Bruny Island Holiday Book: In early 2001 I moved from Melbourne to the isolated rural community of Bruny Island in Southern Tasmania. I quickly developed an ongoing creative relationship with the small local primary school, which averaged about 30 students. Then-principal Gay Cumming secured funding for a Numeracy & Literacy Artist-in-Residence project – I provided a series of cartoon skills workshops, from which students designed a range of creative puzzles and comics, and helped me in the layout of the Bruny Island Holiday Book. This was published as an A4 activity book and sold around the island that summer, as a school fundraiser.
Bruny Island School Artist-in-Schools project: In 2004, the school received funding through the Artists-In-Schools initiative, for myself to collaborate with the students & teachers in creating a 16-page digital classroom activity resource about Place. The resource was to be available online as a PDF download, as part of a communication exchange with other isolated schools. Each page features a classroom activity designed by the school, to research local history, environmental data, industry and population data, literacy & numeracy exercises – all centred on learning about Bruny Island, and using original drawings by the students throughout. Most of the activities can be adopted by other schools to investigate their own local data, and you can download the PDF kit here:
