The Power of Storytelling

Rona Glynn-McDonald is a proud Kaytetye woman from Central Australia who works with First Nations communities and high-impact organisations to shape systems that centre First Nations people, knowledge and solutions. She is the founder and CEO of Common Ground.

Ben Brooker is a writer, editor, critic, playwright, essayist, dramaturg and bookseller. His work has been featured by Overland, Australian Book Review, RealTime, The Saturday Paper, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, and others in Australia and overseas. His plays have been performed in Sydney and Adelaide, and his latest performance projects include commissions by ActNow Theatre, Next Wave Festival, and OzAsia Festival. Ben was an inaugural Sydney Review of Books Emerging Critics Fellow and was appointed to the board of Writers SA in May 2021. He is currently working on his first book, on psychedelics in Australia.

Gabrielle Chan has been a journalist for more than 30 years. She has been a political journalist and politics live blogger at Guardian Australia since 2013. Prior to that she worked at The Australian, ABC radio, The Daily Telegraph, in local newspapers and politics. Gabrielle has written and edited history books, biographies and even a recipe book. In September 2017, she swapped interviews with politicians with interviews with ordinary people on her main street to discover why they think politics has moved so far from their lives. The result is Rusted Off: Why country Australia is fed up. In the process, Gabrielle draws conclusions about the current state of our rural political representation, the economic and cultural gap between city and country and how to bridge it.

Damon Gameau is a filmmaker, author and environmental educator whose innovative feature documentary, 2040, explores solutions to improve our planet for a better future. Damon spoke at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit and has addressed governments around the world on regenerative systems and climate action.