St Margaret's Anglican Girls School, Ascot, QLD
In 2019, St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School launched an initiative that aims to bring stories together as an expression of listening, debunking stereotypes, and celebrating the unique cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders students.
Ghidal, meaning “stories” in Kala Lagaw Ya, a language from the Torres Strait, is a rich collection of stories, artworks, interviews, or profiles from 21 of the school’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders students. To develop the publication, the school held activities that helped the girls think more about their fascinating stories, including visiting art galleries and spending time with Torres Strait Islander and ABC journalist Rhianna Patrick to help access their stories.
Another project introduced in the past 12 months - the STEAM initiative - provides Visual Art students with opportunities to engage with innovative technologies to create virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) artworks, helping to prepare students for jobs of the future. The initiative sees students illustrating the pages from a children’s book in three dimensions using VR technology and software; experimenting with audio to animate their VR paint strokes; and working on a collaborative VR painting accompanied by the school orchestra to help bring a musical composition to life.