This week Nadine and I spent a lovely 3 days in Yarrabah - the beautiful Aboriginal community which is 45 minutes out from Cairns CBD on Cape Grafton. We were well looked after and very grateful to spend some time in such a breath-takingly beautiful landscape with such lovely people.
State Library’s Indigenous Language Coordinator - Des Crump, was heading up to do some language workshops in the community. I brought out the iPads and did one fun digital session with the adults, but generally, he worked with adults during the day and we stuck around to work with children in the afternoons. I tried to incorporate some language into our workshop too.
It was a great way to collaborate with another unit of the library, as we got to meet important members of the community, learn some basic language words and listen to stories and history about Yarrabah. The workshop on Monday had 8 children but that grew to almost 20 by Wednesday.
Big compliments to the parents, teachers and community, as I have never worked with such a polite, respectful and enthusiastic group of kids! This was the first workshop I've done in Yarrabah so we worked on some basic claymation and stop-motion animation and drawn cartoons using the iPads. They picked it up straight away.
As a group, we recorded a short song in language and made an animation to go along with it. I will do some very minor editing and add subtitles then give back for them to use as a resource. I hope to visit Yarrabah again soon to build on the skills that the children learnt and illustrate more of their unique stories.
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