# Sam Kirby: What?s In Your Hands?

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** CreativeMornings HQ
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1m9PfCnvAw
- **Дата:** 21.04.2026
- **Длительность:** 28:02
- **Просмотры:** 4

## Описание

A reminder that what makes a place feel alive isn?t out there ? it?s already in our hands. Stories, people, small moments of connection ? and the way we choose to see them.

Sam Kirby at the Toowoomba chapter of CreativeMornings on Mar 13, 2026. 

Free talks like this one are hosted every month in cities around the world. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more inspiring videos: https://bit.ly/1jeJwut

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## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1m9PfCnvAw) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

It really is exciting to be here today. I know that you're in for an incredible day ahead. I was here at the 2023 creative industry summit and I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but um for me that was certainly something that was a pivotal shift in my journey as a creative and so I'm really excited about all the incredible speakers that we're going to get to hear today. Um hopefully I can do it justice. Um so appreciate the introduction and I do just this morning want to give you a little bit of my history. Um, but before that, I'm going to do that thing that they always say you should never do as a speaker, which is tell you that I feel completely and totally uh in incompetent uh as the person chosen to speak this morning. I think every single person that gets up on this stage says that they're not the best person to speak into that. And I'm definitely going to um going to echo that as well because for many of you I know you in the room today and I've been friends with you for several years and we've worked together um through the field guide. Um and I've had the privilege of telling your stories. I'm somebody that's much more comfortable behind the page than on the page. Um but I think it's your stories that have really been the inspiration that's enabled me to do what I get to do. Um, and for that I'm incredibly thankful. Um, so I apologize today. I did I did make sure that we had a fixed mic because my communication style is largely flailing hand motions. Um, you'll definitely see that throughout the day. Um, if you see me winching wincing, a little bit of a disclaimer. I cracked a rib last week. Um, it's not an indication of how I feel the this morning is going. Um, if I see you wincing, I might start to think differently about that. Um, but we'll see how we go. So, as I said this morning, I wanted to just start by telling you a little bit about myself. Um, and my journey over the last couple of years, cuz prior to 2022, I wouldn't have considered myself a creative. I I largely still don't think of myself in that capacity. Um, but the realization is that we are all creatives. Um, creativity in many ways is just problem solving. And so my background is business, finance and project management. Um, which is a really interesting base and not typically industries that you would associate with creativity. Um, but I want to tell you the journey of how I then came to run a local lifestyle publication. Um, a 32page local lifestyle publication. Uh, and more recently in the last two years, um, launching a citywide event. Um, some of you might be familiar with the scavenger hunt um that we run the field game um which thank you which um is an incredible local initiative um not just by myself um but I've got a business partner um Steve Clayton who's here in the room today um and a team of people around us that help us to do that which really does tie into this conversation that we're having today about local. Um, I remember when Amy reached out um about speaking today um and my initial thought was, "Oh, wow. We've really hit that point, have we? We've hitten that point in the well. " Um, because I don't think of myself as the most competent person, as I said, to speak on this matter. But it is something I'm incredibly passionate about. Um, and there is something to be said about passion. I um I think that passion something that I've learned over the last four and a half years is that passion always trumps natural ability. You can be you can be as talented as you can be, but if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you'll always be beaten to the post by somebody who that's the thing for them. That that's all that matters. And so I feel like that a little bit about this topic today. I'm incredibly passionate about Touumba, about the region that we live in, about the lifestyle that we get to experience here. Um, as I was preparing this, I remembered a um a quote that I heard several years ago from Shane Webbkkey that said, "I don't profess to be the best in the room, but I can outwork everyone else. " And that's kind of the mentality behind my story today. Um, so a little bit about me. I'm a Toumba boy. grew up in a um on a farm just outside of Tumbra. I've lived here largely my whole life other than a couple of years where I moved up to the Wit Sundays. Um moved back to be a poor uni student again, decided to go back and do my masters. Um and made the decision to come home. Um and I stand by the fact that was actually one of the best decisions that I've ever made, even though I didn't realize it at

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1m9PfCnvAw&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

