Oh look, a leaf...

This leaf (please see previous post if my referring to ideas as leaves confuses you) is still pretty far away and not quite clear yet, it must have flown in from elsewhere. But, I've been having this thought surrounding the idea of what influences the attendees of writing festivals.

Obviously, the authors there are so for a few clear reasons: to advertise their writing and their work, to discuss their methods, and to teach a younger generation. There are some obvious reasons for the audience to attend as well: being able to hear from their favourite authors, having their questions answered, or to draw inspiration from them, but for me it doesn't seem as though these reasons could account for the majority of the audience. 

On Thursday I volunteered to assist with the Sam the story Tram session of the festival, which is basically a session for young children where they board the tram, sing songs as it travels through Bendigo, hop off at the Bendigo Gold Mines, read a few story books, and then travel back. I had a few thoughts while I was assisting with this: there seem to be a lot more mum's (13) present with their children than dads (1), what kind of organisation goes into planning such an activity and who was in charge of this, this coffee isn't great and not nearly enough to suffice being awake at 7.30am, and a lot of the kids actually seem pretty disinterested... actually most of the kids... actually are any kids singing along or listening? At this point I looked around the tram and noticed that 5% of the kids actually seemed entertained by the singing, dancing, and story telling, and 100% of the adults seem entertained. While the kids are staring out their windows and playing with a loose thread on the seat of the tram, every single one of the adults present are singing and clapping along to Big Red Car.
And here's where this experience links in with my wonderings about what motivates the audience of a writers festival. I begin to wonder do we as adults have an innate attraction to story telling? Perhaps we become so entangled with the stressors of adulthood that we inadvertently seek opportunities to act as children and be told a story, using the excuse that our children will enjoy enjoy the event, or that we're going for academic reasons.

As I said, the leaf is still a little blurry but on Day 2 of the festival this is where my thoughts are at.

Panoramic snapshot from Sam the Story Train