Students swarm Girgarre for literacy event

Bell Shakespeare performed a kid-friendly version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an author illustrator held a workshop, and an orienteering event saw students get active.

Organiser and Mobile Area Resource Centre library teacher Fiona Smith said she aimed to host a large literacy event every two years.

“Instead of trying to do individual Book Week activities in each school, we converge and do different things here. There’s lots of adventure involved,” she said.

“We try to engage (students) in different experiences they don’t always have access to, being in smaller rural schools.”

The Hansen Little Foundation, a private family institute based in Melbourne, provides support for Bell Shakespeare to tour regional Victoria.

Chief executive Vedran Drakulić said the foundation had a keen interest in supporting education programs that supported children to learn about arts and culture.

“We believe that arts and culture play a really important role in helping students learn and understand other things outside of mathematics or science and so on,” he said.

“It builds their confidence, builds their aspirations, and builds their understanding of the rest of the world.”

Mr Drakulić found the students were fully engaged in the performance, which he said was “very inspirational and really wonderful”.

Actors Mariska Murphy, Olivia Ayoub and John Tsakiris performed six sessions for the event, and found that, while initially reserved, the students embraced their show.

Ms Mayoud said, for some students, it was like seeing “magic come to life”, which could make an impression beyond the performance.

“We have lots of kids come up to us after the show and say ‘I want to be an actor now’, or ‘that was so cool, I like Shakespeare now’. That makes it all worthwhile,” she said.

Mr Tsakiris said one student had approached him for acting tips for an upcoming school play, and Ms Murphy said part of their aim was to inspire kids to perform.

The actors have been on the road over the past 19 weeks, staging over 190 shows across the country.

At the football netball club, author illustrator Fiona Smith held a creative workshop for the students.

Ms Smith led the students in making collages, turning painted recycled paper into artistic renditions of native birdlife.

Students were also tasked with finding different wildlife printouts scattered throughout the botanic garden as part of the orienteering activity.