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Out of the Darkness Cafe Conversations 2021
Compassion Ballarat • March 11, 2021
Have you seen the Art Gallery’s 2021 exhibition, ‘Out of the Darkness’?
Compassionate Ballarat led, in a relaxed atmosphere at The George, a number of conversations to discuss what role the Arts can play in supporting individual and social trauma with questions such as:
- What was your overall response to the exhibition?
- How can creativity, wonder and awe lift us out of our day to day?
- What role might art and creativity play in social healing?
- How can contemporary art galleries and museums contribute to community wellbeing?
Each year the Australian Compassion Council holds a National Day of Compassion, to provide a meaningful opportunity for all Australians to participate in learning about and in practicing compassion. This is the fourth year this National Day has been convened and each National Day has a theme and in 2024 our Theme is Compassion and Deep Connection which featured six facets of deep connection including: Contested spaces - Indigenous Justice - Peace Culture - Repairing Relationships - Innate Connection with our Environment - Dealing with our Distracted World. The National Day started with a launch that included presentations from the CEO of the global Charter for Compassion, Marilyn Turkovich on the Charter’s involvement in the 19th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates – with the Australian Charter Ambassador, Hugh Mackay, AO on Deep Connection in Community - and with the National Lead of the Australian Compassion Council, Dr Lynne Reeder on a Compassionate City project entitled Seeds of Compassion along with some inspiring young students and their compassionate wishes for their city. You can access the video recordings of this day here:
The purpose of this project was to plant seeds of compassion to promote Ballarat as a caring city underpinned by the compassionate wishes of its future leaders. Nearly 100 wishes were received from Ballarat students in Year 6 and Year 10 classes and the collected wishes were subject to a content analysis and were written up under the following five headings: 1) INCLUSION - ACCEPTANCE – BELONGING 2) RESPECT - UNITY – PEACE 3) SAFE – PROTECTED – COMPASSIONATE 4) COHESION – HARMONY – EQUALITY 5) THRIVING – MEANING – POTENTIAL The student’s wishes will be distributed across Ballarat, and they will also be circulated to cities around the world who have signed the Charter for Compassion. By sharing this report globally, we offer these cities a valuable demonstration project for them to consider replicating, and Compassionate Ballarat will continue to work with the City Council to make tangible, as many of these wishes as possible.
In 2024 the Compassion and Care Award was won by Maggie Phillips for her participation in the World's Greatest Shave and fundraising for the Leukaemia Foundation to spread awareness and educate us all about the 140,000 families who face blood cancer right now, and that it takes the lives of 16 people every day. Maggie’s efforts in raising money goes towards those individuals in the community suffering, and into research to prevent future pain. Maggie shows true compassion and care for members of the community which we are very grateful for. In 2024 the finalists in this category included: Adelle Weidemann, Charlotte Gibson, Eva Xie, Madelaine Hutchinson and Maggie Phillips. Compassionate Ballarat congratulates all the award finalists and winner for the compassionate work they do in the community and in recognition Ben Kelly, Chair of Compassionate Ballarat personally presented this Award to Maggie.
