Indigenous Cultural Themes

Getting Inside Rainbows End

Together with cultural educator, Shiralee Hood, we have created an exciting and new style of program for students studying Jane Harrison's Rainbows End. It uses immersion to help English students understand the text and support them to express themselves in written assessment tasks.

Shiralee is a Noongar/Gunaikerai woman. She wrote the book on helping indigenous actors tell their stories. She created the Indigenous actors' programs at both WAPPA and VCA. She has provided countless hours of cultural education for non Indigenous audiences.

Together, Shiralee and James will guide students as key scenes are read out loud. Being in the play, exploring the characters and talking openly, in a supportive environment, will help students enormously to empathize with a narrative that might otherwise seem foreign.

Special guest facilitator: SHIRALEE HOOD

Writing about Country

Shiralee is a proud indigenous Noongar/Gunaikernai woman. James' family is of migrant and refugee origin. Both have lived in city and rural Australia. Their combined heritage enables them to offer unique insight into the theme, the mentor texts, and the ways suggested by the VCAA that students could write about country.

Short writing exercises in this workshop focus on, pre and post-colonial "Australia", city and country, migration, resettlement, identity (and losing one's home/country) as well as discrimination. Given that Split was written by a Noongar woman, Shiralee's people, we strongly suggest that schools choose this as one of the two mentor texts we explore on the day. Her knowledge could be what opens the door to writing about country with reference to indigenous Australia.

The facilitators are both professional actors, directors and writers. They are two of the most experienced arts educators available. Shiralee co-created the indigenous actors' programs at VCA and WAPPA. James created the Eagle's Nest Schools program. They have mentored thousands of young people in the art of telling and writing stories.

The workshop combines techniques from Western and Indigenous approaches to creating stories and is a must for any school wanting students to thrive at "Writing about Country"

Special guest facilitator: SHIRALEE HOOD