In celebration of the Manning Valley’s cultural richness, the gallery will host Cultures in the Manning Stories, a platform to share the cultural stories of our diverse community through art, music, performance and storytelling.

The event will be held on Saturday, November 10 and will include morning and afternoon sessions. The morning session will feature Biripi and migrant journey stories in a Q&A style, as well as a number of cultural performances. A shared lunch will follow and lead into the afternoon session launch at 2pm.

The afternoon session will include two cultural projects, Birds of a Feather – an exhibition of work by the multicultural women’s group – and Manning Migrants, a public art project that introduces us to migrants living and working in the Manning Valley, photographed by Ronnie Grammatica.

“The aim of my work is to prompt the audience to reflect on who makes up the Taree community in 2018, to start a conversation,” Ronnie said.

“Art is for everyone and I’m passionate about bringing art to the people.”

Art Gallery director, Rachel Piercy, said: “We’ve partnered with the Migrant Settlement Project for many years to improve social inclusion and events such as these are an opportunity to promote harmony and inclusion by giving people a firsthand experience of cultural diversity in our area.”

The annual Cultures in the Manning Festival was unfortunately unable to take place this year due to different constraints, but next year will be bigger and better with the completion of the new car park adjacent to the gallery.

Bookings for this event are essential and can be made at the following link culturesinthemanningstories.eventbrite.com.au.