Art Write Light

Art Write Light is a free creative writing project curated by Story Factory, that connects Australian artists with young people in an explosion of creativity.

This year-long project creates opportunities for students to creatively respond to the work of living artists, and to each other, and for this to inform and enrich their approaches to writing and storytelling.  

What did we do in 2019?

In 2019 we partnered with Bangarra Dance Theatre and choreographer and dancer Kaine Sultan-Babij, who created snd performed a new dance work based on his family totem – the caterpillar. The students wrote about the performance, sharing their writing, which is turn formed the inspiration for another dance work from Sultan-Babij, which was performed at the project’s completion alongside audio-visual installation of the student’s writing.

What’s happening in 2020?

For Art Write Light in 2020, the multi-disciplinary artist Ernest Aaron has created three original artworks exploring the fragmented and episodic nature of the modern world, using brilliant colours and pop-culture references. This work will be used as inspiration for students in a series of writing workshops in schools across Western Sydney. 

Aaron will share his creative process, inspiration and artistic aims with students, to which students will write a sequence of flash fiction pieces exploring and extending elements of Aaron’s work. 

A selection of work created by students in these workshops will be featured in an installation and launch event to be held during Term 4 2020 at Story Factory Parramatta. The launch event will feature audio recordings of student work, a light-based installation of student writing and a second artwork from Ernest Aaron responding to the student writing created as part of the project, closing the loop of creative responses.

Want to run this program at your school? 

If you’re at a school serving high populations of marginalised young people (FOEI above 100, or ICSEA below 1,000), contact us on info@storyfactory.org.au and we’ll book you in!

To get a little taste of the program, these PDFs provide two outlines for two of the fun, engaging writing activities we take our students through as part of Art Write Light.

You can download and print these at home any time, so you and your students can get writing and start imagining!

ACTIVITY TEMPLATE 1 – BEDROOM VISION BOARD

ACTIVITY TEMPLATE 2 – ERASURE POETRY

One of the works Aaron has created specifically for the project – Unconsciousness Stream 2, Ernest Aaron, 2020

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