We warmly invite you to join us for Everflow, the official closing event of Birrarung Riverfest 2026. Everflow is an expansive half day program integrating music performances, sound-sculptural and video installations, Deep Listening workshops and canoe paddles. Join us for part or all of the closing event at Collingwood Children’s Farm.
Developed in alignment with Deep Listening as a way to embody the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung philosophy of burndap Birrarung burndap umarkoo (what's good for the Birrarung is good for all), Everflow explores the interconnectedness of community building, care for Country and collaboration. Weaving both creative and environmental elements, the program welcomes audiences into stillness, reflection and deep connection with Birrarung as we understand our place within its ancient story.
Deep Listening is a way to practice awareness for the more-than-visible, more-than-audible and more-than-human, expanding conscious attention towards these deeper layers. In this way we begin to hear the rhythm that runs beneath the noise, the rhythm of the Birrarung. Our practice of Deep Listening involves compassionate listening/sharing circles, musical listening sessions and guided meditations, as we learn to listen with our whole being.
Everflow is the intersection of artist-producers Alex “Pug” Williams and Evie Juliet Taylor’s individual expanded research projects, collaboratively merged through continual visits with Birrarung, meditative experimentation and Deep Listening.
We are excited to share our experiences of how Deep Listening shifts our relationship to self, others and place - allowing us to imagine new futures by truthfully acknowledging the past and present.
Everflow Program
How does the River Sing?
Led by Dana Flahavin in partnership with Emergent Sound for Resonant Bodies, ‘How does the River Sing?’ invites the community to connect, listen deeply, and re-imagine Birrarung as a single, living and integrated entity, that affects and is affected by its surroundings.
Responding to water health, imagery and sound gathered from different parts of Birrarung, musicians will create a live, improvised and emergent soundscape that take listeners on a journey with Birrarung from source to sea.
Resonant Bodies seeks to remove barriers and make an inclusive, accessible and inviting third space for people to engage with and enjoy the therapeutic benefits of sound by engaging in nourishing and restorative deep listening. This could look like lying, sitting, drawing, sleeping, standing, witnessing, meditating or moving.
Listeners will be invited to add their responses to the gathering of imagery and sound that asks, “How does the River Sing?”
Birrarung Paddle: Connected by the Deep
Join us to practice Deep Listening, paddling on water. Hosted by Up the Creek, you'll experience the river from a new perspective; a place to slow down, immerse yourself in nature, and reflect on the relationship between city and landscape.
As we paddle, we focus on how we collaborate with the water itself, tuning into our senses, noticing the river's effect on our bodies as we move across it, and imagining new ways for people and the river to collaborate differently.
This tour is designed to be suitable for all ages. Children are encouraged to come along and share their voices. A diverse cohort of all ages can help us all imagine better!
Deep Listening Community Circle
Join us to practice Deep Listening to each other on land, through guided meditation and compassionate sharing.
Scavenger Collective x alwaysgoingnevergone
SC x AGNG is the physical manifestation of Pug and Evie’s complementary collaborative research. Evie creates text projections that blur the lines between personal and ecological mythology, while Pug constructs materially sound-sculptural installations from reclaimed polystyrene and steel. Through relation with people and place, to the tension of rivers with waste, SC x AGNG presents an immersive environment of sound, sculpture and light designed to reconcile the stories held within bodies of self and bodies of water.
The Yarra River Keepers Expanded Polystyrene Report identifies EPS as the most prominent and pervasive pollutant found within Birrarung’s waters. It colonises Birrarungs strata, alter-lives of chemical relationality, toxic single-useness, essential in facilitating contemporary human society.
More to be announced!
Connect deeper with the Birrarung by reflecting on our role and relationship with this ancient life source, and the first river to be granted legal status as a living entity.
Full program to come, including community conversations with Dr. Erin O’Donnell and Dr. Maya Ward.
Artist Biographies
Alex ‘Pug’ Williams is a multi-disciplinary artist from Djilang/Geelong living/working/singing/playing on unceded Wurudjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne.
Driven by curiosity, his practice explores acoustic phenomena, material transformation, and the cultural and ecological implications of mass waste through immersive and site-responsive sound sculptural installations. Drawing on truth-telling, deep listening, extreme metal, ritual, and expanded sculpture, they created resonant environments that invite audiences into embodied encounters with sound and materiality.
Pug seeks confluence with the Moonee Ponds Creek, Merri Creek and Birrarung.
Williams has exhibited and undertaken residencies in Australia, Ireland, Italy and Vietnam. He studied Fine Art at RMIT (TAFE ’16’17, undergrad ’23) and VCA (Honours ’25).
Evie Juliet Taylor is an artist and community facilitator who works with installation, sound and poetry as a vehicle to listen to the deep. Their work investigates the space between the personal, ecological and cosmological realms, which reveals itself as a net of relationality holding all things as interconnected. Guided by theories of deep ecology, Evie works in collaboration with community and environment.
Taylor is based on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people in Naarm (Melbourne). Their work has been presented in various spaces in Naarm including Gallery Gallery inc (Brunswick), Centre for Contemporary Photography (Collingwood) and Abbotsford Convent.
This event is proudly hosted by Up the Creek. To learn more about their work, visit their website here.
Most Riverfest events are free, and many have limited places with long waitlists. Please only book if you're confident you can attend, so others don't miss out. Bookings are limited to 2 tickets for smaller events and 4 tickets for larger events.
Can't make it? Please cancel your ticket by opening your Humanitix confirmation email and selecting 'Manage Order'. Your place will then be released to someone on the waitlist. If you need assistance, contact us by email: riverfest@yarrariver.org.au
Events will proceed unless severe weather or other unforeseen circumstances require a change. If this happens, registered participants will be notified by email.
If you're able, please consider making a donation when booking to support the Yarra Riverkeeper Association and the continued success of Birrarung Riverfest.
We welcome people of all abilities. If you have any accessibility requirements or need assistance to participate, please contact us before the event so we can discuss how we can support your attendance.
Celebrate the Yarra, Birrarung at one of 70+ events hosted over three weeks from 27 September to 18 October. Whether you enjoy riverside walks, cleanups, creative workshops, wildlife spotting or paddling adventures, there's something for everyone at Riverfest. Riverfest is presented by Yarra Riverkeeper Association with thanks to our partners Burndap Birrarung burndap umarkoo collaboration and Water4Good. Check out the full Riverfest program here.
Yarra Riverkeeper Association acknowledges that the lands and waterways of the Yarra, Birrarung catchment, are the unceded territories of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung and Bunurong Boonwurrung peoples. We pay respect to Traditional Owners, who have, and continue, to care for Country. We acknowledge that the river now called Yarra has always been known as the Birrarung by its custodians.
