On Thursday 15 June, 20 girls from Year 7 visited the National Gallery to attend the Girls Write Up festival. After listening to the opening speaker Ms Winnie Dunn, who talked about what it was like to be a young female immigrant growing up in Sydney, we moved into our workshops on slam poetry, writing from art or scriptwriting.
Ms Soreti Kadir ran the Slam Poetry workshop and gave us the chance to watch her perform, before encouraging us to write and present our own pieces. Ruyton student Philippa P performed her own poem (below) in front of the whole group during the Slam Poetry panel.
‘Life is a box of time.
Tick tock up the antique clock,
Time waits many dates to finally stop your clock,
To fly, to swim to stop.
Tick tock stop the clock.’
Ms Ingrid Wood ran the Writing from Art session in which we were taken to the gallery to view and reflect upon certain paintings before writing about them. Many of the student pieces were really beautifully written and described the painting extremely well.
The Scriptwriting workshop was run by Ms Katy Warner. We were given sheets of paper and a stimulus and were told to write a scene in three minutes. Surprisingly, we found that in three minutes we could develop great ideas and create something quite good. Throughout the session, Katy shared with the group many tips about scriptwriting and character development. All girls came away with their minds bursting full of ideas.
Mia A, Talia G and Juliette M, Year 7