In this one-off workshop, students will explore the vibrant artworks of Amy Claire Mills, a disabled and Neurodivergent artist working on Gadigal Land. Inspired by her bold and imaginative pieces, they’ll reflect on the kind of soft spaces—safe, welcoming places—they’d love to spend time in.

Truth might be stranger than fiction, but most of the time lying is more fun. In this workshop, students will play around with the truth to compose a short poem made up of false statements designed to amuse the reader.

What is freedom to you? It means different things to different people at different times. What if you could build your very own freedom machine? What would it look like? How would it move? Where would it take you? In this one hour workshop students will explore Kirli Saunders’ and Matt Ottley’s beautiful picture book The Incredible Freedom Machines. They will use this as a starting point to design their own freedom machine. Students will then write a one-stanza poem describing their machine and where they would use it to go to feel free.

Students imagine a hungry monster living under their couch and write about their first epic encounter with it as a narrative poem. Students will be guided through key aspects of the form and the use of various poetic devices including repetition and simile.