Porch pops up fit to spin a good yarn on

The porch of a farmhouse is a place people go to watch the sunrise over a cuppa and the sunset over a beer.

In true Aussie fashion, these are often consumed over endless stories of “life in the sticks”.

Rural Room founder Bec Bignell, who grew up on a grain and sheep farm at Kojonup and founded the online community Rural Room in 2016, believes all too often, these stories go untold.

She said Dowerin GWN7 Machinery Field Days was an opportunity to launch a pop-up porch, with this year’s field day theme, Celebrating Our Story, “perfectly aligned to what we do at Rural Room — collecting stories”.

“There is not enough representation of regional people, voices and stories on a national stage,” she said. “There are too many regional stories told from the perspective of city people.”

Complete with a backdrop of corrugated iron and a ceiling of gum leaves, the pop-up porch in the field days’ Art Area served as a stage from which Ms Bignell and her team gathered and shared stories.

The country-themed porch was used to live stream regional tales and field days experiences, and share the work that makes up the hashtag #storiesfromthesticks.

Rural Room broadcasts these stories to its online audience of more than 62,000 followers, via Instagram and Facebook. The pop-up porch also hosted an interactive storyboard for visitors to add to by scribbling down the most interesting and moving story of their experiences at Dowerin.

Dowerin GWN7 Machinery Field Days assistant event co-ordinator Tiffany Davey said the response had been “incredible”.

“People felt as if they were a part of something great, contributing a snippet of their lives to the gum tree,” she said.

“Dowerin GWN7 Machinery Field Days is a platform that unites everyone in agriculture, this includes the storytellers.”

Ms Davey is a member of the Rural Room Media Stringers Network, a national online collective of regional storytellers and content creators.

“Rural Room is about uniting the creative — to work with an incredible platform like Rural Room added a new element to our event,” she said.

“We wanted to ensure everyone knew the beauty that is in regional Australia, and Rural Room encouraged everyone to write a few words and think about their own story whilst helping to celebrate our own.”

Ms Bignell hopes to see the pop-up porch become a regular field day fixture next year.

“The reason the field day set-up works so well is because it draws so many different people together in one spot,” she said.

“Field days give us an opportunity to give everyone access to creativity.

“It means people who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves ‘creative’ get the opportunity to release their voice and to share their story.”