ACROSS Victoria this month, government schools and kindergartens will open their doors for Education Week, running from May 20-26, and invite parents to have a look around. Many schools will also ask artists to entertain the kids, and there’ll be a raft of free events for all ages.
Cultural Infusion, a social enterprise group that promotes equality by educating through the arts, will take their latest play, Call Australia Home, into schools around Melbourne.
Call Australia Home confronts issues around immigration and racism, and was crafted by Ella Filar after a series of workshops in community centres, with the support of Vic Health’s Arts About Us initiative. “It’s done in a musical theatre style, which is a great way to deal with a whole lot of confronting issues,” says Cultural Infusion founder and chief executive Peter Mousaferiadis.
He says that with communities in Australia becoming more diverse than ever before, we need to educate our children from a young age that difference is a good thing.
In almost 10 years, Cultural Infusion has delivered its blend of engaging education to more than a million students, according to Mousaferiadis. ‘‘There are something like 7000 different languages in the world, and so many cultures. Taking this play into schools entertains, but we can simultaneously use that art as a window to the wider community.”
From cultural excursions into schools to fascinating daytrips, several arts venues will play their role in the Education Week celebrations.
For film-lovers of all ages, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will host a steampunk-inspired event called Fantastical Inventions.
ACMI education programer Susan Bye says the event will look at the links between imagination and invention, allowing students to explore the rich fantasy worlds of film and encourage creativity. “We want to stimulate kids into thinking about the world of imagination, go back to school and create some crazy inventions of their own,” she says.
As well as cutting out bits and pieces of machinery to create their own steampunk-inspired inventions, kids can watch films such as Sean Tan’s The Lost Thing, The Golden Compass and Stardust, depending on age appropriateness, and they can check out the Screen Worlds exhibition, which includes Oscar-nominated Anthony Lucas’s The Faulty Fandangle.
National Gallery of Victoria will invite children from disadvantaged schools to get close to some of the gallery’s celebrated artworks and create their own stories.
Every Picture Tells a Story is an interactive tour led by Marg Stephens, an educator at NGV, with help from indigenous playwright, illustrator and author Jane Harrison.
“So many of our artworks have fantastic stories behind them,” Stephens says. “We take kids on an interactive tour of the gallery, sit in front of the artworks and ask children what they think might be happening.”
As well as getting to role-play some of the characters in the paintings, they’ll get to find out about the artist and when and why the artwork was painted. They’ll then be encouraged to create their own storybooks.
‘‘It’s a history lesson without them knowing it,’’ Stephens says.
