Q Commons is a live learning experience that challenges attendees to stay curious, think well, and advance good in their communities.
During this two-hour live event, attendees hear fast-paced global and local talks educating them on how to thoughtfully engage their city and cultural moment. Join us Thursday, November 16, 2017, from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, as we gather at Greenlane Christian Centre to learn and consider how to advance good in Auckland.
Global Speakers
Cultivating Virtue
David Brooks
David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and appears regularly on “PBS NewsHour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He teaches at Yale University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the bestselling author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement; Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There; and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. He has three children and lives in Maryland.
Confronting Our Technology Addiction
Kara Powell
Kara Powell, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute and a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary. She is an author of numerous books including Growing Young and Right Click: Parenting Your Teenager in a Digital Media World. Coinciding with her extensive research, focus groups, interviews and observations on the effects technology has on this generation, Kara has also done extensive work and analysis of how technology affects human relationships.
Our Complicated Moment
Propaganda
Jason Petty, also known as Propaganda, is a Los Angeles-based hip-hop and spoken word artist who aims to communicate in any creative form possible. He’s an intellectual, a poet, political activist, academic & emcee with degrees in illustration & intercultural studies in addition to songs that have landed on Billboard’s Top Christian, Top Gospel, and Rap music charts. Growing up black in a Mexican neighbourhood and later a suburban all-white neighbourhood, he is armed with a bold message of alliance and has assembled a body of work that both challenges & reaches across the spectrum of pop culture. Propaganda is an advocate for the value of human life and seeks to empower people through art and social justice.
Local Speakers
Global Leadership in Cultural Creativity
Jay Lucas
Jay is a communicator on the history of Christianity in Aotearoa New Zealand and the role the Treaty of Waitangi plays in shaping the past, present and future of our country. His book, “Huia Come Home” published in November 2017, calls for the necessity for western society to learn from an indigenous worldview. It also proposes that New Zealand is a land where the potency of agreement in cultural diversity, embedded in the Treaty, will offer leadership to a world of cultural, religious and political discord. Check out his work at huiacomehome.co.nz
Creating diverse and inclusive communities
Michelle Sharp
Michelle is CEO of Kilmarnock, a not-for-profit organisation, that provides a supportive, dynamic and connected environment for adults with intellectual disabilities. Her ambitions, from the outset of joining Kilmarnock, were to change attitudes towards people with disabilities and create a diverse, and inclusive community that respects the fundamental dignity of each and every one of us and celebrates our individual abilities. Michelle is also Vice President of Inclusive NZ, Director of Nutrient Rescue, Trustee of Ākina Foundation and Trustee of City Harvest.
Inequalities that divide us
Annaliese Johnston
Annaliese Johnston is a twenty-something advocate with a passion for seeing “justice roll down like a river” in her homeland. Annaliese works for the Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit as a policy and legal advisor, which seeks to work towards the eradication of poverty in New Zealand, and is involved in pro bono work in community law and prison reform. In 2016 she was a founding member of the “Park up for Homes” movement which started in a flat of young christians in South Auckland. The movement saw thousands of New Zealanders come together in solidarity with and in peaceful protest at the homelessness crisis that had families sleeping in cars. Annaliese is also a Trustee of Child Alert New Zealand and part of the faith community of St Augustine’s Anglican church in Auckland.
Q Commons Schedule
| 7:00 pm | Vision & Opening Remarks | Local Q Commons Host |
| 7:15 pm | Global Q Talk | David Brooks |
| 7:25 pm | Local Q Talk | Jay Lucas |
| 7:35 pm | Local Q Talk | Michelle Sharp |
| 7:45 pm | Response Conversaions | |
| 8:00 pm | Global Q Talk | Kara Powell |
| 8:10 pm | Global Q Talk | Propoganda |
| 8:30 pm | Local Q Talk | Annaliese Johnston |
| 8:40 pm | Response Conversations | |
| 8:55 pm | Final Thoughts & Conclusion | Local Q Commons Host |
| 9:00 pm | Finish |