the time. um going back to uni meant going to my parents and having that conversation where I said, "Mom and dad, I don't know if you know this, but I'm incredibly passionate about being able to buy food for myself. And unfortunately, I am not in a position where I can do that and afford to pay rent as well. Could I move back home? " Now, of course, the conversation went differently. It was more like, I don't know if I've told you how much I love you. I, as your 26-year-old son, would love to move back into the house with you. Um, but it was this um this homecoming that brought me back to Towa again in that field of finance, business, project management um and accounting um that then actually became the foundation of the journey that led me to where I am today. So um to skip forward a few years um in 2022 I found myself in a position through happen chance through circumstances through very much a seven degrees of Kevin Bacon type situation uh where I was in the position where I was offered um this startup publication in Touumba. There was an incredible local creative local journalist who' who'd started this thing called the field guide. this creative magazine that showcased the best of the region, that told the stories behind the stories, um that was there to uplift, um to just showcase the incredible region and the incredible people that make it the place that we call home. And um she was she was incredible um the incredible Phoebe Tully um who's coincidentally just moved back to Towa. Um, but she'd found herself in a position where she'd been offered a job because of the work that was she was creating that required her to move away. She wasn't going to have capacity and through friends of friends, I found myself in this position where this business was offered to me as something that I could purchase. and um a and being stuck pretty much in spreadsheets 8 hours a day, but with a passion for food and art and creativity, I said, "Who better who better to take on the helm of a magazine of a newspaper than the man with no journalism experience, no photography experience, no media experience, no design experience? Who better to take on the helm? " Thinking, "Well, this will be a fun hobby now. " Now, now Phoebe being as brilliant as she is, she she's like, "Don't even worry about it. It'll be a couple of hours a week. " Um, and for somebody as amazing as Phoebe is, that is probably true. Uh, for somebody like me, that was the biggest underell in the history of underells. Um, and what's proceeded from that has been four years of this thing that has taken on a life of its own and it ultimately has completely consumed everything that I do. Um, but for me it was really interesting. So, taking on this publication and having to go out and find stories and talk to people, what it did was it actually exposed me to a whole different side of Towa that I didn't know existed. So, I'd been very insular from that. As I said, um I was working at the time as an accountant and um I didn't think I really had that much of a creative bone. The the words creative and accountant usually don't go together in any other context than on the news and not usually for good circumstances. Um and so I just had to put myself out there. And what I discovered was this incredible creative community, this incredibly artistic community, this community of entrepreneurs, this community of the makers, the doers, the people that are driving this region forward. And we began to I began to discover these stories of these incredible individuals, which is you in the room today. Um, and it just dawned on me that there was something so much bigger than what I thought was maybe a taxdeductible way to get a few free meals. Um, which it's a good perk. Um, but in 2023, I found myself in this room. Uh, a couple of editions in. I think Phoebe was up to edition four when I took up over. We've just hit edition 19. I think we're about edition six at the time. And I was sitting at one of the tables and um some of you may know her but the incredible Alicia uh Voland from Windy Acres Farm was sitting opposite me and a couple of months earlier I'd st heard her story and everything she was doing through their lavender farm and then their bee beekeeping and the education programs that she was running and we ran a story on that because I was like yes content. Yes, I've got content. Fantastic. And anyone who's who knows the pressure of having to produce

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1m9PfCnvAw&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

something that's content based will know you just grasp hold of anything that you can get. And so we we'd run this story and I was sitting opposite Alicia and hadn't realized that she was a panelist for the third session of the day. Um, and then she got up and she was posed this question. And the question, um, seemed odd to me at the time, but it was kind of deeply profound, I thought. And it was, "When did you as a creative, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur? When did you feel like you had made it? " Um, I think so much of us around this kind of industry live in that world of imposter syndrome. Um, which is interesting because we're all exactly the same. But I certainly was sitting there at that time in this world of imposttor syndrome. Um and Alicia was posed this question of when did you feel like you had made it? When did you feel like you were able to own the position that you were in? Um and she said something that completely shocked me which was when the field guide ran that article on us. Now for me I had no concept of what I was doing. It was simply let's put out some content and here's an amazing person. Let's tell her story. But what I began to realize was there was something so much more and so much deeper to what we were doing through storytelling. Um, another example of that happened a couple of months later where um we the new edition was dropping. I'd received the new edition from the printers on a Friday. Um I like to drop them out on a Saturday. um pretty much 120ish stockists around town. It's a full day task. So I was like, I'm going to get the jump on it. Friday night, um couple of bars that are open. Going to drop some copies of the edition in. Um so I think I was driving past Uber, the amazing Katrina, um Costigan was there was like dropped a few off. Um head home. Great. Can tick a few off my list. Again, this is still just a hobby for me at this stage, but something I was getting a lot of satisfaction and a lot of drive out of. The next day I needed to drop some off at the Lighthouse Gallery. Many of you will be familiar with it. Um, the amazing Emma McTagot. Um, and we were promoting an exhibition that was launching that day in the edition. We were telling the story. Um, and as I was there, Emma comes out, she greeted us, she grabs the field guide editions, and she pretty much proceeds to run around the gallery shoving them into the hands of every single person that's there, raving about, "Have you seen this local publication? have Now, I remember that there were people at the counter buying some artworks at the time. And Emma proceeded to, you need to check out this local publication. Only for them to turn around and say, "Oh, yeah. That's the reason that we're here. We were visiting from Brisbane. We were having a wine at UV last night and we saw it and we loved the artwork so much that we delayed going back to Brisbane so that we could come in and buy some artwork. Now, I don't say any of this to make us sound good. Um the reality of that is that I think they bought something close to $6,000 worth of artwork, which is a huge amount for an artist. Um we don't say that to make ourselves make myself sound good. I say that because what it did was a huge paradigm shift about the power of storytelling and the power of what we were doing. There was this shift that took place where I began to realize that this isn't about me. This isn't about a taxdeductible meal. This isn't just a hobby. This is having real and tangible benefits and real and tangible impacts on people's lives. And I think that was this realization that then proceeded to unpack over the next couple of years the power of storytelling that it's the stories that we tell that shape the culture that we live in. I fundamentally believe the stories that we tell shape the culture that we live in. that you look back at history, the printing press, you look back at um prehistoric cultures, it was the stories that they passed down, told about identity, values, the stories that they told about origin that shaped those cultures that tied them together. And it's no different today. the the change in Europe that took place um with the development of the printing press and then globally. The stories that we tell are the stories that cha change and shape our culture. And so what was this fun thing became this responsibility to how do we tell the stories that matter? are going to uplift? inspire? How do we tell the stories that are going to have a positive cultural impact in our city? Uh, skip forward a couple of years. Um, and in 2025, the extension of that was the launch of the field guide uh, field

