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In Person: Walks, Workshops & Intersections

Excursions and workshops for school students, workplaces and community groups

Every year The Intersection speaks to thousands of school students, workers and others, leading interactive walks around Melbourne’s CBD city, running creative workshops and facilitating social intersections.

At The Intersection, we challenge you to meet the other, because diverse connection and empathy are vital to creating a liveable city. Homelessness, addiction and racism are symptoms of a deeper problem of disconnection. Most of us are unaware of our tendency to categorise humanity and our addiction to stereotypes.

Our experienced educators connect with their audience to engage at the level of each group. We use stories from the city, personal experiences and relevant statistics and to craft a powerful narrative that breaks through the stereotyping and categorising and invites human connection and empathy.

Your school, business or community group can book individual sessions, and we are also able to combine several sessions over one or more days as part of a retreat day or city experience programme. Our sessions are extremely popular with Year 9 City Experience programs.

See below for a list of Melbourne CBD walks, workshops and ‘Intersections’ on offer. Online and in-school session info is here. For enquiries & bookings information bookings@theintersection.org.au.

Information about All Sessions

- Capped at 30 participants. Recommended group size 20 to 25.
- Sessions range between 60-120 minutes in length
- Costs stated are per group up to 30 students maximum. All costs do NOT include GST. Contact us if budget presents a challenge.
- There are a maximum of 9 session slots per day (depending on session choices), and more with sufficient notice

The fees for our walks and workshops support the work of The Intersection and are necessary to help cover our costs, however, we do not want them to be prohibitive. Please contact us if you have budgetary constraints.

Please email bookings@theintersection.org.au for further information.

Walks

Experience the city first hand

A MOST LIVEABLE CITY

Walk the streets of Melbourne’s CBD to see a different angle.

Students are encouraged to challenge their own assumptions and recognise the danger of single stories.

Through interactive storytelling, students realise the strength of diversity in building a healthy city/society.

Explores homelessness, stereotypes, hierarchy, colonisation, power, addiction, connection and more…

Melbourne is known as one of the worlds most liveable cities.
With coffee, arts, footy, trams, and graffiti, whats not to love?

WELL
1 in 10 of us will experience homelessness in their lifetime
1 in 5 of us drink at harmful levels,
1 in 4 are lonely and
2 in 3 of us neither know or trust our neighbours.

Clearly all is not well.

So who is Melbourne liveable for?

Our experienced educators will take students on a journey through different perspectives of our beloved city. As we move through different places we invite observation and tell stories questioning the stories that aren’t told. We unpack themes of stereotyping, power, connection and empathy; and discuss issues such as homelessness, addiction, colonisation and disadvantage.

Where you stand determines what you see. Come and see our city through different eyes.

This walk runs for 90 minutes and costs $455 (plus GST) for a group of up to 30 students. We highly recommend students also do our Empathy Workshop as it provides skills and insights for a response to the challenges raised in this session.

For enquiries & bookings information email bookings@theintersection.org.au or make a booking request.

Can be provided at a level suitable for Grade 5/6 students or other groups - just ask!

TRESPASS TO BRANDALISM (Graffiti)

Melbourne is world-renowned for graffiti and street art. Historically controversial, irreverent and subversive vandalism. It is still a crime and yet paradoxically it has been embraced by mainstream, corporate and pop culture.

The graffiti and street artist once was a vandal with creative resistance to authority which gave them an outlaw status. The artist’s position in society was on the margins as graffiti questioned the status quo. Through breaking the law, graffiti questioned the laws of the city. It pushed boundaries and trespassed.

Today graffiti artists are receiving commissions and advertising campaigns worth thousands of dollars. Historically a generator of political change and now a big part of Melbourne’s urban landscape that has far more in common with advertising than trespass.

In this walk, we will take look at some of the stories that we find ourselves seeing in Melbourne. We will visit some of Melbourne’s best-known spots for graffiti as well as notable historic and architecture spaces.

This walk is aimed at High School students in Years 11-12, workplaces and community groups. It runs for 2 hours and costs $445 (plus GST) for a group of up to 30 students (can also be adapted to run for 90 minutes). 

For enquiries & bookings information email bookings@theintersection.org.au or make a booking request.

Workshops

Go deeper into the challenges

EMPATHY

WHERE YOU STAND DETERMINES WHAT YOU SEE

In a hands-on, interactive workshop students are encouraged to ask: What is empathy?

