Upstageing Festival in Canberra
When Together is holding workshops as part of the Upstageing Festival which launches in Canberra, ACT, on the 20th of March, 2026.
The workshops are free community events designed to inspire creativity and to connect with others.
We walk in urban streets noting down words we see on street and shop signs and then craft the words into a story, haiku or free verse. It is simple and fun.
Sign up for one of the 6 workshops via Humanitix:
No experience in writing is needed, just willingness, curiosity, notepad and pencil.
I've done this exercise a few times and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. That was unexpected! It's best to have no preconception of the outcome but to enjoy the experience and explore.
In the example below of a walking with words activity, I deliberately went to the rose garden in the Sydney Botanical Garden as I'd previously seen some unusual names of roses. What a variety of names!
Missing, thief and '100 not out'
‘Everyone is welcome here’
‘Tangles, walking onion, beardtongues, bumpy ash’
She gave me a ‘double smile’
I cringed. If she hadn’t been wearing a ‘purple star’
I would have grabbed ‘coltsfoot’ and ‘speedwell’ out of there.
After we ‘acknowledged Gadigal country’
I went with ‘naked lady’ - yea interesting ‘belladonna’ -
on a ‘caper’ to ‘unearth garden stories’,
Actually looking to solve the missing
‘Korcarmsis raspberry cupcake’ - a mouthful!
Wishful thinking that ‘boy extracting thorn’
would have something to say
but statues don’t.
‘Naked lady’ thinks we need ‘fairytale magic’
Just as she uttered those words, a ‘blackbird’
Surprised us flapping noisily above the ‘snow carpet’
Someone yelled ‘stop thief’
because it had a ‘silverberry’ in its mouth.
‘Spicy parfuma’!
Our thief it seems.
And here I was thinking it might have been the ‘beardtongues’.
All over.
A beep alerted me to a phone message ‘100 not out’.
I’m not interested in the score! How many times…
I popped a ‘bugleweed’ and went off for ‘tea’.
PS in case you need my services, I'm 'tangles'.
Sadly, you’ll see signs in the gardens ‘Stop Thief’ because plants have been disappearing. All of the words and phrases in quotes were on signs in the gardens. I floated around the herb and the rose gardens after entering through the south east gates where I saw the welcome sign. There were some non-plant signs that I used as well.
https://www.botanicgardens.org.au/royal-botanic-garden-sydney
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