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1m9PfCnvAw&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

game. Some of you might be familiar with it. This citywide scavenger hunt. We had a little bit of funds left um, from the field uh, the field guide that year. And it had been something that I've been mulling around in my brain for a couple of years going, there's a power to storytelling, but how can we engage people? How can we activate people so that they are part of the story? How can we create something that's immersive that connects people to the local environment that we have here that connects people to Towa that connects people to our history, our shared history? How can we give a shared experience? And so been fortunate to do some travel in my time and I saw a concept in Singapore and a concept in Paris and just having grown up around trivia and scavenger hunts and gaming. There was this amalgamation that took place where we're like if we take this element and this element then we can contextualize something to the local environment that's going to have a prof that we believe can have a profound impact. And so we put it out into the world. Um, for those unfamiliar, we hid in 2025, we hid we had tokens minted in the shape of coins. We hid them around the city. They represented real values for real money, uh, with a $10,000 prize pool. And then we slowly released clues, tower based clues to lead people to find these things. And we thought maybe a couple of thousand people would take part. We didn't we didn't really have any idea of what was happening. Um, and in that year alone, we saw somewhere between 10 and 15,000 people on the ground hunting around for coins. We would get hundreds of messages every day. And by all intensive p um all intensive purposes, the statistics were incredible. But we, as I said, we get hundreds of messages a day. It was the messages that I soon realized that was the thing that was the value that was where the actual core the heart the value of everything that we were doing came from. I want to read a couple to you because what started out as a this will be fun soon talk on a completely different meaning and value. So each day we received literally hundreds of messages. Most of them were genuinely messages and they were cheeky. There were people fishing for extra clues, fishing for coins, trying to crack the code, trying to see if I'd break and tell them more information. Uh, a couple of people uh cursing me for completely taking over their life uh for a week. Um, to which I'd usually reply, "Me too, buddy. Me too. " Um, and like so many funny comments that were just coming through, but then there were the ones that were genuinely heartwarming and just downright hit you in the gut. They were downright beautiful. They were goosebumps on the arms. And I genuinely I have told these stories hundreds of times and I still get goosebumps every time I tell them. And so there's nine of them and I just want to read them to you. Just thought I'd let you know all week we keep running into the same family out looking for coins. We saw them again this afternoon. So tonight we all decided to go out for dinner together. I didn't find a coin, but I did meet a girl. We're going on our first date tonight. Wish us luck. It's a good one. Another similar one. I'm getting to spend so much extra time with my partner because of this game. Thank you. Maybe the next clue could have something about sunsets and a bottle of wine. On Sunday, my family spent the whole day walking around the parks. Our family hasn't spent this much time together in a long time. Every day, we've been going out for walks, having dinner together, and coming up with ideas. You have no idea how needed this was for our family. Sorry, I am going to choke up. I've literally told these hundreds of times, and it still gets me. Thank you. Without going into the full story, I've always struggled to bond with my son. Today, we spent 4 hours together in the park. I just need to tell you what this game has meant to be. My grandpa has dementia and some days he doesn't remember me. At the moment, he's doing a little bit better and remembers to call me every morning and we discuss the clues. I'll always treasure these memories we've been able to make. I just needed to thank you. My wife has been struggling with postnatal depression recently, but this week she's been going out for walks every day with friends. I've saw her smile this week. It's been really helping her. Sorry, ridiculous. This might be silly to say, but I just need to let someone know I've not lived a healthy life for the last few years, and this game has got me out walking around the parks, and I'm excited to

