Bring It On Home

We’ve got a housing problem. There aren’t enough affordable homes to go around, and much of the housing stock isn’t the right type. How we got here is complex and there’s no easy fix. It’s time for a renovation.

It’s hard, but we need to see rebuilding our region as an opportunity to look at new designs, development models, and innovative partnerships to meet the housing needs of our communities.

Bring It On Home is an invitation to everyone in the Northern Rivers to think about housing beyond their own back fence, to learn what we have around here and, more importantly, what’s missing.

Visit this exhibition
Living Lab Northern Rivers shopfront
Tues—Thurs, 1—4pm
11 Woodlark Street, Lismore

Rumpus Room

You’ve scanned your way here from our exhibition…

The one space designated to having fun, ours is packed to the rafters with music, books, films, TV, and podcasts we’ve enjoyed.

Listen to podcasts exploring housing, architecture and urban design.

Hidden Cities with Miriam McGarry
Listen here.
Hidden Cities is a podcast about the invisible infrastructure that shapes our urban spaces and experiences. Series One focuses on housing affordability. In each episode, an expert explains how a policy or economic approach impacts housing affordability, to make these often complex policies understandable.
Housing Choice with Kate Raynor and Fiona Andrews
Listen here.
The ‘Australian dream’ is owning a house in the suburbs, but as cities grow and densify, apartment building has boomed. Simultaneously, we’re experiencing a lack of housing and lack of affordable housing. How do our housing choices impact us at an individual, local and national scale? What does research tell us about the attributes of ‘good housing’? How can architects and urban planners actively work with key stakeholders to deliver dwellings and precincts to enhance social outcomes and wellbeing?
Place Agency with Angelique Edmonds
Listen here.
Place Agency presents a series of conversations with 6 prominent Architectural practitioners and academics in Australia and the UK, considering the intersection between design, social value and the power of social connection. Each episode presents a pair of conversation partners examining design’s capacity to elevate one of three themes; Social, Trust and Diversity. It has long been understood that the way we design and organise our living environments can help or hinder social connection. We know that at worst failed approaches can build in isolation- with long term damage to quality of life including physical and mental health outcomes. How we build refers not only to the built structure as an outcome, but also the process through which we arrive at that structure. The series highlights the importance of our agency in this through design’s capacity to be both a noun (an outcome) and a verb (a process).
Hearing Architecture
The Australian Institute of Architects
Listen here.
Hearing Architecture is a podcast featuring professionals from within the built environment, sharing what they do, and why it’s important. In this podcast, we’ll be interviewing architects, builders, and designers from around Australia who will tell us about the work they are doing to improve our cities and neighbourhoods.
Enjoy some fiction recommended by local booksellers.

Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar
Cannery Row
John Steinbeck
Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko
The Tree of Man
Patrick White
The Plains
Gerald Murname
12 Edmonstone Street
David Malouf
Carpentaria
Alexis White
White Teeth
Zadie Smith
The Spare Room
Helen Garner
The Labyrinth
Amanda Lohrey
Tirra Lirra by the River
Jessica Anderson
Mullumbimby
Melissa Lucashenko
Lola in the Mirror
Trent Dalton
The House of Sorrowing Stars
Beth Cartwright
The House in the Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune
Keeper of Lost Things
Ruth Hogan
A Glasshouse of Stars
Shirley Marr
(YA fiction)
(childrens books)
The Shelter
Celine Claire & Qin Leng
Dorothy
Jordan Collins & Myo Yim
Wonder Earth
Zanni Louise
Belonging
Jeannie Baker
For your listening pleasure...

Explore these tunes we've put together all themed around home, housing and shelter.
Bring It On Home on Spotify
Some local film makers put together a list of films exploring home, shelter and belonging.

The Castle
A comedy about a working-class Australian family that fights to keep their home when faced with an imminent government takeover.
The Pursuit of Happyness
A heartwarming film tells the true story of a struggling single father and his son's journey to find stable housing while pursuing a career.
Parasite
A South Korean dark comedy-thriller that explores social class divisions through the lens of two families from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Nomadland
A poignant film directed by Chloé Zhao, portraying a modern-day nomad, brilliantly played by Frances McDormand, as she navigates the American West, exploring themes of resilience, solitude, and community.
Beasts of the Southern Wild
A poetic and visually stunning film directed by Benh Zeitlin. It follows a resilient young girl, Hushpuppy, as she faces natural disasters and discovers her place in a magical, endangered community known as "the Bathtub."
The Florida Project
This drama follows the lives of a group of children living in a budget motel near Disney World, highlighting the struggles of low-income housing.
Room
Adapted from the novel, this film portrays a mother and her son who are held captive in a small room for years and their adjustment to the outside world.
Rabbit Proof Fence
A powerful Australian film directed by Phillip Noyce. Based on a true story, it follows three Indigenous girls who escape a government-run settlement to journey home, defying cultural oppression and discrimination.
Minari
A heartwarming film directed by Lee Isaac Chung, depicting a Korean-American family's pursuit of the American Dream in rural Arkansas. It explores themes of family, identity, and resilience.