years going forwards, we will have Newkind workshops all over the world. Little regional conferences where people in other parts of the world come together in a similar way to share knowledge and that there will be some exchange between all those global hubs where we keep feeding each other. That's my dream, my vision. I'll be back next year with more input than I've given this year and I look forward to it.
Maya
My biggest takeaway from the festival is that there's a great community of people of activists who are like-minded and they want to support the work that you're doing. They want to back you, they want to chat with you, about things that you are feeling and experiencing. They want to work through the dark and all the good times with you and if you just push a bit further, then you can find these people and changes on the way.
Mark Robertson, One Vision Productions
I'm a director of a nonprofit organisation, One Vision Productions. We use arts, culture, community as a way to empower youth, especially through music. We run hip hop workshops, throughout Australia, mentor youth coming out of prisons with pioneering artists and also work with some homeless youth up the North coast of Australia. What I love about this festival is it's such a collective of different individuals and different people here gathering to try to learn more, learn more about their craft, learn more about themselves. We've got 500 people at this festival. What I'll take away most from this is we have so many different people talking about different things in the way that they're pioneering their art forms. The way that people, culture and community come together from sustainability practices to gender differences to find economic sustainability. I have been engaged in some of the most interactive conversations with like-minded individuals where we're teaching each other, trying to empower each other and people are coming together with that collective mind-force. When you're sitting down and having chats, people are open. People are sharing the information. They're saying, ‘this is something that I've learned. I'm feeling this and this is bringing this up for me’ and it's just a really good place to be around other people who are on the same sort of journey and to be sharing our understanding on the substance of change that we're trying to create. The workshops are amazing, but the people, the collective floor pattern is just really great at this festival, and I'll be back next year.
Aliana
Hi, my name is Aliana. My main thing in life and my passion is to really help people understand that they can find a life considering what they really want and what they are passionate about. They don't have to be scared about it. They don't have to try to hide their gifts or the thing that makes them really happy in life. In Newkind I find really good inspiration and motivation, because so many people around us leave their truth and just speak up for what they believe in truly. I'm really grateful for this experience and for really seeing how connection and how motivation and everyone who is here is showing the highest potential of what they want to give to the world.
Igor Kreyman, The Human COnnection Movement
I'm from Sydney and the highlight of Newkind for me was the people. Definitely the people. Every single time I had an opportunity to connect with someone, and just have a discussion and get to know them and just sit in that commonality and understanding that we're here for the same reason. It was just really extremely beautiful. I'm very honoured to be here experiencing these amazing people and speakers.
AMy Churchouse, THe Human Connection Movement
People definitely are the highlight for me here at Newkind, but also my major insight was definitely that we have to do this together.
We're in this together, and going through grief or trauma; it's best to do that in a team with people supporting you. You don't have to do it alone.
Kim, Head of Newkind COnstruction
I'm in charge of construction here and I normally work with my son and we do small building works and we came to the first one because Sam sold a generator to Erfan and we then just sort of followed that to the first Newkind. I was ready to escape in case it was all too esoteric. But after the first day I knew I was in the right place. Sam and I have been constructing stuff for Newkind ever since. So my favourite project here is the wash-up bench, which Sam and I put together and the water boil that's over here, which this year has reached perfection.
And the bagpipes! I played bagpipes and I loan tools to everybody, and everybody does the right thing and puts them back in the van at the end. One of the things I take from here is that lovely chance to just trust everybody on this site. I'd like to be able to do that all the time in my life and I can incorporate that. I can add trust to things that I do and most of the time it's okay and the few times when it's not okay, I'll say it doesn't matter. That's what life is about. Sometimes you go for a long walk and occasionally you'll fall over. Well what do you do? You just get back up and you keep on walking.
Nina
I come from Hobart and my favourite thing about the festival was listening to the zero waste free talk by, Che and Asher. It was very interesting.
Steph, Newkind Volunteer
I've been helping people feel welcome this year at Newkind. I've been here the last few years and it's amazing to see how it's grown as a festival. It's really lovely how it just changes a little bit each year and it just becomes more and more onto it and more and more is being learnt every year. Something is always a bit different. But my main takeaway this year is that I felt in myself like something was a little bit off for a while and I feel like something's really opened in my heart after being in the breath-work workshop. And it's really exciting because now I feel like I know where I'm going for the next bit of time. It's a lot of clarity. It's this really lovely open feeling and I'm just so grateful for everyone here because it's happened together and we're all part of this together and it's beautiful.
