Craving a taste of delicious multicultural food, culture and fun? Grab your knife and fork – or chopsticks – you’ve come to the right place. The 2009 National Multicultural Festival – set to unfold across Canberra from the 6th to 15th February 2009, will provide a smorgasbord of cultural delights to devour.

From the luscious all-day Food and Dance Spectacular in Garema Place on February 7, to the stunning performances of the voluptuous ladies of burlesque review A Stacked Deck on February 13, we have something for even the pickiest eaters. Remember, with dozens of performances, exhibitions, films, celebrations, music, dance and food, the 2009 National Multicultural Festival is an all-you-can-eat event.

The National Multicultural Festival from 6th February to 15th February includes several free events right in the city centre and on the weekend of 14th and 15th February on and near Lake Burley Griffin. Around town community centres, clubs and galleries join in the fun. Well-priced shows are also available at many of Canberra’s theatres including Street Theatre, Canberra Theatre and the Dendy Cinemas.

Bon appétit!

The Brisbane Writers Festival has held the place of Queensland’s premier literary event for twelve years.

It brings the world of writing and ideas to Brisbane, and showcases the best of local, national and international writing to Brisbane, and to the world. For five days in September each year the festival takes over the spectacularly re-developed State Library of Queensland (next to the iconic Gallery of Modern Art and Queensland Art Gallery) in the South Bank cultural precinct alongside the Brisbane River.

The Brisbane Writers Festival is more than a Festival for writers, it’s for everyone who reads. From the world’s headlines, climate change, China or the US Elections, BWF is an event that has meaning and relevance to every single one of us, in every aspect of our lives. This year, there are strong personal voices emanating from the pages of the Festival’s books.

The 2008 festival will bring together approximately 220 writers from around the world including some of the world’s leading authors including the winners of some of the world’s most prestigious literary awards including the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize as well as the winners of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

The festival runs from the 17th to 21st September 2008. Don’t miss it…

Cheese lovers are invited to indulge, tantalise and finesse their cheese tasting skills with a selection of over 300 Australian handmade specialty cheeses at the twelfth annual Melbourne Specialist Cheese Show on Sunday 17th August 2008 at Crown.

Visitors are encouraged to roam the room to find their favourite curds and whey amongst the soft oozing camemberts, creamy blues and crumbling cheddars.

Award winning Australian specialist cheeses on show will include varieties produced from cow, sheep, buffalo and goat milk, coming from prime cheese making regions across the country and includes producers from Yarra Valley Dairy, Donnybrook, Red Hill Dairy, Apostle Whey and By Eleni dairies.

Cheese enthusiasts wanting to broaden their cheese knowledge have a once in a life time opportunity to meet with 30 of Australia’s dedicated specialist cheesemakers who devote their time and energy to creating world class cheeses and will be on hand at the show to guide you through your tastings as well as answer those tricky cheese questions.

Sunday 17th August, 11am – 4pm
Location: Palladium Room, Crown Entertainment Complex
Show Tickets are $40.
Includes unlimited cheese tastings and five wine and or beer tastings.
Children under 15 admitted free.
Limited tickets are available on the door.

The Queensland Poetry Festival 2008: spoken in one strange word is dedicated to the promotion, presentation and professional development of poets and poetry in Australia.

There aim is to provide a launch pad for emerging writers & a venue for established and mid-career poets to showcase significant developments in their work. The festival engages and involves the broadest possible audience by providing a diversity of performances and presentations, presenting poetry in its traditional form and in ways that fuse poetry with other modes of artistic expression.

The poetry festival builds new audiences and promotes new performers through community outreach and liaison with ‘grass roots’ organizations, as well as promotes local industry (e.g. local publishers, book stores, theatre companies). This is a wonderful forum for artists to collaborate and fuse artistic mediums (e.g. theatre/poetry, film/poetry) to produce works that push the boundaries of poetry; and strengthen and build relationships between local, national and international arts communities.

Feel free to email the Festival Director Julie Beveridge at for more information. See you at the Queensland Poetry Festival.

It’s that time of the year again when we welcome Sydney’s annual festival of design , presented by the Powerhouse Museum. Find out what design means to you through a 17-day program encompassing exhibitions and events at the Museum and satellite venues all over Sydney. Highlights this year include a series of special night openings to ignite the spirit of modernism and complement the new exhibition Modern times: the untold story of modernism in Australia.

Young Blood: Designers Market is on in tandem with ‘designboom mart’, an international market that brings designers from around the globe to discuss and sell their wares.

To coincide with SD08, the Powerhouse Museum and the British Council with Arts NSW will present the inaugural Design NSW: Travelling Scholarship, valued at $18,000, to an emerging local designer. The scholarship has been established to enable a young designer to undertake professional development activities abroad.

The Powerhouse is also proud to co-produce the exhibition Workshopped for the second year. A mainstay in the Sydney Design calendar, Workshopped has been exhibiting new Australian design — from prototypes to production pieces — in high-profile commercial settings for seven years. This year Workshopped returns to Chifley Plaza in the CBD.

