Portal is a weekend of workshops to give our region’s fantasy lovers a chance to develop their craft, build their worlds and strengthen their community bonds.
2024 RECAP
Portal is an event that I produced to bring all the little pockets of fantasy lovers, readers, gamers, and writers in the community together under one roof. And it worked! Portal 2024 consisted of four workshops, all facilitated by local fantasy lovers and creators. The workshops covered world-building, clay sculpting, writing, and mapmaking, so by the end of the weekend our participants were able to take their own semi-developed worlds home with them.
People travelled from Port Lincoln, Mount Gambier, Adelaide and Broken Hill – as well as all throughout the Riverland – for approximately 30 people at each workshop. So warming to see my tiny hometown full of fantasy friends this past weekend! Not only did Portal build our crafting, creating and writing skills, but also brought together a few different pockets of fantasy lovers into the same room together and connected community.
Pulling together a weekend-long event is a hell of a thing, but wow, what a pay off.
Thank you to everyone who travelled to Barmera, to my behind-the-scenes supporters, to everyone who left feedback, and those who offered a kind word to me and the Part of Things team.
Huge thanks and congrats to our fantastic facilitators, Stuart, Sam, Alysha and Riverland Tabletop Guild. Each of you have brought such a life to this festival.
See you in 2026!
CREATIVE RESPONSES
We invited some young storytellers to soak up the fantasy goodness and commissioned them to write a creative piece in response to the event.
Levi Button
Prophecy/Tale of Oya:
Once, there was a world plunged into ice- nothing grew, nothing thrived, only withered away, and died. The people of this world had already been through so much; the famine, the plague that turned them into flesh-hungering beasts, and then the war of territories, where the two leaders of the Aldgate and Riverton were exiled as they became the very beasts they feared. Those who were abandoned soon starved and started to die out- until he appeared. Oya, the Guardian of what soon became Brinbourn, promised them a better life; but he was false. Oya, that trickster cursed them all…
NOTE: Levi is also working on a map to share! Update soon 🙂
Be Part of Things: we are the project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body and the Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.
#regionalarts #creativeregions #regionalartsaustralia #regionalstories
Part of Things 