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Here's a roundup of free online events from around the world celebrating International Colour Day (March 21).

Unmuted: Indigenous Colour Stories

March 20, 2025, 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. EDT Virtual Event

Celebrate Indigenous Voices on International Colour Day, as members of indigenous communities share their colour stories. With panellists: Coleen Garska, Jade Crabbe, Lisa Boivin & Presley Mills. Moderator: Erika Doehring-Lafferty.

https://www.colourresearch.org/event-details-registration/unmuted-indigenous-colour-stories

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Please join us online for our exciting International Colour Day 2025 event at 7 pm to 9 pm AEDT on Friday March 21, to be held in conjunction with the AIC Study Group in Arts and Design (SGAD) as the first of their new series of online forums on art and design topics. Three painting conservators, Simon Ives (Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney), Marieke Gerken (Bruker Nano Analytics, Berlin) and Rika Pause (Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam) will speak on remarkable new insights provided by applying XRF and other non-invasive tools in the fields of painting analysis and painting conservation. The forum will be introduced by SGAD Chair Prof. Dr. Maria João Durão (University of Lisbon), and will conclude with a discussion of questions from the audience chaired by CSA Vice President and SGAD Co-chair Dr David Briggs.Registrations  https://coloursociety.org.au/event-6094003

In addition to our online International Colour Day event, our Western Australian Division is planning an in-person ICD celebration in Perth on March 22 and their Divisional AGM on March 29, both at the Grove library, Peppermint Grove. Enquiries are welcome  at csa.nec.pres@gmail.com.

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Slade School of Fine Art

Colour & Poetry: A Symposium VII

Friday 21 March, 10am–5pm (begins immediately following our own event The XRF Revolution).

Online via Zoom. The full programme is now available on the Slade Colour & Poetry webpage:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/events/colour-and-poetry-a-symposium-vii-20250321/

FREE book via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1246218967479.

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ISCC Fluorescent Fridays: Colour with a Purpose in Product Design

21 Mar 2025 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM  (US Eastern)

This event shines the spotlight on Gisela Monteiro and her design students Josué Neves and Pedro Lucas Viana from the Federal Fluminense University, Brazil. They will explain how the “Colour with Purpose” workshop was conducted to validate the teaching material created based on the content formulated by the Colour Literacy Project. This includes the application of colour in drawings of real objects, such as furniture and clothing. The objective of this series of exercises is to empower students to use their knowledge of colour to justify their choices in projects, combining intuition and objectivity in the process.  

https://iscc.org/event-6095874

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German Colour Centre (DFZ) International Colour Day online event (in English), Friday, March 21, 2025 from 8:00 PM CET (Saturday AM in Australia)

Prof. Esther Hagenlocher, Head of the Department of Interior Architecture, College of Design, University of Oregon, USA, will speak on “COLOR SPACES FOR ALL” and Cornelia Faißt, an Austrian architect and university lecturer at the University of Liechtenstein, will speak on “LEARNING FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH”.

https://deutsches-farbenzentrum.de/international-colour-day-2025-online-lecture/

Thank you everyone who made the CSA 2023 national conference Colour Sense and Sensibility on October 12-15 a big success!  Paul Green-Armytage has prepared this 25-page pdf document of his photographs from the conference and excursion, which you are welcome to download. You're also invited to listen to this recording of the keynote address Colours of Objects and Colours of Light by CSA Past President David Briggs.

We've decided to make the two video recordings from our International Colour Day 2023 event, Controlled Palettes in Painting, permanently available to all, in line with our two previous ICD online events. The recordings can be found on the following YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS-wuqMtzc7ts_HBC8aQws79rYsCIKbD0

The links to the playlists for our previous two ICD online events can be found below.

ICD 2022 Progress in Colour Education

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS-wuqMtzc7uxd7kHmfabjbN84NGSH3FN

ICD2021 Routledge Philosophy of Colour Project

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS-wuqMtzc7s_OzQSq9EjnOEdLMoSZ9wZ

The 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Colour Society of Australia was held at 5 pm yesterday (November 29) on Zoom. The Report presented by CSA President Dr David Briggs on CSA activities for the year is publicly available at this link:

CSA AGM 2021 President's Report.pdf

Reports by CSA Treasurer Emily Guo and Membership Secretary Julie Blackmore were also presented and will be available in the Member's Area in due course. The meeting closed with the election of office bearers for 2022 in which the following members were all elected unopposed:

President: Dr David Briggs (NSW)

Vice President: Mike Dixon (WA)

Secretary: Glenys Thomson (Southern States)

Treasurer: Emily Guo (NSW)

Membership Secretary: Julie Blackmore (Qld)

The 2021 Annual General Meeting of the NSW Division of the CSA was held at 4 pm on the same day on Zoom. The following members were all elected unopposed:

Chairperson: Dr David Briggs

Secretary: Aly Indermühle

Treasurer: Jean Pretorius

Five of our presenters from Colour Connections Sydney 2021 have made the video recordings of their presentations available online. Please feel free to share these links in any way you see fit.

