What actually happened at Kinda.forward
I will be honest with you. I had imagined this day for months, and it still did not prepare me for what it actually felt like to stand in the Gathering Hub on 27 June and watch it happen.
Over 500 people came through the doors of UTAS Inveresk Campus that Saturday. Small Steps to Sustainability, the event I designed as the assignment, became a real day, in a real place, with real people in it. I am still trying to find the words for what that felt like.
The choir
The New Horizons Choir opened the morning, and I do not think I was prepared for it. There was singing, there was dancing, there was this energy in the room that you could physically feel moving through the crowd. It set the whole day up before a single session had even started. People who had walked in quiet and unsure suddenly looked like they belonged there. I found myself standing at the side of the Maker’s Yard with a lump in my throat, watching this thing I had only ever seen on paper turn into a room full of people smiling at strangers.
The most gorgeous choir I have ever seen.
Little moments that made it what it was
Over in Sprouts Studio, someone had set up a crochet cubby, this small, colourful little beacon tucked into the corner, and kids were in and out of it all day. Nearby, they were decorating leaves and hanging them on the community tree, and by the afternoon that tree was not just covered in colour, it had life in it. You could see, physically, what a day like this can build when you give people something small and simple to add to.
Children decorated leaves and added them to the tree during the course of the day.
Out among the stallholders, what struck me most was not the busyness. It was the conversations. People were not just staffing tables, they were genuinely talking with visitors, helping them figure out what they needed, pointing them toward the next thing, asking questions back. Nobody was performing sustainability at anyone that day. It just felt like people being generous with what they knew.
Everywhere else, all at once
Beyond the choir and the crochet cubby, the whole site was alive in its own way. Story Loft ran talk after talk and two panels through the day, with Jenn Heggarty from OzHarvest Tasmania giving a keynote that had the room properly still and listening. Over in Maker's Yard, people queued for demonstrations and micro-talks from local makers and small businesses, each one telling their own story in their own words. The Fix-It Foundry never really quietened down, InterWEave ARTS, The ReDress Hub, and St Mary’s Repurposing and Upcycling working alongside visitors to mend rather than replace. Out at the Community Garden, Frank Strie had his Kon-Tiki kiln smouldering away most of the afternoon, drawing people over to talk about biochar and soil, while the Kinda. Lounge held its own quieter world of conversations, panels, and, at one point, a celebration of the Wilderness Society's 50 years in Tasmania.
None of it felt like six separate events happening to share a venue. It felt like one day, built by a lot of different hands, all pointed in the same direction.
The Maker’s Yard
A day connected to place
David Warrener opened the day with a Welcome to Country at Riawunna Garden, and walking out there with everyone that morning is the moment I keep returning to. It grounded the whole day in this place, in Launceston, before anything else began, and it stayed with me through everything that followed. That connection to place was not a formality. It was the foundation the rest of the day stood on.
A beautiful moment of true connection to place.
Harder than I imagined, and worth every bit of it
I will not pretend this was easy. It was bloody hard work, more than I had even imagined when I started, and there were moments in the lead up where I genuinely was not sure it would all come together. But standing in that room on the day, watching people I have admired from a distance for years turn up and give their time and their knowledge so freely, I realised something. I was not just organising an event for this community anymore. I was standing alongside them. Some of the people I met and worked with that day are people I have admired from afar for years. Now I am one of them.
Kinda. a lot of work, Kinda. worth every bit.
Why this matters
Kinda.forward started as the assignment. It grew because I wanted to test whether people in this community wanted a different way into sustainability, one built on small, doable steps rather than guilt or perfection. This day answered that question. Yes, they do, and they are willing to help build it too.
This was always meant to be the beginning, the proof of concept for FutureFwd Tasmania, our bigger event planned for early 2027. But it was also something else. It was the day Kinda. properly became part of this community, not just an idea I had been carrying around. I will never forget it.
Thank you
None of this happens without the people and organisations who backed it. To every contributor, partner, volunteer, and supporter who said yes to being part of this, thank you. You were not just helping run an event. You were building something with me.
Small steps. Big ripples.
Kinda. acknowledges the palawa/pakana people as the traditional custodians of lutruwita/Tasmania.
