Today was a special day. The whole day was dedicated to community. We opened up our little school to others in hope that we could give generously to each other. Students from Mercy Catholic College visited us for the day as part of their service learning. They brought clothing and food for us, as well as company and support. In returned we shared our archibull project with them. There was three goals for today: 1. To try and get the cow as close to being finished as possible. 2. To complete the majority of our multimedia / animation entry. 3. To build community in as many ways as possible. TLC students and Mercy students split into two groups. The first group gathered around the cow to keep adding to our art. The Mercy girls asked so many questions about what we had been learning and the intention of our cow. We took the time to share with them some of our newly found knowledge. The cow brought both groups together in rich conversation and helped to break the ice and make new friendships. By the end of the day the cow was really taking shape... so closed to being finished now. (Can you pick the mistake in the rainbow above?? We will fix it before submission!) The second group of TLC and Mercy students had the AMAZING privilege to work with rapper and spray artist Losty on our multimedia / animation entry. Losty is a friend of our school, mentoring and supporting our students whenever we need him. He gave up his time to work with us on this special project. Losty reinforced some previous spray art techniques he had taught us and we shared these techniques with the Mercy girls. I know it isn't clear what this has to do with our animation, but we promise we will tell you soon. The final product will make sense... but in the meantime here is a sneak peak! A massive shout out to Losty for his support in this project. We then all sat down and shared lunch with each other. The shared project connected us and we made friends and memories that will be with us for many years to come. This is what one of the Mercy girls, Imogen, wrote for their school newsletter. "The Lakes College Outreach was a day full of love, acceptance, laughter and community as we were welcomed into the 'Youth off the Streets' school in Blue Haven, an alternative school for teenagers who are disadvantaged or at risk. Full of excitement and nerves the day started in a circle, where we introduced ourselves to the teenagers of Lakes College and vise versa. We cooked a delicious breakfast of smashed avocado, toast, bacon and eggs and fruit. A little nervous and uneasy we shared a few laughs and conversations as we ate breakfast. The day remained challenging and a little confronting, however it was an experience that has shaped us and will continue to impact us. It was challenging to start conversations at start and confronting to hear of all the different circumstances that each kid had or is going through. As the day progressed, friendships formed, laughter was heard from afar and trust was built. The sounds of thoughtful and friendly conversations filled the air, as we spray painted a mural, hung out and worked on an art project. The wonder of community was displayed as we shared a lovely meal together outside. Many hands came together to prepare the food and set/ decorate the table so that we could enjoy a moment of fellowship and unity. Right in that moment we were all the same, no matter the circumstances we all faced, in that moment we were all in our most human state, smiling, eating, laughing and talking. In that moment we all belonged. The day ended where we started, in a circle. We each expressed something we were grateful for that day. Tears we shed, smiles were widened and once again laughter filled the room. Our hearts were full. Us Mercy girls left the college with opened eyes, softened hearts and a passion to see beyond people right to their core. We are grateful and blessed that we got the opportunity to be involved in such a rich experience. " This is what this project has, and continues to do for us and those that are part of the community we continue to build in and around our school. (Note: This is only part of the team. We have a few shy students who didn't want their photo snapped!)
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The finished product. Sadly we had to paint over the flags. They were the first thing we did on our cow, but when we added everything else they looked tokenistic. That wasn't our intention, so we made a change. The final product is not tokenistic at all. It is the core of our project. The future is in our hands.
Today we decided to take on the huge task of the head of the cow. We knew what we needed to do, but it was more difficult then first anticipated. Everyone got involved and we managed to pull off the enormous task of spraying our hands onto the head of the cow. Why did we chose to spray our hands on the head of the cow? The cow is looking forward, to the future, and we know that the future is in our hands.
So much progress is happening here in relation to our Archi. What a team effort! Everyone has been getting involved and is having a great time doing it.
Chelsea and James have been helping out with the horns. John and Frankie have been building the Great Dividing Range and helping out with the window border. Steven, Aaliyah and Isabella have painted the udders. John and Jasmine have changed the colour of the head. Kelly helped out with the sign and the "Rain, rain, go away, come again another day" feature. Aaliyah, Isabella and Jasmine have taken the hot glue gun and added so many extra bits and textures including rope, the gum tree, the farmer, and the sign. Brandon has worked tirelessly on the writing on the legs listing all the products we source from beef. Telisha and Tamar have been testing out some ideas for the head. Chelsea has outlined the writing on the leg. Jasmine have looked up all the distances from the Great Dividing Range to numerous places in Australia. We all added our pledges to the metal bucket. Amy has been keeping us on track! OUR PRINCIPAL Steve and OUR SCHOOL MANAGER helped out with the drilling of the window. OUR NEW VOLUNTEER Gareth didn't hesitate to help out by securing the window and helping us to drill out the bottom of the cow. We talked at length about what the solution to ongoing drought could be. A big question with no single answer. Our teacher directed us to a site called Climate Wise Agriculture. This site has been developed by Young Farming Champion Anika Molesworth. What a champion she is! This site extended our thinking around Climate Change, the drought and the complex issues that surrounded it.
