SHOWCASE PROJECT
STORY FACTORY
Nelson Meers Foundation have proudly supported The Story Factory since 2012. This wonderful organisation enriches the lives of marginalised young people through creative writing and storytelling. Below are extracts from their Western Sydney Campaign Impact Report, 2018-2021.
“Reading is access, but writing is agency - without strong writing skills, children cannot actively engage in their education. Each week, our expert Storytellers and trained volunteer tutors work with close to one thousand marginalised young people in Western Sydney in our creative writing programs, improving their writing skills, amplifying their voices, and expanding their future prospects.”
A HEARTFELT MESSAGE TO OUR COMMUNITY
FROM NELSON MEERS FOUNDATION
We want to reassure the cultural sector that our Foundation will continue to provide strategic support in the challenging circumstances in which we find ourselves. We are doing our best to make funds available – to the extent that we can – to allow us to be flexible and responsive to the critical situation faced by Australian arts and culture.
We are heartened by the way in which the sector has instinctively pulled together, and we know that all our artists will continue finding new and different ways to tell our stories. In a fractured global environment in which so many are experiencing dislocation, isolation and loss, we need these stories now perhaps more than ever before to provide perspective and meaning.
We encourage our project partners to continue communicating with us. Our thoughts are with all of you, your families and loved ones, during this time.
CASE STUDY
URBAN THEATRE PROJECTS: BLAK BOX - A 'TOURABLE' SPACE FOR FIRST NATIONS STORIES
Blak Box is stripped back storytelling - up-close and personal in a surround sound environment. Blak Box embraces the First Peoples concept of ‘deep listening’. In NSW, the word for deep listening is Ngara. In the Yorta Yorta language of the Murray River in Victoria it is Gulpa Ngawal. An Indigenous understanding of deep listening is based on stories, silences and the spaces that lie between.
Blak Box will play ‘home’ to commissioned works and stories by First Peoples artists as part of UTP’s B-Side program.