Further a field, Sydney Design’s many partners and supporters will present a great program of exhibitions, events, walks and talks at venues all over Sydney. The 12th International Design Festival runs from the 8th August to 24th August 2008.

Splendour In the Grass is an annual music, arts and youth culture event which has taken place on the outskirts of Byron Bay each July/August since 2001. Past years have featured a staggering array of the world’s leading music talent including Coldplay, Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys, Queens of the Stone Age, Moby, Brian Wilson and many, many more.

As well as the latest and best in music from Australia and overseas, the festival also features local arts and crafts, creative performance and cuisine.

The festival is on the top of most discerning Australian music fan’s wish-lists of must-go Festivals, which combined with the event’s relatively small capacity compared to many of the summer festivals, results in feverish activity on the day tickets go on sale.  This year’s festival will be the eighth Splendour In the Grass. The two-day event accommodates 17,500 people and has sold out in advance in each year of its existence, often within hours of going on sale – all tickets to last year’s festival were snapped up in just 5 hours, while the preceding three years’ events sold out in a little over a day.

Many who attend choose to immerse themselves in the full ‘Splendour experience’ by taking advantage of the on-site camping adjacent to the festival site. Campers set up their tents right outside the festival gates and quickly establish their own Splendour village for the weekend.

The National Design Centre’s 2008 Melbourne International Design Festival is gearing up to be another eye-opening celebration of design. The highly-anticipated festival will be jam-packed with design-related activities and events, intermingled with a series of exciting surprises.

Many of the MIDF events are free. Now in its fourth year, the festival has expanded to reflect the global nature of design. This year’s program includes long-time favourite, the Australian International Poster Annual, the popular PopUps program, Studio Open and a series of international and national exhibitions. Market-goers will be pleased to hear the Melbourne Design Market is also set to return during the Festival.

For more information phone or email , or visit the website here . The National Design Centre’s 2008 Melbourne International Design Festival runs from the 17th to 27th of July 2008.

You’ll find new inspiration at the Byron Bay Writers Festival 2008 . Expect new writers with new writing, new ideas and new media. The best of Australian writing awaits, although it may not always wear the face you’d expect!

The Byron Bay Writers Festival had its beginnings in 1997, when a small group of locals led by Chris Hanley wondered whether authors might accept an invitation to spend a winter’s weekend in Byron Bay. They did, and an audience of two hundred locals enjoyed a gathering of fifty Australian writers. Since then, the Festival has grown from a single venue event to fill four huge marquees and venues around town and sells 45,000 individual tickets.

The focus of the program is firmly on Australian writing, with recognition of our physical place in the world through the inclusion of Indonesian and Asian authors. The Byron Bay Writers Festival enjoys a close relationship with the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and believes that through words and ideas, bridges are formed that cross cultures and schisms. Fundamentally, the Festival provides a forum for intelligent discussion and guests are invited to address the issues that matter to them as writers and which necessarily concern us all. It is a celebration of the vitality of thought and creativity with a healthy emphasis on fun.

The Rocks Aroma Coffee Festival 2008 is the largest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. With Australians consuming an average of 2.4kg of coffee per person per year, it’s no wonder a celebration of coffee is one of the biggest events on the Sydney calendar.

Mark your diary for a day of indulgence in heavenly treats at The Rocks Aroma Festival – for lovers of coffee, fine chocolate, tea and spice – with atmospheric live entertainment throughout the day from 10am to 5pm. Make your first stop the coffee roasters at First Fleet Park or George Street, where you can pick up a freshly brewed cup of coffee for just $1.

Take your pick of coffee from boutique roasters or the larger coffee houses, or enjoy comparing the different roasts as you wander through Sydney’s heritage quarter. Coffee in hand, stroll on to the Lifestyle Forecourt near the Overseas Passenger Terminal to enjoy live music entertainment or pick up some tips and ideas on cooking with spices and chilli at the free cooking demonstrations.

With an enticing array of chocolate, tea, spice and all things nice, The Rocks Aroma Festival is paradise for the senses. Those with a penchant for something sweet should head to the mouth-watering Chocolatiers’ Boulevard and wander among stalls laden with all things nice from chocolate-dipped strawberries and cute cupcakes to decadent fudge and old-fashioned treats.

If you’re finding it difficult to see the funny side of Brisbane, look no further than Brisbane comedy festival In Stitches for a little inspiration. Some of the funniest people in the country head to Brisvegas for 12 side-splitting nights of stand-up comedy, live music, theatrics and general buffoonery from June 17th to 29th June 2008.

In Stitches takes place at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and includes the antics of Jimeoin, Anh Do, The Umbilical Brothers, Fiona O’Loughlin, Julia Morris, Cal Wilson, Carita Farrer, Akmal Saleh, Scared Weird Little Guys, Puppetry of the Penis and the Chaser’s Age of Terror Variety Hour. Though events are ticketed, free performances take place late each night in the Cascade Court.