On social media, trolling and toxicity has thrived in debates about the Voice.
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But you won't find any of that at the Maliyan Cultural Centre in Wellington where the community has been invited to come in and raise their voice about the upcoming referendum.
"I don't feel like people get to have true, genuine, conversations online or get a genuine feel for what the community is thinking ... it can become brutal sometimes," Emah Guihot, the centre's community curator, said.
"I feel like it's best to be able to have a space where we can go in and connect with people to have these conversations and Maliyan represents that very well. The community feels very comfortable here."
![Emah Guihot, community curator at the Maliyan Cultural Centre, with the Voice wall. Picture by Belinda Soole Emah Guihot, community curator at the Maliyan Cultural Centre, with the Voice wall. Picture by Belinda Soole](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/137578502/f1b4c772-a8ba-4bba-b33b-f967d8606857.jpg/r0_0_5395_3597_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Wellington locals and visitors have been writing messages sharing their thoughts about the Voice to Parliament on floor-to-ceiling chalkboards in the cultural centre - with most being supportive.
Andrew Glassop, Orana Arts' partnerships and engagement manager, said the installation - Murrayalalinya - went up on National Sorry Day in May and invites audiences to "build a communal voice" by contributing to "a complex, multi-faceted, multi-lingual chalk tapestry".
"We extended it because of the referendum," he said.
"The Wellington Local Aboriginal Land Council and community members wanted it to stay up as a way for the community to have these conversations in a more sort of laid back and personal way."
Ms Guihot said the response from the community has been "very positive" so far.
"You do get people coming in that are still very unsure, which is very understandable. There's a lot of politics and everything behind the Voice," she said.
"But I feel like people need to learn and the installation has been a way to open up conversations with these people who might be a little bit uncertain."
Mr Glassop said people being able to write their thoughts on the wall made for a "nice mix between the anonymous online world and the more personal face to face world".
"When someone comes in and sees what you have written on the wall they don't know that it was you and they haven't met you," he said.
"But when you wrote it, you were there and you had to take some ownership of it, which I think is often missing in the online world where you can just say what you want and no one really knows who you are.
![Community members add their messages to the wall. Picture supplied Community members add their messages to the wall. Picture supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/137578502/ed7b0ec5-a6f3-47cb-94ce-ce586fc6f012.png/r0_0_2250_1500_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"So people take it seriously and they're not just throwing verbal petrol bombs at each other."
On Wednesday, September 27, the Maliyan Cultural Centre will be holding an information session about the Voice. But the conversations won't end when Australia goes to the polls on October 14.
"We are also looking to do an event very soon after the referendum, for people to come in and talk about their reaction to what the result of the referendum is," Ms Guihot said.
"I think the Maliyan is the perfect space to do that since the community already has so much comfort in here, it's the perfect space for them to come in and let their thoughts out and think of what's to come after the vote."
Mr Glassop agreed that the conversations after referendum day will be just as important as the ones in the lead up to it.
"After the referendum there's going to have to be a coming together, there's going to have to be a period of healing and reassurance from whatever side wins to the other that this is not the end, it's just the beginning," he said.
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