Lenny, Newkind Cameraman
I'm one of the camera crew here at Newkind. I've been on the site for probably about a week now. My main job with the media crew personally is to basically gather shots so that Erfan can build some promotion for next year. What I've been focusing on is getting very natural, genuine shots of people at workshops, dancing, going about their business and just interacting with one another throughout the week, which has been really cool. I come from an illustration and a film making background so I've done a few events but not anything quite like this before, which is very interesting and it becomes a bit of a challenge when you're relying on solar power to charge your camera batteries! But, it's very rewarding and it's very different to the kind of conventions and events and concerts I've done in the past. It is really cool. What I'm taking away from this is a lot of positive collaboration and working together and learning together. Newkind is basically just one massive classroom and every student's very passionate and very driven and it's awesome.
Annabelle, Brotherhood of St Lawrence
I work at the Brotherhood of St Lawrence where I lead the school's program. My highlight at the Newkind Conference has been hearing all the Aboriginal Voices and really coming to understand more about how we are all connected, including the land and each other and humanity.
Olenka Toroshenko
I am a multidisciplinary artist, lover of humans, collaborator, lover of the earth, and looking to spend some time amongst like-minded people here at Newkind. I think my takeaway from Newkind this year is to listen first and speak second, particularly in the activist community. We all have lots to say and we're all very opinionated and it would probably serve all of us a bit better if we stopped to listen first.
Image credit: Jack Constantine.
Fred Leone
I'm from Melbourne via Brisbane and the biggest thing that I got out of this week at Newkind was being able to have in-depth conversations with like-minded people, the presenters, and everybody. Just the openness and willingness of people to share stories about either work or their life with that foundation of how we're approaching it, in terms of how are we affecting change in either our direct life community or the broader community. It's really interesting.
Christian
I work in human education, spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, relational. What I've seen here is two things. The magic of the land and animals acknowledging us, the moments with black cockatoos, the possums coming on stage, the wallaby coming to breakfast, and what that symbolises. Also the connections with people. There’s some really great people here and seeing everyone's souls expressed in different ways. In particular starting to look at which consciousness scale people are on.
Jarra Cohen, Newkind Volunteer
I'm from Lismore up in Northern New South Wales near Byron Bay. I've been volunteering here at Newkind and it's been incredible and I'm feeling so inspired by the time spent with such like-minded people, realising the incredible potential that is in this space, being a part of so many in depth conversations with amazing, incredibly intuitive people. I'm realising the potential positive impact that their businesses can really have on society.
Bernadette
Right now I’m not in paid work to look after my family. And I'm very lucky that I've been able to achieve the goals I had for myself. I‘ve always tried to incorporate giving back to the community all these years, and I'm just so blessed that I have the time and the resources to do that, and I'm here to seek ways, concrete ways, on how to optimally impact. My main takeaway really is that there is hope and my mood to ease every good thing is possible.
Clara
This has been my second time at Newkind. I had to come back because Newkind changed my life last year. It put me on an entirely new trajectory and it connected me with people who I feel like I could've only dreamed about and they've come into my life and played such an important role. But the real work is always what happens after Newkind and it's how we integrate it into our communities and into our networks and build and change those. It was a beautiful experience to spend the rest of the year changing my life because of it and knowing that it was influencing those people around me as well. This year’s Newkind has been just as phenomenal, just as magical and also transformative. Some of the most beautiful things is of course the people and connecting with like-minded people, but also people who challenge you and ask you to really question your values and your beliefs and the work that we do. But it reminded me this year that it is so much easier when we collaborate and that we're not alone and that there's so many people around us who care deeply and passionately and are willing to do something about it.
Together we can achieve the things that we can't achieve on our own.
But it also reminded me that we have to do our inner work and we have to learn to care for ourselves deeply and to clear ourselves so that we are able to come and do the important work for our planet effectively and be more efficient and not waste time with carrying our baggage around with us. But once we deal with that, we have the space and the capacity to be more effective out in the world. That has been a beautiful message.
Yvonne, Bewitched
I run Bewitched and I'm based in Brisbane and it's my first year at Newkind and it's been really interesting for me. I’m very passionate about our environment and that was probably the main reason why I'm here, to connect with like-minded people and get new ideas. I really liked Stewart's talk about permaculture and I've started getting into it, but what I found amazing is just the amount of projects he has going on at the same time and all these amazing things like bio-gas reactor and solar and mushrooms and everything. It's pretty amazing.
Shankar Kasynathan, Amnesty International
I'm really excited to be here at Newkind. There's so much more this year to see. Everyone seems to be focused on the really important core business which is building community from the ground up and for us that's really, really important with the My New Neighbour Campaign. I’m really excited to see that this is the anthem of this festival; building community, creating bonds and trying to search for the way forward.
TOny Fox
I'm from the Sunshine Coast, and it's been an honour to attend Newkind 2020. It's been lots of different workshops and discussions. Some of the things that I'll certainly take away from it though are in line with my own values, which are that a lot of the solutions being proposed are community based and from the ground up rather than from the top down.
Ariane, Head Chef at Newkind
I've been cooking at the festival and running the kitchen. My biggest takeaway is the fact that everybody here seems to be so excited, that they find kindred spirits and souls that they could talk about anything with and it's not judged and it's one family.
