Edited transcript of interview with Meredith Lawrence, who established Fawkner Community House in 2000.
I’ve been managing the community house for nearly 17 years and in fact, I set the house up. It was a lot of hard work, actually, we only had 15 hours of funding at the time. We had a building from Moreland council and so I had to set up all the programs, the committee management, get funding for the programs, get people in the door really. I just remember when I first came here to work and I didn’t drive then and I was catching the bus home I think and someone got off the bus and gave me their ticket, you know, total stranger and I thought, “Wow, what an amazing place!” You know?
Then I started organising some dances with the kids at what was then the Fawkner Secondary College with freezer funding and suddenly… and you know… we’d organize these hip-hop dances and we’d get these Italian seniors coming in for a dance as well. It just feels like a country town really.
The choir runs on Thursday afternoons and I think it’s been going for about 12 years or possibly even a bit longer, with a number of different people directing it and with a number of different musical styles, I suppose. But my own experience is mainly with acapella. We do a mix of songs that reflect the cultural diversity of the area, but we’re now moving into 1960s pop songs, actually! (Laughs) So it’s all a bit… you know… it’s a bit of a mix of stuff.
(Video of choir performance plays) Meredith: “We’re Fawkner Heart and Soul Singer soul singers. And this is a song that was written by a linguist called Laura Brearley and it’s a song of respect for the Wrundjeri people who are the traditional the owners of the land.” (Choir performs Wurru Wuru Wurundjeri by Laura Brealey)
The choir, many, many, many years ago, called themselves the Heart and soul singers and I think that music, and particularly when it is going very well, it really feeds the soul, I think. And it’s the whole point of singing (and it’s really the same as community work) it’s about bringing diverse people into community with each other and singing really as one voice and that’s when you get it, as in musically, that really works and all the different parts come into harmony and… you know… you get this amazing there full sound, even with not very many people, so it’s… I think it’s a wonderful experience.
(Choir performs Pitjai Inkaart Urn – a Lutheran hymn taught by Genice and Nicholas Williams)
About the ReCollection project.
As part of the 2017 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Memento Media partnered with Moreland City Council to present ReCollection at the Coburg Carnivale. ReCollection is about celebrating, sharing and capturing the memories of Moreland’s places, history and faces. The ReCollection exhibit showcased short documentaries and printed historical material which helped attendees take a trip down memory lane.
During the Carnivale, many locals generously shared their stories about life in Moreland in our specially built ReCollection Recorder.