Wakakirri Environmental Arts

The Wakakirri National Story Festival is all about sustainability through the arts. Our initiatives include:

1. Encourage schools to create stories about the environment and raise awareness
The stories created by schools are shared with the rest of Australia via public performance, email, website, television and print media. Through the process of creating and sharing stories people can gain an understaning about creating a sustainable worl.

2. Encourage schools to create sustainable art
We encourage schools to reduce, reuse and recycle when making art and endeavour to make students understand the true meaning behind the three concepts

- Reduce – Reduce the materials you need to create your art

• Reduces cost
• Reducing the number of props reduces the energy needed to move props and costumes to performance venues
• Reduces storage

- Reuse – What materials can be reused to make a prop or costume

• If you need to make a prop or costume what will happen to it in the future? Can it be designed so it can be reused multiple times?
• What sets and props do you already have at your school
• What materials can you reuse to create your item and then possibly return to its original use

- Recycle – What items can be made from reusable materials that can then be recycled

• Can you make your item from recycled materials?
• Will the materials be deconstructed and placed in the recycling bin when finished? 

Every school that enters Wakakirri must complete a judge's information sheet demonstrating how they embraced the concepts of reduce reuse recycle.

* A Wakakirri teaching kit on reduce reuse recycle is available. Click here

3. Think about environmental lifecycles when creating your arts

What materials are you using? Glue? Paint? Tape? What kind of lifecycle do they have? Where does the paint go when you wash it down the drain? What is the glue made from? Are there environmentally friendly alternative products you could use?

* For more information on life cycles and sourcing environmentally friendly products try these sites:
Reverse garbage centres
Australian Conservation Foundation
Eco Directory
Environment Protection Authority - includes the eco-footprint where you can calculate your impact on the environment
CSIRO - Land and Water
Department of the Environment
Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative

4. Environmental prizes
A national Wakakirri prize for Sustainability is awarded every year to one school that excels in telling and/or creating the best environmental story. This school is held up as an example in the media to draw attention to environmental issues in the world.