Melbourne · Yapify
About us
Arriving somewhere new is rarely the hard part — connecting is.
Yapify started because we kept watching the same thing happen: people land here for all kinds of reasons and get through the first fortnight on adrenaline. After that, the calendar is still empty — surrounded by a city, and living beside it rather than in it.
We started with a talk show, because talking was the one thing we could do straight away.
It is in our name. Yap — the word people use when they think you talk too much. We took it as a compliment. Most people arrive here funny, sharp, full of opinions, and then find that in a second language they sound like a smaller version of themselves. You do not run out of things to say. You just stop saying them.
So we build somewhere to talk. If you want to come on the show, feel free to ask. There is no bar to clear.
What they wanted was not only content. It was somewhere to turn up.
So we started running the things we had only been describing. We build every one of them the same way — so that whoever arrives alone does not leave alone.
It is hard to become part of a city just by being told you are welcome. It happens through small repeated things — game nights every week, familiar faces, people remembering your name, hangouts with friends. We design for building up these small moments.
A community that only talks to itself becomes a parallel world. So we connect with local businesses and artists, and make it a community that merges with the city. We have products built with local artists and projects running with local businesses — whatever we make, we try to make it with someone from here.
We are trying to build a name — a community where someone who landed six weeks ago can find activities, ask a stupid question, yap and share opinions — and where local businesses and communities can reach out, through a partner who lives in both languages.
What we do
What we already run, and what we are building next. We will keep adding services that are actually helpful for international newcomers — that is our promise.
Where to eat, what is on, how things actually work here — plus local information updates, in the language you think in.
The thing we started with. Long conversations about study, work, money, homesickness and the parts of moving countries nobody warns you about.
Our weekly sport night. Easy to learn in ten minutes, impossible to stay a stranger through. Turn up on your own — most people do.
Something small every month — a coffee chat, a reading, a cake party. Then seasonal big events with different themes.
One-day trips out of the city — the coast, the ranges, the places you only find out about from someone who already lives here.
Events
Open to everyone. Click any card for the detail — and tell us if you want to come.
Shop
Tote bags, card protectors, notebooks and key chains — with the tomato on them.
Collaboration
Pottery Boy is an Australian ceramicist who throws every piece by hand and paints it himself. The work is big, loose and unmistakable — stars, figures and blocks of colour brushed straight onto the clay, glazed thick, fired one at a time.
His pieces are named rather than numbered, and sell out in single drops. He teaches across two studios. We went to an artist rather than a factory on purpose.
Some of his work
Our first collaboration is a small run of vessels carrying the Yapify mark — thrown, dried, painted and fired one at a time, the same way everything else in his studio is made.
These are the first pieces before firing.
First release · in production
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A stall, a partnership, an idea, a question — leave it here and we will write back.
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