What happens when we empathise with people different to us? How does it change us and our society?

Experientially we learn to transform our perspective, our schools, our community and our world.

Empathy is the ability to step into another’s shoes, to look at life from another’s perspective. By transforming our sympathy into empathy, we may begin to see as others do. This is easy with friends, but to empathise with a stranger is much harder. But, as the unknown becomes known, we may see that we are all the same. This insight empathy brings makes it a tool for change, having the power to transform ourselves and maybe even some of the biggest issues facing our society.

At The Intersection, we strive for an empathetic world. Our two decades of work in Melbourne have brought us into contact with the stranger (homeless/addicted/marginalised) and inspired us to imagine what life is like for them. These acts of empathy have helped us to see ourselves in them and discover our shared humanity. We invite you to step into another’s shoes with us and see life from their perspective. This session draws on The Intersection’s ongoing empathic work to challenge and inspire students to not only have empathy themselves but use it as a tool to inspire change in the world.

This session runs as a 90 min workshop and costs $455 (plus GST) when hosted at our CBD venue.

It can also be provided at your school (or another venue) at no additional cost for bookings of 2 or more sessions on a single day.

It is highly recommended that groups also participate in our “A City Walk” session.

For enquiries & bookings information email bookings@theintersection.org.au or make a booking request.

Can be provided at a level suitable for Grade 5/6 students or other non-standard groups. Ask us!

us+them=we

People are hard to hate close up: move in

We sort ourselves into like groups, allowing us a sense of belonging and connection with like-minded people. But this can also create a division of 'us and them' and a mentality of, you're either with us or against us. At The Intersection we believe that right now we need to not live in a divided world and that we need to embrace difference and diversity for our own growth, health and healing.

In this workshop, we will begin to re-humanise the other, through a series of interactive activities, media and discussions. Discovering that people are hard to hate close up and that strangers really are fiction.

This workshop runs for 2 hours, costs $455 plus GST, and is only on offer to those students who have participated in a "The City Walk” and compliments our "Empathy Workshop".  

For enquiries & bookings information email bookings@theintersection.org.au or make a booking request

Intersections

An opportunity to connect, and meet the other

Meet The Neighbour

Meet the Other

Students practice the skill of empathy through a panel style Q&A conversation with a small group of people from diverse backgrounds and experiences of marginalisation in our city venue.

By connecting with people we may have false assumptions about, students realise that these people are more than just stereotypes, they are our neighbours and we are all connected.

At The Intersection, we recognise that curiosity is key to empathy. To understand the different ways that people see that world requires more than just imagination, it requires exploration and inquiry into real people’s experiences.

We have developed a unique new session called Meet The Neighbour — students can meet one of 10 people who have experienced disadvantage or discrimination in Melbourne, in a 20 minute collaborative conversation.

Meet The Neighbour creates safe spaces for dialog where topics can be discussed openly. We take you on an active journey of empathy building, dissolving the stereotypes that divide us and discovering that, underneath, we are all the same. This opportunity to connect with and learn from people in all walks of life reveals to us the transformative power of empathy and connection as tools for personal and social change.

For enquiries about & bookings for this unique offering please email bookings@theintersection.org.au or make a booking request.

Laneway Cricket

Enjoy a game of backyard cricket in the city’s backyard — a laneway.

Through the intersection of a game of cricket and a laneway, you will be asked to meet the other. Invite a stranger to join and see what happens when different people come together to play sport. Barriers, assumptions and stereotypes get removed and broken down. No more are we a homeless person, business person or school student, we are just people; neighbours sharing a game of cricket.

This game is umpired by one of our oldest friends who has struggled with many of the issues discussed in our A Most Liveable City walk.

This session runs for 90 minutes or 2 hours, costs $475 plus GST, and is only on offer to those students who have participated in a “A City Walk”. It also compliments our "Empathy Workshop".

Please note: due to council restrictions we are not currently able to offer this session (as of February 2023) however if you are interested in booking it please enquire.

For enquiries & bookings information email bookings@theintersection.org.au or make a booking request.

Walking Empathy

Hear a different story

This session invites you ‘walk in the shoes of another’. A self guided experience of chose your own adventure. Follow the map and interactive audio around the city to hear a different story of people living and working in Melbourne.

For enquiries & bookings information email bookings@theintersection.org.au or make a booking request.