With poignant synchronicity, on the International Day of Peace - September 21, 2023 - Canberra lost a unique creative and prophetic voice for peace, justice and environmental security. After a short but intense encounter with cancer, Dr Glenda Cloughley passed away at her Canberra home with her husband Tony, and their sons Daniel and Raphael beside her. Her Australian family also includes stepson Louis, his wife Brianna and daughter Sienna.
Glenda Cloughley became a household name in March 2003 when she invited Canberra women to secretly join her in the Marble Foyer of Parliament House to sing a lament for the people of Iraq, which she had written only days earlier with composer friend Judith Clingan AM. They started singing just as then-PM John Howard announced in the chamber Australia would join the US-led war with Iraq. The singing of the 150 women who gathered became an international media event and led to the formation of the well-known Canberra group A Chorus of Women.
To mark its 20th anniversary in March this year, A Chorus of Women, gathered about 100 singers, including many of the women from 2003, along with some men, to return to the Marble Foyer (with permission this time) to sing an updated version of the Lament, written by Glenda. This invited the audience to "give our voice to the Song of Life" so "lament will turn to renewal". Assembled parliamentarians from across political parties were deeply moved. Some commented that in times of warmongering and climate disasters it is good for the nation's decision-makers to be reminded to have courage to take bold action for the children of today and the future. TV news coverage of the event included Glenda speaking to camera with her characteristic deep intelligence, direct eye contact and voice that has been described by others as "the voice of peace", explaining her initial impulse in 2003 and the new focus for the 2023 version.
Hailing from the Southland Region of South Island, Aotearoa New Zealand, Glenda was the daughter of Winnie Grant (Cloughley) and the late George Cloughley. After studies at Otago University, Glenda started work as a journalist with the Otago Daily Times and then the Evening Post in Wellington. She moved to Australia in 1977 and continued a career in journalism, PR and management consultancy. In 1986 she married Tony Pratt and together they set up The Change Agency, which brought together thinkers from many walks of life for events that explored ideas for transformational change in human relations.
Along the way she became interested in the work of Carl Jung and returned to study to become a Jungian analyst and psychotherapist, later setting up a practice in Canberra. She also completed a masters degree in social ecology and a PhD in psychology. These studies took her deep into storytelling, including the teaching stories embedded in Greek mythology. More than most, Glenda understood the therapeutic value of a big story both to individuals and at a cultural level. She was committed to reconnecting those of us with European heritage with our forgotten Indigenous past, including studies from neolithic times when peaceful Earth and goddess-centred cultures prevailed. She was inspired in this by her friend and mentor, the artist and prehistorian Dorothy Cameron (1917-2002), and famed archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, who founded the discipline of archaeomythology.
As a gifted singer-songwriter, the birth of A Chorus of Women allowed Glenda to develop her ideas in collaboration with other Canberra women. She created a repertoire of songs that profoundly captured shared concerns about peace, human rights and environmental damage. These songs were often composed at short notice in response to national or international news, local landmarks and/or specific events. An example of her unique interweaving of artistic, mythic and cultural discourse is the friendship she developed with the sculptor Tom Bass to find out more about his sculpture of Ethos in Civic Square - Canberra's first public artwork (1961). This friendship resulted in the song I am Ethos - with music by Glenda and words from Ethos to the people of Canberra that Tom, then 89, told Glenda Ethos spoke to him in a dream, and which are now inscribed in a paving next to the statue.
Glenda also composed two major choral and dramatic works. The Gifts of the Furies, performed at the ANU in 2009 and at Old Parliament House in 2010, was possibly the first artistic work to recognise the mythic scale of climate change. Drawing on the ancient Greek trilogy, The Oresteia by Aeschylus, this prophetic work warns what happens when humans elevate their laws above the laws of nature and shows how disaster can be averted when we put nature first.
April 2015 saw the concurrence of the much commemorated centenary of the Gallipoli landings with the significant but lesser-known centenary of one of the world's oldest peace organisations, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. WILPF was founded at the remarkable International Congress of Women held at the Hague in April 1915. This was a complementary and very different story to the Anzac narrative - a story about women, peace, and the early stirrings of internationalism. Glenda told this story in her second major work, A Passion for Peace, which she called a "community oratorio". Premiered as the centrepiece of a five-day Festival for Peace at the Albert Hall in April 2015, The Passion has been performed in different formats to great acclaim on several occasions since.
These two choral works exemplify Glenda's appreciation of the unbreakable laws of nature that continue through cycles of death and renewal - "lament to lullaby" - the transformative power of love, and the importance of storytellers and artists to embed these things in our public psyche.
While Glenda strove to sing up what we can agree on (nurture of life and care for the Earth), rather than protesting what we don't want (wars or environmental destruction), she did not shy away from highlighting the ongoing trauma that results from destructive human behaviours. Her compositions have left us with a body of beautiful and profoundly meaningful music which will continue to do its work for the common good insofar as A Chorus of Women - and others - continue to present its timeless wisdom. The cultural wisdom in her music has also helped those who know and love Glenda to process the grieving of her loss. In her words: "Lament is the start of renewal."
- Remembering Glenda, a celebration of her life and work, will be held in the Chapel of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture in Barton on December 13 at 2pm. Details are at chorusofwomen.org.
