The symposium, inspired by the Arts and Industry Festival’s remount of the verbatim theatre play The Bridge, brought together former West Gage Bridge workers, artists, academics and unions in a curated series of conversations, exchanges and performances about how to build bridges between art, industry, and social science research. Tara Goldstein was invited to the symposium as the Festival’s visiting scholar to give a talk on sharing research findings through verbatim theatre. The Bridge ​shares the stories of workers who died building Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge in 1970.

Overland magazine released a podcast on The Bridge project which provides a summary of Bridge Symposium and includes intimate accounts from workers who survived the West Gate Bridge collapse, scenes from the play The Bridge by Vicki Reynolds and a symbolic building of bridges through musical performance of “Throw Your Arms Around Me” with Mark Seymour, James Henry and local community singers, largely sung in the Indigenous language of Yuwaalaraay. Click here →