We decided it takes COURAGE to be a farmer. It takes COURAGE to stand up against climate change. It takes COURAGE to bring about change in a nation. At Youth Off The Streets courage is a big part of what we are about. As mentioned in previous blogs, the circle of courage is the model we use as a school and organisation. It takes courage for us to change our lives. It takes courage for us to come to school everyday. It takes courage for us to chose education. So we have taken the letters of courage and turned them into our solution. Chelsea took the class brainstorm and turned it into the following. This will become a significant part of our cow. We are slowly making progress on lil' t-bone. We didn't realise how time consuming and large this project really was! Passers by our classroom (which is based in the local community centre) stop by and ask us what we are doing. Kids exclaim "Look at the cow mummy" and we hear the occasional "Look there's a cow. No bull!" We are proud at the progress we are making. However, it is important to note that not everything has gone to plan. For example, we experimented with cracking medium to use on the back of our cow. We wanted the paint to crack like the dry land in rural Australia. We youtube and experimented on the fibre glass we had cut out of our cow... BUT when we actually did it on the cow it didn't work. So we had to come up with a plan B and in the end we drew the cracks on by hand. Additionally the inside of the cow still proves to be an issue. We will explain the purpose of the hole in the cow in a later blog. However, our urgent problem is how to cover it. We took a sheet of patchwork material and covered it with pledges. One aspect of the cow is our pledge to make different choices about the way we think about food, the way we deal with food waste, how we speak up about environmental issues, and support our farming community. Here are some of out pledges. But there was a problem... when we put it inside the cow, it was too dark and we couldn't read them. We experimented with lights which looked cool, but didn't really make a difference. It is funky, but not what we are going for. So... Plan C. Plan C included cow hide and a bucket with the pledges to be written on the bucket. Still not quite what we want. Back to the drawing board! Watch this space to see what Plan D looks like! (We have to figure it out ourselves first!
Here are some more shots of our team work and ongoing progress on the cow.... oh and us sitting down and sharing another delicious meal together. In addition to painting our cow, we have been working on many features and additional textures that will help our cow tell a story and be eye-catching to those passing by. Catriona and Chelsea have taken responsibility for our peg people. These people will represent a healthy community living unaware of what farmers have had to do to provide them with the food on their table and many of their other day to day products. (More on this later.) We also have a little person representing a lone farmer. Catriona worked hard on painting his overalls and making sure he looked perfect. But... although we LOVED what Catriona was doing, we wanted to bring these characters to life even more. At Youth Off The Streets we have some amazing volunteers that give up there time to support us in many ways. We asked one of our volunteers, Kathy, to help us out. She went away with a brief and came back with the MOST AMAZING clothing for our healthy community. She even crocheted an akubra hat for our farmer! We loved trying on the different outfits and working out the best combinations. We cannot wait to add them to our final design. We have also begun to layer our cow with many other textures. Aaliyah and Kelly have been working on creating the Great Dividing Range. The Great Dividing Range is the mountain range parcelling the coast line of Eastern Australia. It is also a significant symbol for our cow. The Great Dividing Range signifies the divide between coastal and inland Australia and the divide between city and rural communities. It will separate the two ends of our cow. We are also working on many other small features for our cow which we will elaborate later on in the blog.
We are continuing to bring out artistic ideas to life. Everyone is contributing where they can. One feature of our our cow will be the horns. We have made a strong connection between something our Aboriginal Cultural Officer, Tyson, said to us with something Tim, our Young Farming Champion, said. Both spoke about respect for the land. Tim talked about how grateful he was for all his animals provide him and how he respects them for all they provide. Tyson spoke about how Aboriginal people view their totem animals and again express gratitude for all the land, our animals, and all they provide. We have decided to capture this respect by placing both flags, the Australian and Aboriginal flag, on the horns of the cow. This is a difficult process (to get it exact) but we are going to give it a go. Did we mention our cow now how has a coat of a lush field of grass? We finish all our archi sessions with a meal together. Why? Because thanks to our farmers we can gather around a nutritious meal, share stories and laugh together. We are also starving after all that work!
In the past week things have gotten a little crazy! In our last post we mentioned how we had come up with some pretty cool ideas. Our teacher told us not to worry if the idea seemed impossible... we would find a way to make it work. Our community jumped on board to help make our ideas a reality. Let's start with Fairlite Plastics. Fairlite Plastics specialise in Perspex cut to size, Lexan polycarbonate, Alupanel Composite Aluminium, Central Coast plastic supplies, Laserlite Roofing, Suntuf Roofing, Boat Windscreens, Marine Plastics, Corflute, Engineering Plastics, Brochure Holders,Polystyrene Foam, Hobby Supplies, signage products and much more. We are giving them a big plug because they really helped us out We needed a window for our cow. Yes a window.... and well the cow isn't flat and a window for a cow is a very odd request. We sent our teacher out to see what she could do. The first plastics place sent her on the way laughing about how she wanted to replace the cow udders with an acrylic dome...but she is glad they did. Why? Because this wouldn't have happened. So our teacher came back with a dome. Ok, it wasn’t exactly what we had in mind… we were after all going to replace the udders… but there is always a plan B. We then got in touch with friend of the school Jason Breakwell. Jason travelled up from Sydney to help us cut a hole in the cow. Now we needed Jason for four reasons:
Jason got to work straight away. Our teacher was a little on edge while he hacked into our cow but he did an awesome job. Anyone walking by the school would have been wondering what was going on. He gave us instructions on how to attach the window when we were ready to go. Jason then worked with Steven, Brandon, Aaron and Frankie to construct our corrugated iron canvas. This will be used for our multimedia presentation. We cannot wait to show you what we have planned for this! We had archibull class in the afternoon and began defining our ideas further. We also spent some time exploring the impacts of the current drought. We were particular moved by this poem. tendaily.com.au/news/australia/a180716wnv/the-haunting-poem-that-is-the-silent-face-of-drought-20180717
Many of us at Youth Off The Streets have seen our families struggle or feel like there is no way out of a situation. This really hit home for us and is essential what is driving our design. Catronia led the way pulling the group together in a final brainstorm. We finished lil T-bone off with a sponge bath of sugar soap and put him to bed. Overall, a very successful day. It feels like this project is on its way! |
AuthorThe amazing students from The Lakes College, Youth Off The Streets Archives
September 2018
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