Epic Collaborative Poetry at Garma

09 Aug 2017

This year, for the first time ever, Sydney Story Factory took part in the Youth Forum at the legendary Garma Festival in north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

The Garma Festival of Traditional Culture is huge, and a spectacular annual celebration of the cultural inheritance of the Yolngu people.

It is hosted, coordinated and programmed by the Yothu Yindi Foundation and brings together 2,500 people every year to share knowledge and culture. It is also a vital and important forum for discussion of some of the most pressing issues facing Aboriginal people in Australia.

Over the four days of the festival, Cath, Richard and John immersed themselves Garma’s Youth Forum.

The Youth Forum is a mini-Garma in itself, jam-packed with workshops for Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people 8-18 from across the nation, building confidence and knowledge within the leaders of tomorrow. 

Our team ran poetry workshops in which every one of the 200+ young people attending put pen to paper and let their ideas flow. Over the course of the weekend they created an epic ‘Poetry of Place’ collaborative poem that was so huge it ran all around the walls of the Youth Forum. Our poets also recorded their poems as audio files – and we can’t wait to share them… watch this space.
 
We took so many photos, we can’t fit them all here, but you can check out all the action at the @SydStoryFactory Twitter account. 

Huge thanks to the University of Sydney who supported Sydney Story Factory’s visit to Garma 2017.