Jackie Love, Secret Sisterhood
Secret Sisterhood is a social enterprise and women's movement. We create beautiful, meaningful jewelery and then give 100% of our profits to women's causes and charities. I've loved being here at Newkind. I think my biggest takeaway is just being around like-minded people and hearing everyone's discussions and being in the same room with people that all have the same kind of ideas and perspectives on everything.
Luke Faccini, Good North
I'm here representing Good North, which is a conscious business community from Byron Bay northwards. What has struck me most of all at Newkind this year is the truth and care that has come from the Indigenous speakers and how there is genuine love and invitation to take on practice and make it our own. Because without that we're not going to be able to change anything, even with all the grief that we have caused them with colonisation and the country.
Jayden Bicbudgel
My key highlight was all the fantastic people I've met and the fantastic speakers and the insights into the different industries that can make a change and how I can make a change with my organisation through sustainability and agriculture.
Sarah Ripper
Here at Newkind I have to say some of the highlights for me have been listening to the Indigenous elders and speakers, particularly Fred Leone. He was amazing and I loved the perspective and the grace and humour that he brought. Also Helena Norberg-Hodge and her micro and macro practical and cosmic and actionable insights, that I think everybody can take something away from that. That's been fantastic for me.
Michelle
I'm at Newkind because I'm a parent, a mum of four children and have recently become involved in climate activism and I wanted to acquire some more knowledge and networks and skills. I've done that in abundance and more. One of the key things that I've taken away from Newkind is that I was approaching my activism from a place of fear and actually my activism is actually about love. It's love for the planet, love for humanity, love for the environment, love for my children. And so that's going to have a big impact on how I enact my activism in this space. It's been quite profound for me. Another thing that I've come away from the conference with is something that inspired some thinking about what Erfan said in the closing address, which was that raising children is also a form of activism. Sometimes it's difficult to do activism outside of the house, but in thinking about how we raise children and the love and the presence that we give them is also a form of activism.
Delong Lin, Freelance Photographer
I'm a freelance photographer based in Brisbane and my biggest takeaway from Newkind this year was reconnecting with familiar faces from last year and meeting new ones and sharing stories and knowledge and being in a beautiful space.
Zach
My main takeaway from Newkind is basically the importance of us doing what we can do and helping each other. The power of connecting and sharing ideas is massive and I think that's really important.
Ruth Langford, Nayri Niara
Ruth Langford, Yorta Yorta woman born here in Tasmania. I am also founder of Nayri Niara, an Aboriginal-owned social enterprise that looks at connecting with country culture, community, the self and the sacred. We also unite Indigenous knowledge with modern innovations and I also love the practice of holotropic breathwork and offer that around the world. A couple of the things that I've taken away is the immense paradigm shift that's happening on the planet right now through a very dedicated core collective of people, and that coming together in this supported way has amplified people's lives. They're shining out, and [I’m] very happy to be here.
Farley DOuglas, SUper Feast
I work for Super Feast, which is a tonic herb company in the Byron Shire. My highlights from Newkind have been a theme that has kept coming up in nearly all of the workshops and lectures that I've listened to, and has been around connection and perhaps a lack of connection and thinking about how that has played a really key role in many of the global issues that we are facing today. It feels like the Western population sees themselves, their personal self as very separate from mother nature and from earth and from source or whatever you'd like to call it. So this disconnect leads to a real lack of understanding and care for our surrounds, which in turn I think has really led to a lot of the issues. So constantly we come back to how we are all yearning for connection, and that connecting directly with mother nature and earth is really key in us all moving forward for a better future.
Another thing that has come up is that there are really great people across the globe doing really great things and instead of beating along to the beat of your own drum, it can be really positive to actually work with other people, because together we can make a lot bigger, greater, more epic things happen.
I've also been really thrilled to see and hear the fact that the Indigenous themes have been so prominent in the whole of this Newkind Conference. I've learned a lot personally myself and it's really inspired me to continue to dive deeper into the Indigenous and what they have faced and what they continue to face today. I'm excited to be more responsible in my own knowledge in that space. Something that has been really cool is I've spoken to so many people during this event. I actually feel that the majority of them have been, twenty, maybe mid twenties at the most. I'm really excited by that because I really feel like if I was the way I am now ten or fifteen years ago, I can only imagine what a different place society would be. I really feel very heartened by the younger generation, these young adults who are already so aware and self-aware of their connection to source and earth. I'm really pleased by that because sometimes things are pretty crap. It's really great to say that they are coming through. Overall I've been so impressed by the event, the fact that they not only talk the talk but they walk the walk, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the report that they produce after the event to show the footprint being a zero waste event, with composting toilets. The wash station is next level, only plant based food, all powered by solar. The places and the guys behind this are really, really impressive.
