- By Amelia Drew

I headed over to Smith’s Alternative Bookshop for You Are Here and Scissor Paper Pen’s debate, We Gotta Get Out of This Place, which posed the question: as an artist in Canberra, do you stay or do you go?  My personal question up for debate was: aren’t debates terribly boring? Will anyone attend?

I was sorely mistaken.

I arrived to find a large and enthusiastic crowd packed into Smith’s Alternative Bookshop to hear the debate, which ended up being a combination of debate and entertainment: debatertainment.

With this description in mind the first speaker of the affirmative team, Sam Townsend, a.k.a. dragqueen Venus Mantrap, began with fervour. A product of Canberra, Townsend voiced harsh words for his hometown, such as the opinion that “Canberra and its people weren’t willing to nurture its soul.”

BMA editor Julia Winterflood opened the negative team’s debate with finesse; humorously tearing shreds of the fortunately absent Julia Johnson, the missing third speaker for the affirmative team and famed songstress. She described Canberra’s community by saying, “We’re young, but we’re keen!”, which drew cheers and whoops from the crowd.

Following Winterflood, was affirmative team’s Andrew Galan, local yeller and published poet. I mostly had no idea what he was saying (or spraying; at one point an umbrella was erected in the front row by a wet patron), and the only part I fully understood was a two-second impression of Uma Thurman’s dance from Pulp Fiction.   However, I saw others in hysterics, hanging onto bookshelves for support, which made it all worthwhile.

Next, journalist Eleri Harris began illustrating (quite literally) her arguments for the negative team. Armed with her cartoonist talents, marker, and easel, Harris highlighted the benefits of Canberra’s lack of hipsters, its abundance of time, and the fact that “I [Harris] am standing here with a shitty biro, and saying shit but people are loving it!”

The final speaker for the affirmative, and last minute ring-in, was Rosie Stevens, writer, poetry advocate, and operator of the absent Julia Johnson’s cardboard cut-out face.  In a speech that was indeed more poetry than vicious debating, she mused that it was necessary to leave the ACT to insure a roof over one’s head, and that “we need to leave to anticipate our return”.

The debate closed with Funmachine’s Chris Endrey who brought the debate to its pinnacle by comparing *NSYNC to The Beatles. He described the capital as a “beautiful melting pot of people coming and going” and that it’s nice not “being shot at.”

With vigorous applause, the wildly entertaining debate came to a conclusion and it was no surprise that Canberra herself was the winner. The entire event echoed the success of the You Are Here festival; the city has been enlivened by local writers, musicians, and performers, and faith in Canberra has been wholeheartedly restored.

Photo by Adam Thomas