SunSpells

☀️ SunSpells: A Summer Solstice Gathering 

As the year tips toward its blazing end, little worlds start to spin faster. Hurtling towards Christmas, we can begin to feel ourselves singed around the edges by the frenetic pace of end-of-year. Deadlines collide, inboxes overflow, social calendars begin bursting at the seams.

It’s easy to forget about the seasonal and cosmic cycles of which we are also a part. 

Sunspells is a call to gather as the sun pauses at the zenith- wild hearts, feral poets, rebel visionaries, and their absurdist little people- as a balm to frayed nerves. An honouring of the vast source of light and creativity, and a welcoming of shadow creeping around the edges. A dropping in to deep appreciation of the incredible beauty brought in by Flowering Grass season- Buath Gurru- before the parching sun bleaches the world to bone and gold-dust during Biderap. 

✨ What to Expect

• A Storytelling circle at the threshold of light and dark- by the incredible Eloise Oxer (read more about Eloise below)

• Live Music by the powerful Yorta Yorta musician and spoken word poet, Allara

• Communal ritual, effigy making and kids activities

• Post ritual dance party by Macauley Cult King

• Pizza and ice-tea elixirs available

• Families welcome.

Let our gathering be a song to the Earth. A turning toward the living world and each other. A remembering of our original relationship of reciprocity. 

It was grace

Stunned by the last lights of the sun

We were swimming in a green sea as deep as a drum

There are things I must record, must praise

There are things I have to say about the fullness

And the blaze of this beautiful life

-Kae Tempest

Allara

Allara is a staunch Yorta Yorta artist - songwoman, bassist, producer and sound-designer. Living on Wurundjeri, Woi-Wurrung Country for almost 15 years, her motivation is driven by a hope of healing and self-determination. Her fire within, is ignited by the resilience of yenbana-l and woka-n mulana. Allara’s unrelenting commitment to collapse colonial structures, inspires her work in all fields, and is based in growing native knowledge resurgence, through wholehearted blak joy... AND crop dusting seeds of resistance, in every corner of every lawn. F**K the colony.

Eloise Oxer

A humble apprentice to the wild, without and within, Eloise carries in heart and soul the old ways of the oral storyteller. Heeding the mythic call that thrums in tree and bird, river and rock she weaves offerings of story and song like threads of connection to a long-forgotten place, inviting others into deeper relationship with themselves and the living world.

In her medicine pouch, Eloise carries the crafts of her patchwork career as a NIDA-trained actor, narrator and vocalist, her adventures in Steiner education, comparative religion and ritual studies, community activism, professional writing, wilderness mentoring and above all her devotion to the Great Green Mother.

Born of Celtic and Northern European ancestry and raised in Perth with a deep sense of living on stolen Noongar boodja, questions of home and belonging have activated Eloise at every turn.

Inspired by thinkers and weavers such as Joanna Macy, Tyson Yunkaporta, Martin Shaw, Sharon Blackie, Josh Shrei, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mary Oliver, and Björk, Eloise is storyteller and song gatherer, writer and wilderness wanderer, pedal pusher, hopeful gardener, avid crafter, devoted mother and home educator. She lives with her family on the sacred lands of the Wurundjeri people, and is lovingly committed to repair and re-member the wild way home, one song, one story, one footstep at a time.