School Mural Showcases Cultural Diversity
Muswellbrook South Public School is proud of their strong cultural diversity and thanks to recent grant funding they have been able to build on it.
The school Parents and Community committee were successful in receiving funding at the start of 2021 from the Country Arts Support Program, by Arts Upper Hunter, to create a cultural program within the school.
“We as a P&C decided to do a mural because we thought it would be an opportunity for hands on learning, so not only can students sit down and discuss what they would like to do as a group but also how do they do it and what does it mean,” president Tara Jeans said.
Muswellbrook South Aboriginal education officer Melissa Kelman along with Richie Lawton from Budbudda Dreaming sat down with the students and talked about what message they wanted to share through the artwork and what it could look like.
“That’s where ‘Heal the Country’ came from because that was last year’s NAIDOC theme, so they kind of ran with that,” Tara shared.
“It’s really important to us because I know last year there was 38 per cent of students identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.”
The three panels will be displayed with pride in the school grounds.
Tara shared that while the application for the funding was a lot more involved than what they are used to, needing letters of support for the cultural project and other documentation, she is glad they did it and will be looking for other out-of-the-box grants in the future.
“We have really thought this past 12 months about what we can achieve as a P&C to put back into the school,” she said.
“We can get money to get water fountains and all those sorts of things, but this has probably been the best one from the student’s perspective because they were a part of it, you can’t ever take that away.”