19 April 2011

20-something looking for ways to meet new people

| betto
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I’ve been in Canberra for a few months now and I feeling pretty socially frustrated. I’ve lived in many other cities, but this has been the hardest place to meet people and make friends so far, I think because my work and study are rather solitary affairs. I’m not exactly the sort of person that would go to a bar on my own or anything like that… especially from what I have seen of the bars in Civic so far? Hmm. Not my scene.

Anyway, I’m determined to fix this situation, so I wanted to ask RiotACTers if they could recommend any social groups or activities where I’m likely to meet other people in their mid/late20s or early 30s. The catch is, unlike Canberra’s lycra lovers and guernsey gangs, I’m not really into sports.

However I like artsy stuff, like theatre and dance and performance and music and literature and photography, political stuff, cooking and volunteer work. I’ve googled around, but it’s hard to tell from group sites whether you are going to end up at a retirement group activity club or something where you might actually meet people your own age. So any tips would really be appreciated.

Thanks!

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Lost and Found office launch, definitely something to check out if you’re artsy. There’s always heaps of little gallery openings going on around Canberra, usually with free drinks and friendly young artsy people. Can be a bit hard to find at first, but once you find them and chat to some people, very easy to keep the party rolling!

http://us8.campaign-archive2.com/?u=70822b08c5f726177d1531bca&id=6948ea03c8&e=bbe07f2c18

betto said :

Thanks for all the tips so far RiotACTers…

I was also wondering, has anyone attended French classes at Alliance Francaise or elsewhere that they could recommend? What was the composition of the classes there like, age-wise? I could do with starting to learn a third language, but I want it to be fun and social… I have enough serious classes as it is.

I have some friends from uni (20-somethings) who are learning French at Alliance Francaise and they’ve really enjoyed it. They have said though that it’s mostly pensioners and retirees there.

Matt Sheppard6:32 pm 19 Apr 11

Improvised theatre classes

http://www.impro.com.au/act/classes

New beginner classes are starting on Tues 3rd and Thurs 5th of May.

The classes usually have a good, friendly vibe and and most of the students are in the sort of age bracket you mentioned.

Had you considered applying for entry to ADFA?

Join an Ultimate Frisbee team. It’s the sport for people who don’t like sport.

LSWCHP said :

EvanJames said :

There’ll be a few who have a large, energetic membership and others that were set up to scam money off the association to buy food for morning teas. Ahem. Not that I’d know anything about that.

Can you still do that? My brother and a few of his mates did that at the ANU back in…oh…1983 or thereabouts. I thought that accountability would have come along sometime in the last 30 years.

It was pretty easy. We had a very active academic/social group, but the association wouldn’t give us any money for our society, to cater, as it had members that were students, academic staff and interested members of the community. We had very good talks by visiting academics and writers and archaeologists and things, but the ANU students association wouldn’t fund anything that had academic staff as members. So we invented a fake society, wrote an excellent charter for it, and the association happily funded us to buy sticky buns and coffee for the monthly get togethers and everyone was happy.

Sometimes we got contacted by people who wanted to join, so we quietly pointed them at the correct society which had a slightly different name.

CanberraGirl193:29 pm 19 Apr 11

Take up dancing. Most of the people I’ve met through salsa are about that age group, so you could check out Subsdance or Salsabor, which are both excellent schools. As well as lessons, there’s also a lot of opportunities to go out social dancing, and it’s a useful life skill to have.

I’ve not gone myself, so can’t give personal feedback, but there are quite a few ‘Meet Up’ groups in Canberra…like this one:

http://www.meetup.com/Best-of-Canberra-Social-Meetup-Group/

Festivals that are held in Canberra are always looking for volunteers. UC Live handles Grooving the Moo and Stonefest. You might meet some interesting people there? Groovin the Moo is coming up soon too.

EvanJames said :

There’ll be a few who have a large, energetic membership and others that were set up to scam money off the association to buy food for morning teas. Ahem. Not that I’d know anything about that.

Can you still do that? My brother and a few of his mates did that at the ANU back in…oh…1983 or thereabouts. I thought that accountability would have come along sometime in the last 30 years.

There’s Rover groups (18 to 26 year olds) all through Canberra. As Crew Leader of Corvus in Evatt, it would be lovely to have you along. We do a lot of sporty activities like squash, rock climbing, runs around the Lake, and are fairly non traditional. We generally meet on a Monday night. Details are on the Scouts ACT web page if you’d like to shoot me or any of the other Crews an email 🙂

There’s also a few Sporting social groups around which is always a nice thing to head off too.

+1 for languages at CIT. There’s heaps of fantastic people you can meet from taking up an Auslan or Spanish course 🙂

For a change, try learning new language at CIT (TAFE)

Kandy A said :

http://www.canberramusiciansclub.org.au/

come along by yourself
chatty bunch, all sorts of ages

Folk music

: shudder :

Thanks for all the tips so far RiotACTers… except for the naked run tip (um, this isn’t exactly the Gold Coast temperature wise…) and the blonde interwebs site thing. That is like an online version of Mooseheads, without the much-needed alcohol to numb the horror.

The improv classes sound like they could be fun and book clubs are a good idea too, thanks.

I was also wondering, has anyone attended French classes at Alliance Francaise or elsewhere that they could recommend? What was the composition of the classes there like, age-wise? I could do with starting to learn a third language, but I want it to be fun and social… I have enough serious classes as it is.

http://www.canberramusiciansclub.org.au/

come along by yourself
chatty bunch, all sorts of ages

georgesgenitals said :

http://www.blondeink.net

Ugh, no! I’m getting a vision of pots of boiling water and dead bunny rabbits.

There’s plenty of good social dance classes around – I can recommend Jumptown Swing and K’Motion for starters. If you like theatre/performance, you might also want to check out Impro ACT – they run introductory improvisation courses every term and most of the students are in your age brackets.

ThatUniStudent9:37 am 19 Apr 11

Run around naked for a bit. You’ll attract plenty of interesting artsy people. Just watch out for the ones in the new vouge blue and white uniforms.

Have a look at the societies that come under the ANU’s umbrella. There’s a whole bunch of topic-based social groups, the film club is one that springs to mind (they screen good films http://www.anufg.org.au/ ), and I think there’s some others that touch on your areas of interest.
http://sa.anu.edu.au/clubs-societies
and click on the list of clubs and soceties near the bottom. There are HEAPS. I imagine the uni of canberra has something similar. SCUNA is pretty big and active, that’s the choral society.

You might like to talk to the association, and ask them which are the most active. There’ll be a few who have a large, energetic membership and others that were set up to scam money off the association to buy food for morning teas. Ahem. Not that I’d know anything about that.

Book clubs – if you hunt about you can find a few, and go to an initial session to see what the crowd is like. You’ll also have a good chance of meeting people who are reasonably intelligent and get an idea of who they are as people into the bargain.

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