So it all begins!

This week I had my induction at Mandurah City Council. I was nervous before starting as I have never had any experience in an office setting, never mind the council headquarters. I was introduced to everyone and was sat down to go over all of the infrastructure of The Stretch Festival. I knew there would be a lot of work involved in organising a festival but it really is quite overwhelming when you look at just how much organisation actually goes into creating a festival.

Stretch Festival – What is it?

2017 will be the 16th Stretch Festival, which takes place in Mandurah. There will be plenty of events at Stretch which involve various members of the local artistic community. Stretch attracts roughly 1600-20000 people every year. Being involved in organising a festival such as this has opened my eyes to just how many people are involved in creating events like this and the amount of health and safety risks that have to be taken into consideration when planning such events.

Stretch will bring in lots of local talent such as Riptide Youth Theatre that will be providing an interactive and creative moving performance that will engage visitors to the festival. On the Saturday of Stretch there will be a celebration of Noongar culture. Noongar culture is the local Aboriginal culture that covers the Mandurah and Peel Region. To celebrate and remember the Noongar culture there will be a Welcome to Country followed by a performance from the Wardong Dancers.

Plenty of The Big Draw events will take place throughout the Stretch festival. The Big Draw is an international festival that focuses on bringing together communities by drawing and collaborative artwork. Before becoming involved with Stretch I was not aware that The Big Draw was such a large event that it is. I’m really looking forward to involving my future classes in the competition.

know his name – Yb Memorial.

This week there was a wonderful celebration of one of Mandurah’s famous Noongar elders: Yabagurt Winjan. Pictured above is the memorial built by Peter Farmer, a local Aboriginal artist who worked closely with the community to create an outstanding piece of artwork to celebrate and remember the life of Yabagurt Winjan. Yabagurt Winjan worked closely with the British settlers of Australia to attempt to reconcile relationships between them and Aboriginal natives, the Noongar group.

Throughout Australia the Aboriginal cultures are celebrated and respected by “Welcome to Country” that elders of a local area will introduce events by speaking of their native past. At the Yabergurt memorial unveiling I was incredibly grateful to witness such a moving “welcome to country”. Its incredibly important to upkeep traditions and respect the importance of elders. Especially in countries such as Australia where the populations of native communities are so small. I felt incredbly humbled to be involved with the YB memorial unveiling. As I’ve never been to Australia before this was all entirely new to me and absolutely fascinating to watch.

The turn out for the Yabergurt memorial was incredible with performances from local schools in the Choir and those that had been involved in creating the memorial were invited along for the unveiling. There was also lots of passers by who had stopped to watch what was going on. There was a real sense of community at this event and lots of members of the local community were proud of their achievements.