By Molly Magennis
Footscray Community Arts Centre will receive crucial funding from the state government in order to deliver innovative First Nations educational programs to students across the west.
The not-for-profit organisation is one of 80 across the state who will receive a share of the $7.5 million that the government is investing to help provide both student learning programs that are not usually available in a normal classroom setting.
The funding will also cover teaching learning programs to help support the delivery of these programs.
Footscray Community Arts Centre will use their funding to establish learning programs that focus on First Nations perspectives, culture and history.
Their students program will connect students in the west with local indigenous leaders, where they will learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture through hands-on incursions, excursions, workshops and conferences. It will seek to reach 435 students and six schools a year.
The teaching based program will provide opportunities for teachers in the west to gain the confidence and skills to deliver First Nations curriculum learning areas. The program will hope to deliver five workshops a year to 12 teachers.
Footscray Community Arts Centre creative workshops program producer Urvi Majumdar was a former teacher herself, and said that from her own experience, many teachers do not feel comfortable nor equipped talking about First Nations cultures to their students.
“We hadn’t been taught ourselves on how to teach it, but at the same time, it’s curriculum, it’s actually across every curriculum subject, so every curriculum has the requirements that teachers teach….. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives,” she said.
“A lot of teachers don’t feel really equipped to do that, so it’s quite unfortunate because it means that we have students who don’t get that knowledge.”
Ms Majumdar said the programs will be lead by First Nations artists and community leaders, and will be broken into three learning areas: First Nations perspectives, responding to the climate crisis and waves of migration in Footscray.
The centre has already started delivering a few of the excursions this year, but expects the teacher based workshops to begin in the second half of the year.
Schools who would like to be involved in the programs should visit the Footscray Community Arts Centre website or email Ms Majumdar.
Details: footscrayarts.com/schools-program/ or Urvi@footscrayarts.com
