Story Factory - March 2024

 

Image by Cassandra Hannagan

Hi John,

It’s publishing time at Story Factory!

As Term 1 comes to a close, our storytellers are busy pulling together the hundreds of stories and poems written by young people in our programs over the past six weeks. Our centres have been a hub of activity - every day you’ll hear earnest discussions like: ‘Is this word plant or plane?’ ‘What are robux?’*

Our brilliant volunteers have played a huge role in this process, coming in every day to type up young people’s work. Next, we’ll print out the covers and bind young people’s stories into beautiful books - a copy of which will be handed to each student in the final workshop of the term. It’s a tangible record of their achievement, and something they can proudly show to family and friends. Watching young people’s confidence soar as they see their words in print for the first time is a true highlight of our work.

Congratulations to all our soon-to-be published authors! 

*Robux is the currency used in the online game platform, Roblox. Just ask any primary school kid.

Onwards, 
Story Factory 

 

FREE TO FASHION: AN EXCITING COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

This term, we were thrilled to kick off our very special Free to Fashion project, delivered in collaboration with our friends at The Social Outfit. Together, we worked with 32 brilliant young women from Birrong Girls High School and Bossley Park High School, supporting them to write creative pieces and create artworks exploring clothing, culture and identity. 

Their writing and artworks will inspire the creation of original textile prints and a stunning new outfit manufactured by refugee and new migrant women from The Social Outfit, as well as a full-colour book. The book and the clothing will be launched into the world at Carriageworks later this year. We can’t wait to share them with you!

 

ZOOMING INTO THE NT

In another exciting collaboration, we delivered digital workshops to primary school students at Papunya School and Ti Tree School in remote central Australia as part of a partnership with National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy (NASCA).

As is the case with many non-urban areas, young people at these schools have very limited access to arts education programs, and they were delighted to have us Zoom into their classrooms and let their imaginations take flight.

Our staff were almost as excited as students when young people taught them to say the names of animals in Luritja language - a huge program highlight.

The success of these programs is a testament to the value of our digital creative programs in making it possible for us to reach young people we would not otherwise be able to work with and providing them with opportunities to share their stories with the world.

 

NEW STUDENT STORIES

This term, we’ve delivered a whole bunch of fun and exciting creative writing programs, with themes ranging from creating characters at a monster school to ghost fiction and stories of imagined clones. Young people’s writing about these topics is, as always, creative, funny and insightful. Here's one of our favourite pieces.