Riverview Stories

The Riverview School Artists in Residence Project is underway! The adventure has begun.

I enjoyed the warmup session with the teachers on the third of their start of year professional development days. The energy was interesting - professional but playful. The story we created together is rough. It had to be, we didn't have enough time for anything but rough, but it does have all the components I'm hoping for in this project,  local setting - the skate bowl in Pickering Street, students as characters and some local flavour.

 

Skate Bowl from Google Street View in Hayden St, Riverview

It was good watching the teachers working out how to have a bit of fun with the process. One way was their choosing students who had been a little challenging for them last year as the characters in their story. I got so much pleasure out of seeing their linocuts and look forward to putting them together with the text of the story on the project blog.

Stories of place are such an important part of community and cultural development. We all live in place and are shaped by place. Our stories are shaped by place and our stories shape our places. Telling stories about our places helps us take pride in our country, our town and in ourselves.

The four introductory storytelling and story creation sessions in the library with the whole of school were rich and textured. Most of the sessions went well although the years 4,5,6 year session didn't get off to as good a start as I would have wished because the Queensland Times journo and photographer had arrived just before the start.

I'm looking forward to meeting with the four participation classes this week and working with them to develop their stories.

Daryll