Aly Indermühle, "Luminous colour - the enchantment of Light Art"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8vDcBfhaDc

Andrew Werth, "Using color effects in service of an artistic vision"
https://www.andrewwerth.com/2021/04/colour-society-of-australia-talk/

David Briggs, "Four key insights about colour"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k3hOxrZ4fw

Ron Francis, "Calculating colour for imaginative realist painting"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk_P_av0Meg

Eva Fay, "Colour Education from the Shillito Design School, Sydney"
https://www.evafaycolour.com.au/media.html

The volume of abstracts from the conference can be downloaded here.

The link to the complete set of video recordings of the conference presentations was sent to all participants shortly after the conference, and will be made available to all CSA members joining or rejoining for the 2021-2022 membership year.

Our online national conference "Colour Connections Sydney 2021" is just two weeks away. Please take a look at our main conference page for the full program and for information about our speakers and their topics.  Three levels of registration are publicly available for participants who require access to the live presentations and/or recordings for the whole conference, and these registration packages include free membership of the Colour Society of Australia to June 2022. Single-day registration, which does not include CSA membership, is also available. Zoom links and a pdf volume of abstracts will be emailed to registrants shortly before the conference.

Video recordings of the presentations at the conference will be made available to CSA member and nonmember registrants shortly after the conference.

A recording of the CSA NSW June webinar Paints and Paint Making with Michael Harding and a collection of slides from the Peter Tasker's presentation on Murobond paints for CSA NSW in February were added to this archive recently, along with several resources that we had available from previous years, including a never before released pdf summary of David Briggs' presentation Leonardo da Vinci on Colour, Light and Vision, given to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death in May 2019.

Video recordings of our ICD 2020 webinar presentations can now be viewed on the CSA NSW Division YouTube channel. In the first presentation "Colour Subjectivisms: What, Why, and Which One?" Dr Derek H Brown (U Glasgow), co-editor of the forthcoming "Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour", discusses the Routledge project and presents a very accessible overview of philosophy of colour. In the second video "What is a Colour?: Scientific Opinion about Colour and Colour Measurement" CSA NSW Division Chair Dr David Briggs explains current orthodox scientific opinion about colour and colour measurement based on his chapter in the Handbook, "Colour Spaces". The videos can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS-wuqMtzc7s_OzQSq9EjnOEdLMoSZ9wZ
We had a great response to our ICD 2020 event with registrations from all over the world, including some AIC royalty! Unfortunately Derek had to travel to his home in Canada shortly before the event to be with his wife and son for the duration of the COVID crisis, which would have required him to give his presentation at 3.30 am central Canada time! We therefore decided to record our presentations as videos and make them available directly online.

We are very saddened to advise that Max Luescher, a long term member of the NSW Division of the Colour Society of Australia, slipped away earlier this month after a long battle with illness.
Max began his technical career in Switzerland in the field of analytical chemistry. After migrating to Australia he joined Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical company Geigy in 1964 and was in charge of technical service for surface coatings, printing inks and plastics. When Geigy merged with Ciba forming Ciba-Geigy Max continued as Technical Manager for pigments and additives in the paint industry until 1992. He was the mastermind behind the 1996 edition of the AS2700 Australian Colour Standards for General Purposes.
Max formed his Chromos Consulting Company in 1993, dealing with pigments, colour display on computer monitors and other colour science related matters until his retirement in 2002.
Max was a member of the founding committee of the CSA when it joined the International Colour Association (AIC) in 1987. He was a most active member for many years attending all of our speaker meetings together with his wife Hanni. He also regularly gave presentations in the field of colour science at meetings and at our national biennial conferences. He was also a member of the organising committee for the 1999 CSA national conference "Colour Interaction" held in Sydney. Max was also a very active contributor on committees for several of the Sydney CSA national colour conferences.
Max was the expert and man to go to for explanations of colour science and technical colour matters. Always open to discussion with designers about the ever-elusive phenomena of hue shifts under different sources of illumination. A legacy of Max’s work is his research in this area that led to the development of a computer program designed to quantify hue shifts under different illumination.

We will miss you Max,
Rest in Peace.

We hope to advise at a later time of the date of Max's funeral, which has been postponed indefinitely due to the coronavirus situation.

Colour & Perception Conference

Details are now available for the Colour Walkabout on Friday 7 September, the first day of our Melbourne conference. There are organized tours of the Australian Tapestry Workshop or of the National Gallery of Victoria, International in the morning and the Royal Botanical Gardens in the afternoon.

Alternatively, there are options for Self-Guided Tours. Both the organized and Self-Guided Tours set the tone of the conference in terms of linking what we all observe and perceive around us and how this will later be addressed in the presentations and activities during the following days of the conference.

Details of tour options HERE.