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1m9PfCnvAw&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00)

exercise again. Then the last one. Thank you. Honestly, I've needed this game without trauma dumping on you guys. I've had a tough time mentally for a while now and I've struggled going out of the house. In the last week, I've been going out for a few hours every day. This has given me the motivation to get going out again. So, thank you for your whole team. What started out as a fun idea as a why can't Towa Womba have nice things? We're a city of 180,000 people. This will be fun. We have a little bit of budget in the money. Maybe we can motivate a couple of thousand people to get out and learn something new about their city. Completely changed. Completely took on a whole new meaning. Um, so of course we were compelled to do it again in 2026. Um, it didn't become a will we do it again. It became a we have to do it again. Not for the purposes of just running another game, but the fact that it's having real impacts on real people. See, I think so many of us as creatives never have we don't have any idea of the true impact that we're having. We are the cultural carriers of our city through what we choose to build, create, what we choose to bring out into the world, what we choose to to birth out of ourselves these ideas that we come out with. We're telling stories every time we do that. and you have no idea of the impact that can have on other people. One of the great strengths of the game we quickly realized, well, it's its ability to mobilize literally tens of thousands of people around the city to explore our parks, to explore our art communities, to interact with local historical places that they didn't know existed. One of the stats which blew my mind was 86% of people that were pled said that they learned something positively new about Toumba. They experienced Touumba in a positively new way because of the field game. So that motivated us and our goal with this over the next couple of years is we're moving people through the parks. city. Why not also take this opportunity to inspire, to motivate, to fill our parks with art and music and culture, to connect people with our local creatives, artists through sculpture in the parks, musicians in the parks. At the same time, we quickly wrote a mission statement after that first game, and I want to read it to you today. Our mission is simple. To create and shape the cultural landscape of our city. To spark meaningful connections through shared experiences. To activate local spaces to support our local businesses. And to inspire belonging. We believe that culture doesn't happen to cities that it's built by them. That connection is contagious. That community is built in motion not in meeting rooms. and that play creates space that fosters shared identity and meaningful transformation. So, uh in 2026, we just um we decided to go big and it was the first step towards this vision of um a whole of community experience. Um this year, I'll rattle off some stats which sound impressive and I'm excited by them. They are. But again, that's not the thing. This year alone, we had 18,000 people on the ground. We had a broader reach of 38 to 45,000 through events and peripheral um peripheral participation. So, non-active participants, family group chats, whole heap of things. The involvement and engagement in this was crazy. It was global. The amount of stories I heard of people saying, "Oh, my family in Perth are participating. They're helping me solve the clues. my family in Canada, my family in in Europe and the word of Towa and this small thing we created was getting out and it was bringing people together. The app that we created went to 27 on the Australian app store for the week. That was the level of downloads that we were having. We had 1. 4 million views over the space of a week on our Instagram account and we tracked an economic uplift in the CBD of somewhere around 880,000. And that's amazing and it's fantastic because we want to support a local. We're born and bred to Womba. We It's all about this for us. But I think I want to sum it up with uh looping back to one of these stories. The lady that

### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1m9PfCnvAw&t=1500s) Segment 6 (25:00 - 28:00)

explained that she hadn't been outside her house or barely for two years. So this year she found one of the coins and so had to meet up for redemption. So, she gave me the coin. I transferred the money that it represented into her account. Um, I didn't realize it was her. An hour later, I got a message from her. And she's saying, "Hey, I didn't want to tell you at the time, but I was so excited to meet you. I don't know if you remember, you probably didn't even see it, but last year I sent you a message about the fact that I hadn't left the house for almost two years. " She's like, I just want to tell you that was the catalyst for me stepping outside again. facing my fears. That was the catalyst for me saying, "Hey, you've got some work to do. You need to talk to some people. You need to take control of the things that are holding you back. And you need to take control of your physical health again. " And for me, that's what it's all about. It's how can we engage on a local level to change people's lives. Couple of thoughts I want to just leave you with today. And I know I mentioned one of them. The power of storytelling. What is the story that you're telling through the work that you're creating? Whether it's through a business you're leading, whether it's through an artwork you're creating, innovation. What is the story that you're telling? And how can you leverage that story to inspire, to motivate, to help people step beyond where they currently find themselves? Secondly, local culture happens when ordinary people decide to build something where they are using what's in their hands. For me, that was a publication. then a game. But what's in your hands that you can use to build culture locally? Every time you build, you create. Every time you put something out into the world, you're telling a story and shaping the culture of this city. Finally, there was something we wrote that kind of was how we felt at the time in the leadup to this event and the impetus, the responsibility that we felt that we had to do this for the city. It's been said that action begets action and that momentum begets momentum. As we lead into 2032, as we look at what's the city we want in three, in five, in 10, in 15 years time and how do we build that? Something is shifting now. There's a genuine sense that there's something shifting in the city and I genuinely believe that now is the time to move. Thanks

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/46360*