Back in October, 2009, yarraReporter met with journalists and editors of The Age to discuss the project and even published a story (Check the Media section). They were impressed by the yR concept and have offered work placements for budding writers in 2010.

yarraReporters have been roving the streets of Fitzroy asking people about their favourite movies and what they think should be screened at the inaugural Fitzroy Outdoor Cinema, happening on the 20th March on the oval at Atherton Gardens (weather permitting).

Some suggestions have included Indigenous films such as Bran Nue Dae and Samson and Delilah, Pixar's Up, a Will Smith film, Slumdog Millionaire and even David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

The Harmony Day steering committee is well underway to organising this year's event, happening on Thursday, 18th March from 2pm onwards at the Carlton Estate, 510 Lygon Street, with weekly meetings being held on Tuesday afternoons.

Slowly but surely the committee has organised food (20 kilos of Halal sausages are being donated from a number of butchers!) games for the kids, entertainment (African drumming courses and live performances) and other logistical requirements to make Harmony Day a fun filled event for residents and the public alike.

yarraReporter are getting involved with the Gertrude Street Projection Festival and its artists, with Yandell Walton coming on board. Yandell was the feature artist in last year's festival. The Atherton Gardens site was one of the only dark spaces in the festival in the past two years, which runs in July along the Gertrude Street strip.

This year, we endevour to use the space to create light installations, incorporating photo's and text, and also cover the lead-up and the event itself.

yarraReporter are seeking new participants to undertake journalism and multimedia training in the coming weeks.

If you are a public housing resident in the City of Yarra and have an interest in doing something creative and expanding your mind, please contact Anya ASAP.

anya@infoxchange.net.au

yR out

The partnership between yarraReporter and The Social Studio has strengthened and is expanding with the release of Bespoken, a bi-monthly four page lift-out section within The Migrant Newspaper, that has a print-off of 3000 copies and is distributed nationally.

The cold weather did not deter the invited guests to attend yarraReporter website launch today.

Cr Amanda Stone, the mayor of City of Yarra, Domenique Haslam, 3ZZZ manager, Enda Kenny, the Atherton Gardens Office of Housing manager, Andrew Mahar, Infoxchange Australia Executive Director and Cr Geoff Barbour, Langridge Ward Councillor were amongst the guests who attended the launch.  yarraReporter journalists and the new recruits were there too.

After much hard work we are proud to announce the public launch of the yarraReporter website!

The launch will be celebrated at a ceremony in Fitzroy on Friday July 3rd attended by the City of Yarra mayor, Cr Amanda Stone, Infoxchange Australia's Executive Director, Andrew Mahar, and other dignatories and guests.

Today we completed the recruitment of the second batch of the yarraReporter training participants. 

After going through recruitment and selection process, we have 7 recruited participants from 3 housing estates.  More participants are being sought.

Like the first batch participants are from different cultural backgrounds and experiences.  Wol Wol studies journalism at Monash University and Dismas Christopher studies theatre at Victoria College of Art.

The training for second batch will commence in July.

yarraReporters are invited to join lectures on feature writing at Swinburne University’s journalism class this month.  The class is held once a week for the next 3 months.

Four of them participated in the class, and 2 of them finished the assignments. 

The articles will be published not only at yarraReporter but also at uTime, university magazine that is distributed nationally.

Swinburne University’s media and communications unit students will contribute articles to yarraReporter.