Murray Arts has successfully snagged a grant worth almost $35,000 to embed writers in Border classrooms to teach storytelling skills next year.
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Three established writers from the North East will spend 10 weeks in schools helping children with first-person narrative writing as part of a program called Sticks and Stones.
A video expert will then step in to produce a six-part podcast series of the most unique and compelling stories.
Writers Brendan Hogan, Carm Hogan and Kate Rotherham have been sounded out to partake in the program, while six schools registered their interest but had not yet been notified of the funding news.
Outgoing Murray Arts director Karen Gardner, who pushed for the funding in one of her last acts with the organisation, was thrilled to learn the grant application had been awarded through the federal government’s highly competitive regional arts fund, delivered in Victoria by Regional Arts Victoria.
“It came from an idea of building resilience in young people, and using the arts as a toolkit to express themselves for when things don’t go according to plan,” she said.
“It can be quite isolating being a young person, but this will help them in knowing there’s other people out there experiencing something similar.”
Sticks and Stones will be in partnership with headspace, which will send its staff to work with students to build on their resilience in conjunction with the writing program.
Ms Gardner said it would prompt young people to reflect on what their personal stories were about, and what was important to them. “I hope that it provides an insight into the lives of young people right across the region,” she said.
“I hope that it gives young people a toolkit to help them into the future, for when life throws things up at them and things don’t go to plan.”
Kate Rotherham said she was excited to work with young people.
“I want to help them find their voice, and to tell their stories,” she said.
“It is particularity important to hear from young people in an a regional area about what matters to them.”
The $35,000 that was awarded to Murray Arts consists of two grants as it applied for cross-border consideration for schools along the Border.
On top of the six stories included in the podcasts all students’ stories will be published eventually.
There are two funding rounds per year and its aim is to improve access to the arts and to encourage greater private sector support for the arts.
For further details on how to apply, visit rav.net.au/funding-opportunities/regional-arts-fund.
