Building a Chorus, Engaging Citizens: The Creation of ‘Websong’ Through Participative Decision Making and Production

Gillard PM¹*

1. University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

A Chorus of Women (‘Chorus’) came into being in the lobby of the Australian Parliament House, Canberra on March 17, 2003. Over 150 women, who had not met together as a group, gathered to sing a newly composed ‘Lament for the Dead’. Australia’s engagement in the war in Iraq was announced that day in parliament.

Chorus has continued to develop as a smaller group of women meeting to discuss philosophy, to share knowledge about writing new songs, to create forms of participative work, to perform in public places and to articulate the concerns of citizens.

This paper describes the fieldwork and preliminary findings from a participant researcher study of the creation, development and performance of a new work, ‘Websong’. This was a presentation of singing, weaving, art, dance and ritual, shaped from the dreams and experiences of group members and performed to audiences in Bulgaria, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra during 2004. Chorus uses participative forms of organisation and decision making to compose and create their work. Like other Communities of Practice, they make use of the Internet to support their interaction with each other and to do their work.

The research contributes a description of Chorus in production and performance; the ways it works internally, the work it produces and the deeper engagement with issues in public life that it makes possible for others.

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