newCardigan is five years old this month. If we were a human, we’d be “going” to school over Zoom by now! Normally we like to have a little birthday cardiParty in June, but things are weird this year. Instead, every day this week one of the ‘cardiCore’ will be sharing their personal reflections on the first five years of newCardigan. Please share your own reflections with us on your favourite social media, your blog, as a video or audio recording, an email, or via ye olde postal service. We can’t wait to read, hear and watch them.
I joined newCardigan in early 2017 as a ‘friend from the West’. I had never been to a cardiParty but I knew that I wanted to set them up in Perth. I spent that year watching, learning, and scoping out potential cardiParties in Perth. Would the Melbourne setup work for the laid back, spread out Perth region? What happens when we run out of places to visit? Who’s going to help me? Luckily I had great support and knew some excellent people to tap on the shoulder and they happily helped me out.
Watching the Perth events grow and change over the last few years have helped restore my joy in GLAM. Talking to museum folks about exhibitions, introducing librarians to archivists, and visiting places that we’d not normally go. One of my favourite cardiParties would have to be the walking pub tour of Perth. Not only was it hilarious, fun, and informative, but we got to ‘drink’ in some culture along the way. Honestly, you haven’t lived till you’ve rushed from bar-to-bar with a group of GLAM folk talking about architecture, society, and beer.
newCardigan helps GLAM professionals to be more awesome. This is why I wanted to bring newCardigan to WA. Nothing gives me greater joy than to introduce two amazing people and say ‘you should talk’ and walk away knowing that the seeds for some interesting project might be about to be born. Be it new people coming along to their first event or seeing those familiar faces turn up again and again, I think everyone walks away from a cardiParty a little bit changed for the better. Five years of newCardigan means five years of helping people be awesome, and what’s better than that?