School Residency Programs Kick Off

School Residency Programs Kick Off

Over the next couple of weeks WEYA teaching artists are heading to three schools to work with young people and their teachers on creating new works that celebrate young people’s own voices and stories.

This week, Lilly Fish, Penny Harpham, Dave Kelman and Jane Rafe will begin year two of our residency at fabulous Whittington Primary School. This project involves 150 primary school students from Prep to Year 6. The project will adapt stories from the Arabian Nights to teach oral language, literacy and humanities and to create a huge community performance event scheduled for August. See details of the 2016 student show, Adventures in Ancient Greece.

Next week Penny Harpham, Dave Kelman, Katie Mudlin and Claire Pearson return to Victoria University Secondary College to begin year two of WEYA’s residency there, delivering a series of workshops on Shakespeare’s Othello that will engage every student in Year 10. WEYS will also run a Shakespeare based after school performance project for students in year 8 to 12 that will culminate in a major community performance at the school in September. How will WEYA follow up our extraordinary 2016 Samoan language Hamlet? Watch this space.

And in a couple of weeks time Lilly Fish and May Saba Sabet (new staff) will be kicking off our third year at North Geelong Secondary College, building on last year’s Romeo and Juliet of Corio project. This twenty week residency engages twenty English as a Second Language VCAL students from many different cultural backgrounds in a radical re-working of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a vehicle for exploring contemporary Australian society. The residency will culminate in a community performance at the school in September.