Since 2005, The Marg Barry Memorial Lecture has been held annually, to celebrate and continue the work of an outstanding South Sydney community activist, politician, networker, provocateur and former Coordinator of the Inner Sydney Regional Council for Social Development, Marg Barry (1934-2001).
Over the years, the lecture has educated and engaged local residents, community activists and and community organisations on topics such as the changing nature of neighbourhoods and the importance of building electronic communities, the global financial crisis and its negative impacts on social inclusion, and the importance and power of preserving social history.
Previous lectures
- 2018, Free speech vs Hate Speech presented by Tim Vines, Vice President of Civil Liberties Australia to Inner Sydney Voice 42nd AGM on Thursday 25 October 2018 at Redfern Town Hall.
- 2016, Something changes in me when I witness someone’s courage: Marg Barry lecture, 2016 presented by Wendy Sarkissian PhD LFPIA Independent Planner on the occassion of our 40th AGM Celebration & Annual Marg Barry Lecture on 12th October 2016 in the Strangers Dining Room at NSW Parliament House.
- 2012, Democracy from the ground up: the real stuff of community engagement, co-presented by Dr. Dallas Rogers, Urban Research Centre, University of Western Sydney and Graeme Stuart, Community Engagement (Teaching and Learning), University of Newcastle (sound file)
- 2011, History matters: power and preservation, Dr. Lisa Murray, City of Sydney Historian
- 2010, The revival of social justice, Eileen Baldry, then Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of NSW
- 2009, The global financial crisis: a severe challenge for social inclusion in Australia, Jock Collins, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre, UTS
- 2008, Reconciliation after the Apology, Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law and Director of Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning
- 2007, What is truth? Discovering the basis for authentic communities, Rt Reverend John McIntyre, previously the Anglican minister at St. Saviour’s, Redfern, and now Bishop of Gippsland.
- 2006, We never had a hotbed of crime, Sue Rosen, historian, heritage consultant and author
- 2005, Building e-communities: community development and the changing nature of neighbourhoods, Andrew Jakubowicz, Professor of Sociology, UTS
About Marg Barry
She was gut-strong, mind-quick and moral-certain. Therefore formidable. But also light of heart, vivacious, funny and a self-put-down merchant. She was single, single-minded, singular. She was a young woman who had grown old trying to make things fairer and had, therefore, grown fair. She was irreplaceable. She was what every community needs. If this society, Australia, hasn’t got a front line of young Marg Barrys coming on, we’re in trouble.
Barry, who has died suddenly at the age of 66, was officially the Coordinator of the Inner Sydney Regional Council for Social Development until 1999 (when she retired to the Central Coast). Unofficially she was a networker, a provocateur, a community activist, an organiser, more a barbed-wire fence in the path of bureaucrats than a thorn in their sides.
She was sometimes regarded as a character, as happens to those who do not conform. She was the survivor of an era in which the working class of Sydney and especially South Sydney, where she had lived and worked, was a community.
Photo: Marg Barry addressing a protest.
