Cara Williams started out with a goal to be a writer; now she is director of a new street press magazine run entirely by young people.  

Who would have thought that sneaking backstage at a music festival would ever eventuate into the production of a magazine? I suppose there was far more to it than that, but that particularly risky endeavour led to the very first music interview I ever ran.

In late 2005 I had been informed of a new program that was starting up in the City of Moonee Valley called Loop, by a youth worker named Therese who worked at the local council. Loop was a newspaper supplement that had been developed by an organisation called Lead On. In conjunction with the Fairfax Community Network and Bendigo Bank, the Loop page published the writing and artworks of people under the age of twenty-five on a fortnightly basis in the local newspaper. Therese thought that I would be a great addition to the program, as I often drew caricatures, so she imagined I would be able to draw comics for the page. I tried, I truly did. But my comics were bland and slightly clichéd and I found that I was far more attracted to the prospect of writing as opposed to drawing.

So on January 29, 2006, I made my way down to the Big Day Out Festival in Melbourne. I remember the date clearly, as the day of the Big Day Out had fallen on my nineteenth birthday. An impressive line up of bands was exciting enough, but I had also conceived a thrilling concept -- I planned to sneak backstage to meet and greet some of these acts.

It was the first year the music festival had been held at Princes Park in Carlton, and as the event had been temporarily blessed with a new home, event organisers were forced to set up their barriers in a completely new fashion. For me, a budding journalist longing to crack the big time, this new layout was ideal for lurking about so I could determine the best possible angle to sneak backstage.

One particular band on the bill, Wolfmother, was an act that had caught my attention. Emerging on the scene in 2005, Wolfmother had attracted a new league of fans, and had debuted into the Triple J Hottest 100 with a massive six songs - beating past record holders Powderfinger. I knew if I interviewed Wolfmother, I would be able to use this article as a reference when attempting to set up further interviews with musicians.

After I spent a fair amount of time evaluating my self-imposed induction to the backstage area (which I may add, wasn’t particularly exciting), I waited. Wolfmother had just performed an enormous set, so I figured the band would go back to their trailer, clean up a little, and then go and ‘chill’ in the backstage area. After a small amount of prying, I found my chance. Two security guards manning the backstage fencing had focused their attention elsewhere. I slipped past both of them without being noticed.

Once in the backstage area I felt my adrenaline pumping. I must have looked incredibly out of place, but to the unsuspecting eye, I was just another person. For me however, I was on the lookout for one band, and one band only. I hadn’t even thought of any interview questions, I just assumed I would wing it. I wandered about, fairly lost and slightly saddened, as I figured that I had simply wasted my energy sneaking into a no man’s land. That was until I discovered a relatively large marquee that was filled with catering and apparent musicians. I wandered in hesitantly and had a look around. Unfortunately, there was no sight of Wolfmother.

It was as I was walking out of the marquee, ready to return to all my friends at the festival, that I saw the lead singer of Wolfmother, Andrew Stockdale, sitting at a table having a discussion an older gentleman.

My heart started racing. What was I meant to do? How was I meant to approach this person? I realised that I was nothing more than a fraud; just a kid pretending to be a journalist. I drew crappy comics! I didn’t write! And I certainly didn’t interview. So I did exactly what any normal person would’ve done… I walked right up to the table and sat down next to Andrew.

You can imagine it. He was mid conversation with someone. A young girl, red-faced and nervous as hell, sits down next to him. The conversation stops. He looks at me, curious as to what I want. He looks back to the other man. “I’ll speak to you later”, the man says to Andrew and walks away.

So it’s the two of us, sitting there. I manage to blurt out a story about how I write for a page in a newspaper, and would like to interview him. “Sure thing,” Andrew replies. “I’ll just grab a coffee and we’ll get started. Would you like anything?”

As Andrew walked away my mind started racing with interview questions. He returned with his coffee, handed me a mineral water and takes his seat. “Have you got a recorder?” he asked. My face dropped. “Uh… no. But I have my mobile phone? That’s got a recorder on it”. He looked at me, with a seemingly puzzled expression on his face. He has realised that I am a fraud, a nobody, a kid. But, being the incredibly polite person he was, preceded with the interview. The interview was short and sweet, and the content was exactly what I needed for my article.

I wrote my article and submitted it to the Loop page. I then started sourcing other interviews, using my Wolfmother article as proof that I was really a journalist. I would hear a band I’d like, visit their website and get in contact with their management, offering an identical spiel to each in order to arrange an interview.

All was travelling well. I had moved into the position of facilitating the Loop committee and was head editor of the page. We were publishing a consistent number of articles each fortnight, and were receiving an immense number of young people wishing to contribute. In fact, the page had become so popular that there wasn’t enough room to publish all the articles we were receiving.  While trying to deal with the overwhelming amount of young people wishing to submit their work to the publication, the team were often discovering that our articles were being cut down, or not published at all because they were considered as ‘unsuitable’ for our audience. This unfortunately, didn’t fare to well with the people submitting their articles, as well as those in the Loop Committee. Trying to solve this posed a problem. The team didn’t feel it was appropriate for us to tell young writers that their work, if deemed offensive, would not be published.
The team then conjured up the notion that perhaps, if we started our own magazine, we could then publish anything we like!

Of course the team was unaware of how difficult producing a magazine would be. We could easily design the magazine on our home computers, but actually printing it would require money- lots of it. And a group of secondary school students, with a ‘leader’ fresh out of high school clearly didn’t have the money either. So we brainstormed ideas on how to source funding. I would often meet with industry professionals, to seek their advice on how to approach funding applications and grants, or to simply share my project ideas with someone and receive their feedback and general knowledge. I was fortunate enough to receive an immense amount of support from the local council too; all of which contributed in the development of a business plan.

Using my business plan I applied for a number of funding grants, using the angle of a youth project, where people under the age of 25 worked together to produce a magazine. Many of those applications were unsuccessful. I continued applying for various grants for a good six months or so, with limited accomplishment. Although slightly disheartened by my unsuccessful attempts, I continued to be persistent. Finally, my luck changed. In a matter of three weeks, I received notification that I had been successful in three separate funding rounds, each totalling $5,000. This meant that we had acquired enough money to have the magazine printed for a year.

The first edition of Synk Magazine was released soon after, in October 2007. A quarterly publication, that first edition contained the writing and artworks of 7 young people. Three months later the second edition of Synk was released and included the contributions of 14 young people. The third edition, which recently hit the streets on April 13th, contained the work of 18 young people, with a number of more young people joining the Synk committee to devise a marketing team, an editing committee and talent scouts. The Synk team is now planning for issue 4, with the hopes of obtaining further sponsorship and advertising to continue production. Although Synk has gotten this far, we still have a long road to travel! I can only wonder where our journey will take us next…