Community | Vocate

Vocate Community Gatherings

I host conversations worth having, and bring people together to do things worth doing with like hearted people. Group size is typically capped at 8 people, depending on the gathering.

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As a subscriber:

You have a standing invitation to all community gatherings, those listed now and any that emerge.
I'll email you invitations to attend. Number caps apply so you still need to RSVP to secure your place.
$50/calendar year will cover as many gatherings as you choose to attend. (General reservation fee for non-subscribers is $20/gathering (Tables).)
You have the opportunity to suggest topics for Topic Tables (see below)

Once I've notified subscribers I'll open registration here, and anyone else is free to register.

Scroll down for explanations of the different types of gatherings. I'd love you to join this growing community.

Tables

Six to eight people around an afternoon drinks table in a lightly facilitated conversation. We share how we're thinking and feeling about what's going on in the world and I offer a discussion provocation in the form of a question.

The conversation stretches our thinking and expands our hearts. Ultimately, it is about encouraging each other to live better.

Come as you are. Tables are welcoming environments. There's a $20 fee to secure your seat, then buy your own drink. It's like getting together with friends; there is no need to perform or be smart. Leave your cape at the door and check in your phone.

Quarterly Essay Tables

Six to eight people around an afternoon drinks table in a lightly facilitated conversation. We share how we're thinking and feeling about what's going on in the world and we discuss the latest Quarterly Essay (which you will have read before attending).

The conversation stretches our thinking and expands our hearts. Ultimately, it is about encouraging each other to live better.

Come as you are. QE Tables are welcoming environments. There's a $20 fee to secure your seat, then buy your own drink. It's like getting together with friends; there is no need to perform or be smart. Leave your cape at the door and check in your phone.

Topic or Book Tables

Six to eight people around an afternoon drinks table in a lightly facilitated conversation. We share how we're thinking and feeling about what's going on in the world and we discuss a pre-determined topic about which you may have done some thinking or read a book.

The conversation stretches our thinking and expands our hearts. Ultimately, it is about encouraging each other to live better.

Great Ocean

Drive, Walk, Swim

It has become my custom to walk a particular section of the Great Ocean Walk that offers a few safe swimming spots along the way. The drive there is intentionally part of the excursion.

This is your invitation to join me in my endeavour to immerse myself and become increasingly familiar with this little piece of spectacular coastline. The excursion is a full day, and includes an optional ocean dip at RAAFs beach before we leave Barwon Heads at 6.30am. We return back to the Geelong region by 5.00pm.

Winter Solstice Gathering

Our lives are full of figurative darkness and cold, transitions, grief, anxiety, illness. Pain and suffering takes many and varied forms. Our love of, and obsession with, warmth and sunlight, comfort, convenience and happiness means we are not well practiced at sitting unhurried in the 'darkness'.

And so the longest night comes and goes without any ceremony or ritual, save perhaps an early morning skinny dip.

This Winter Solstice Gathering has comfort food, pickled vegetables and fire. It will include optional reflective activities that invite us to engage the darkness in our lives, whatever form that is taking. Or, if you'd prefer to just sit by a fire and sip mulled wine or whisky, that's OK too. And, it might also include an evening ocean dip for those inclined!