Prinnie and Mahalia, the stars from The Voice, at Haberfield Public School Signing With 600,000 Kids Across The Country In Australia’s Biggest Music Gig. It was photographed by Eva Rinaldi.
Once upon a time, a cute picture of Australian school kids looked like this. A bunch of chlldren are posed for their ride to school in the Glass House Mountains in 1928)
In these two images we can see how Australia has and is changing. They are both fine pictures about very different experiences; a generation of Australian artists would understand those kids on that horse going to their rural school pretty well.
————–
Talent Camp is a clever program. It provides a week-long intensive program followed by support and mentorship for twelve to fifteen emerging writers and screen creatives.
Great.
It will occur across Australia, in Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Melbourne, Hobart, Brisbane and Sydney.
Double great.
It looks at both writing and producing skills.
Yup.
It is free.
Holey moley
It is built around people from diverse backgrounds.
Hey, history is being made.
As the release says,
‘Talent Camp is seeking applications from creatives from under-represented communities in screen culture with reference to cultural background, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, geographic and/ or socio-economic circumstance. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creatives are strongly encouraged to apply. The workshops are free, and regional participants will receive financial support for travel and accommodation.
Applications are open to participants who are passionate about storytelling, with previous work produced across any creative platform, including screen, theatre, spoken word, podcasting, photography, and YouTube.’
Reasons to be cheerful
1. It is led by AFTRS but it is a coalition including the Australian Writers’ Guild through the Scripted Ink Program, Screen Australia and all the state agencies.
2. The philosophy explicitly links the need to drive rich and engaging stories with diversity. It acknowledges that great storytelling comes from complex, challenging lived experience. This is not based on the Romantic notion of genius flourishing through suffering – it simply says that art comes from a sophisticated world view.
3. It starts with writing and the first, primal creative acts.
4. There will be a mega national talent camp in March 2020, in which Screen Australia will be more involved.
5. Building a creative culture on diversity is the very opposite of teaching people a unifying set of storytelling skills – which is a quiet statement of a really important decision.
6. This is the second talent camp. The first worked pretty well.
Learn more on the registration page. Pass it around if you know potential candidates.
——
That world of horses and children is part of our heritage. It is never truly gone.
The Sisters – by Judith Wright
In the vine-shadows on the veranda;
under the yellow leaves, in the cooling sun,
sit two sisters. Their slow voices run
like little winter creeks, dwindled by frost and wind,
and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda.
They remember the gay young men on their tall horses
who came courting; the dancing and the smells of leather
and wine, the girls whispering by the fire together;
even their dolls and ponies, all they have left behind
moves in the yellow shadows on the veranda.
Thinking of their lives apart and the men they married
thinking of the marriage-bed and the birth of their first
child,
they look down smiling. “My life was wide and wild,
and who can know my heart? There in that golden jungle
I walk alone,” say the old sisters on the veranda.
