Robyn Archer is back in Melbourne for The Light in Winter festival in Federation Square. She snuggles up on the casting couch for a chat with KAYE SERA.

It's lovely having you back in town. You've been away for a bit, haven't you?
I'm sort of working all over the place at the moment, mostly in Melbourne with The Light In Winter festival and the Deakin Lecture series, but also in Toronto.

What's The Light In Winter all about?
It's to do with the physical thing of lighting up the city, but there's also the added thing of enlightenment, and that's lead us to devise an event that also involves communities. The whole idea of celebrating lights in Europe, ancient and modern, is about warming up and leading you to feel more hopeful.

And filmmaker Srinivas Krishna is doing an installation.
He's a great guy who I met through my continuing involvement with a big festival in Toronto called Luminato. This project is something he's wanted to do for ages, so we're immensely privileged to be able to get it up for him for the first time. It's called When The Gods Came Down To Earth and it's a five-metre leadlight installation of Indian classical dancers in gestural positions and movements which suggest the posters of Indian gods printed in the 60s.

Federation Square has become a real hub for community events.
It's absolutely the chosen space for everybody. There is no lack of people wanting to have their major events there - it's become a very significant and important public piazza for the people of Melbourne.

You've also written a play that opens in Adelaide in September.
It's the story of the first woman architect in Vienna. I met her when she was 95 and interviewed her. I'm also doing a few concerts as well. It's a lovely mix at the moment, and it does seem to be different from the past 13 years of kind of being owned by one or two festivals. It's much-more free flowing (now).

The Lights In Winter has a Solstice Statement to sign.
If people go to the Federation Square website, they can sign the statement, which is very much about acknowledging the value of various communities in Melbourne. What we don't want is for Melbourne to become homogenised as it becomes bigger. We want to keep it a fabulously mixed and diverse place.

The Lights in Winter
Federation Square
June 13 - July 5
Details: www.fedsquare.com