The Mary Lee Exchange aims to create and nurture a new public forum. It provides a space for women, and gender diverse people, to hear stories from leaders and role models in a relaxed and inspirational setting. The Mary Lee Exchange values open dialogues and story sharing between and across communities, generations, and cultures. Through intimate, but open and multi-directional conversation between speakers and audience members we hope to build networks of women and feminists that are strong and supportive.

We launched the Mary Lee Exchange in August 2016 with our first event at the Wheatsheaf Hotel. We invited four panellists to share their stories on the theme of Work; Kristin Alford, Barbara Pocock, Angela Schilling and Cassie Alvey, followed by a DJ set from Angela Schilling.

The next Mary Lee Exchange event will focus on Family and Relationships and will be held at Nexus in January. The Mary Lee Exchange purposefully selects accessible, queer and family friendly venues. To further ensure accessibility tickets will be kept as cheap as possible ($5) to ensure the event is as inclusive as possible.

We value diverse perspectives and this is reflected in the age, race, sexuality and socio-cultural backgrounds of the panellists. Mary Lee Exchange #2 will again be hosted by award winning South Australian theatre maker, Sarah Dunn.

Our aim in putting on these events is to create an open community of women and gender diverse people that will provoke new ideas, strengthen the knowledge and confidence of these audiences and, by sharing their stories, help to empower and encourage leadership amongst historically marginalised groups. With the success of these events we hope to continue them into the future as an ongoing series, further building this community.