Strengths in the Kimberley

by Kate Gillespie

I am a teacher at Yiyili Aboriginal Community School located in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and have found Strength Cards and Reflexions Cards very useful for working with the young people in my high school class.

Thinking abstractly about feelings is a difficult step for indigenous students to take and these cards provide them with the means to access more complex moral ground rather than dichotomic (good/bad) type thinking.

We use them in a wide variety of ways:

• In story and script writing activities to help define our character’s personalities and strengths.
  
• To provide vocabulary to discuss thoughts and feelings in narratives we study in English.
  
• To think about qualities we have that could help in making career choices.
  
• To consider consequences of actions and ways to support friends involved in risk taking behaviours in Drug education classes.
  

To support word recognition for beginning readers.

The photograph of our masks shows how cards were used to think about animal characters that students are enacting in a hip hop and break dance performance for Crocfest Rock Challange. The traditional Gooniyandi story The Bat and the Crocodile inspires the performance.

Two teams fight over who is the best dancer and teasing leads the bat to spear the crocodile. The cards help students decide what colours and lines would best reflect their character's personality. They also help students imagine how they would interact on stage in telling this story.

My thanks to Innovative Resources for these great tools for working with young Aboriginal people.

The story-catching supremos

- a collection of 'possible' books

by John Holton

Originally commissioned by the Pump House Gallery in London and supported by several major arts funding bodies, the Library of Unwritten Books is an innovative experiment in encouraging 'ordinary' people to share their stories.

The Library of Unwritten Books is a collection of ‘possible’ books. Short interviews are recorded with people about a book they dream of writing or making. Limited edition mini-books are published from transcripts of the interviews, which are made available to readers at exhibitions and special events.

Artists Caroline Jupp and Sam Brown collect the books through random encounters in shopping centres, parks, and city streets, and by invitations to visit hospitals, public libraries, and community centres. People are prompted to spontaneously record their unrealised ideas, fictional tales, and personal histories. A small mobile recording unit, housed in a compact, converted shopping jeep, is used to interview the potential authors. There is no selection procedure and all contributors to the library receive a free copy of their own unwritten book.

The collection is evidence that everyone has a story to tell but also that the sharing of stories can be a powerful tool in community building. The library will eventually contain over one thousand titles and will be permanently housed at the Mass-Observation Archive at University of Sussex.

You can find out more about this innovative project and even read some of the unwritten books at Unwritten.org.uk

Bendigo textile artist, Marianne Middleberg has created exquisite handmade ‘nests’ exclusively for Innovative Resources.

Each nest is woven from recycled, discarded threads, twine and grasses. While each nest is approximately 80mm wide and 70mm high they are all unique works of art. Each nest comes with three ceramic eggs handcrafted by Yvonne Cahill the creator of our ‘Pocket of Stones’.

So, what do you do with a nest? Well they could be birds nests or dinosaur nests or whatever your imagination suggests, but they can also be a place to nuture our hopes and dreams until they hatch.

Nest of Hopes and Dreams have immediate appeal to children (and even us oldies who have managed to keep our imaginations alive!) who enjoy their visual and tactile beauty. Kids have always recognised the need for a place to protect their most precious hopes and dreams.

Nest can represent our innermost thoughts and longings, the things we value and cherish, special people in our lives, memories, aspirations, wishes and those things that make us who we are.

Each nest has room to add other miniature treasures or icons – photos, a precious stone, broken pottery, a figurine or other found objects – perhaps a handmade scroll with a poem, a letter or story – just like a bower bird might collect.

Anyone with a fascination for Play Therapy techniques will be enchanted with the possible conversations that can imerge through the Nest of Hopes and Dreams.

Nest of Hopes and Dreams (view it online)

Handcrafted nest approx 100mm diameter/70mm high

Three ceramic eggs approx 40mm x 25mm

Cat No. 7099 AU $29.50

(As each nest is individually handcrafted expect some variations in colour, textiles and size)

Can You Hear Us?

- Young voices in poetry

The Irish poet, Thomas Moore, once said that ‘poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.’

Can You Hear Us? a new collection of poetry by young people involved with St Luke’s Youth Resources Team, is a great example of Moore’s metaphor come to life. These poems by Ash, Brad, Sarrah and Nathan really do burn on the page.

The seeds of this collection were first planted when Youth Pathways Planner, Angela Walsh-Edgar, visited Ash to talk to her about her plans and dreams for the future. ‘When we sat down to make a plan, Ashlee said one of the things she loved doing was poetry. We talked about putting together a publication of young people's poetry and eventually engaged her six hours per week to work on the project with the Youth Resources Team.’

The result is a 24-page booklet of honest, heartfelt, often gut-wrenching poetry, that spans a wide range of subject matter. From loss and loneliness to love and relationships, fear and frustration to anger and forgiveness, these poems demand and deserve to be heard.

As St Luke’s Senior Manager, John Bonnice, says in his foreword, ‘This publication is important because it reminds us that it’s a privilege to be involved in young people’s lives. We need as workers and as an agency to create opportunities for young people to tell their stories. It is a crucial part of our role to listen and assist in finding ways for young people to express themselves.’

If you’d like to purchase a copy of Can You Hear Us? contact St Luke’s Youth Resources Team on (03) 5440-1192

Sometimes there just aren’t the words …

Joe Robazza says goodbye to his son

Two men, one short and graying, the other, younger and taller, but with the same-shaped-head, sit on the dock. The son's hand is on his father's shoulder. It is late afternoon and the waters of the lake are the colour of polished nickel.

Tomorrow the son will be leaving the village to work overseas.

"You'll do okay," the father says. He suspects this is not the answer his son wants, wonders if he should say something wise, fatherly, and he can think of nothing to say.

The waves softly lap against the rocks, against the silence.

Then the son says, 'Fishing was good this year.'

The father agrees.

They compare this summer's catch with the last, and when they speak, they face the lake so that the sun warms their faces and their words skip like stones across the water, before sinking away.

© Louisa Howerow, 2003