Wakakirri National Story Festival

Have a sneak peak at what has been happening behind the scenes in the lead up to the 2006 Wakakirri National Story Festival.

Email your own stories, rehearsal photos or comments to nathan@wakakirri.com and we’ll post them up.

Oliver's Story - St Patrick’s College, TAS

St. Patrick's College promotes and values "Compassion", where they have empathy for others, act with understanding and promote reconciliation. Five senior students decided to accept the challenge of embracing diversity in their College after they heard a Sudanese student sharing his life journey with the College community. “We were challenged to acknowledge and respect the richness and gifts brought to the College by people of different abilities, nationalities and cultures. Our story 'Oliver's Story' shares part of Oliver's life journey in the Sudan and more recently in Australia. Our class has embraced the cultural diversity with a deeper understanding and have certainly come to appreciate more fully the richness the large number of Sudanese students in our community bring to the tapestry of what makes our College community so unique and special.”

St Francis Xavier College, ACT

"Our hip-hop band, made up of four Year 9 St Francis Xavier College students, performed at the Canberra Theatre in the Wakakirri National Story Festival. We were performing our original song ‘Search for Acceptance’.

On the stage, we heard the presenter announce our band and the curtain lifted. At once all the nervousness transformed into energy, and we gave, what we considered to be, our best performance ever. The best thing was enjoying the delight and approval that the audience and judges displayed for our composition. When we came down next to the presenter to answer a few questions, we saw a few SFX students who had come that night to support us. The judges apparently enjoyed our piece of music and commented: “Guys, Australian Idol can eat their heart out…”

We have all made contributions to the song, ‘Search for Acceptance’ and worked on putting it all together. Dyllan has written fantastic lyrics, Theo has obviously shown his talent in music, Seb is amazing at beat-boxing and I was able to invent the music to go with this composition. Dyllan first suggested the idea of the Cronulla Riots and we all agreed it was a moral message for us to spread to our audience. We tried to express how cultural differences and racial violence are completely unnecessary in the world, because ultimately we are all the same. This subject means a lot to us because in fact all of us come from a multicultural background. We hope to have many more opportunities and perform further."

The Challenges of Making a Film For The First Time - Para Vista Primary School in SA

At Para Vista, the students decided to make a straight forward tale of murder as their first ever film. After a week of writing, and a week of rehearsal, the film was shot in one day. But the trickiest part was convincing the boys they needed to wear make-up.

The Show Will Go On – Lilydale West Primary School

Eleven year old student, Lauren Blake, tells us about her inspiring classmate:

“Megan (pictured), aged 11, was born with cerebral palsy and has just had a major operation on her legs. She is now in a wheelchair, which she has to stay in for six weeks. She is just amazing, putting up with all the pain - how does she do it?

Megan got her legs straightened by having them broken and put back together in the right place. OUCH! She's had a few Botox injections before this operation too, to help straighten her legs. She has to exercise every day by lying on her tummy for a whole hour, and she has to have her legs up in her wheelchair every day for about five hours. That would be hard. Doing that every day, she is truly amazing! She also had to put up with the stress of not being involved in Wakakirri - Lucky for Megan, we have worked her into it. It must be hard moving around on stage in a wheelchair, but I know she can do it. Someone with that much determination and bravery can do anything. Good on you Megan!”

This year, they were fortunate enough to receive the Remote Scholarship from the Wakakirri association and the Hornsby Shire Eisteddfod enabling them to begin operation Wakakirri. Coordinator, Tanya Stafford, is the driving force behind the project. “Being able to compete in the Wakakirri National Dance Festival is a dream come true for everyone who has been involved. We are bringing 50 students to dance our story at the regal theatre and 33% are indigenous. Some of these students have never travelled outside of Kununurra. What an experience for them!”

There have been numerous hurdles to overcome, but with enormous support from staff, parents, local businesses and their drive to succeed, they are coming to show the metro, just what a remote Kimberley school can do!!

Their story, ‘ Stop the Toad” has attracted support from major players involved in the cane toad eradication that is happening between the Northern Territory border and Kununurra. The minister for environment, Mr Mark McGowen, is very supportive of the message the students are taking to the city.

“Our first performance was held last Sunday at our local leisure centre. The students received great applause on their achievements and several donations from on lookers. These students have learnt to work together as a team, they have built new friendships, become role models for peers, they have learnt acceptance for others, but most of all they have had a good time. Look out Perth , Here we come!!!!”

Year 9 students from Kambrya College replaced teachers this year as they took on the role of Wakakirri coordinators, developing a Story-Dance item with Year 5 & 6 students from Hillsmeade Primary School.

They wrote the letters to parents, made posters, designed sets, costumes, and the lighting plot, collected permission slips, collated the music, choreographed the item and developed the story whilst listening to the kids’ ideas. They managed the budget, liased with staff at Hillsmeade and attended progress meetings with the principal.

Why? Well, all this was part of the new focus on the middle years of schooling (Year 4-9) in Victoria. Catherine Lyons, the overseer of the project is extremely impressed with the students “They have matured no end. They have more empathy for what a teacher has to do and they are now stronger leaders. They have also developed quick problem solving skills.” The students at Hillsmeade in return have loved being taught by their peers, seeing the year 9 students as great role models to aspire to.

Campania District High School decided to do a story dance on the Migrants to the hydro scheme after looking at a recently published book titled ‘Echoes on the Mountain’. They visited the Hydro Hands on Discovery centre and after showing them an abridged version of what they are planning, the centre decided to pay half their bus fare to the Centre and offered to donate some fabric.

"This is the first time Winthrop Baptist College has ever participated in any kind of competition and I must say we were all a little nervous but had a great time on the day. Our year 12 Dance students came up with the story and Choreographed it. We rehearsed after school once a week for a whole term in amongst exams etc.

On the day we were meet by a great bunch of people who were organised and encouraging. Tthe rules you have in place to gain points gave students incentive and made my job so much easier as the teacher in charge. To see the proud faces of the year 12 students who put this together gave me great joy as their teacher. Thanks Wakakirri for an enjoyable experience."

Michelle Babicci
Dance teacher - Winthrop Baptist College

Campania District High School is a small school in Tasmania. Battling illness and student relocation, the school managed to rally enough students to enter the Story-Dance competition in Hobart for the first time. Included in the excited cast were a number of special needs students thrilled at being given the opportunity of performing. They told a local story about the migrants who came to work on the Hydro scheme in Tasmania. Visiting the Hydro centre (that went on to help fund their entry as a way of spreading local history to a wider audience) was a great experience for the students. After the trip, they decided to focus their story on one migrant they spoke to. This migrant attended the performance and was able to see his story told live on stage. The students learnt heaps about energy, migrants, their own history, dance, performance but mostly respect & understanding and the need to work together - exactly what Wakakirri is all about.

Merrylands East Public School

Check out this amazing turtle made from PET bottles, foam packaging, garbage bags, and a whole heap of more reused materials. A fantastic effort, especially because environmental awareness can help save the real turtles!

Timbarra Primary School

In their Story-Dance item, Timbarra expressed the need to save the whales and they created this beauty out of plastic bags. What a brilliant use of an otherwise wasteful product.

The Willows State School in QLD

Camelot Rise Primary School in VIC

Croydon Hills Primary School in VIC

St Anthony's Secondary Catholic College, performing at Townsville