Once Upon a Festival

On Thursday 28 of October, 31 boys from Year 5 attended the inaugural ‘Once Upon a Festival’ at Immanuel College.  Boys were invited to apply to be involved in this excursion and we were delighted as there was a lot of interest from the Year 5 cohort to attend. We are hoping to provide boys who missed out this year with an opportunity to attend in 2022.

The festival was a whole day event whereby schools from all over Adelaide gathered to meet authors and illustrators. The Year 5 boys were lucky enough to attend the following talks and workshops:

• Jared Thomas –  Author – Game Day series with NBA player Patty Mills – Jared read from the Game Day series and discussed the process of writing and collaboration with Patty Mills
• Andrew Joyner – Author / Illustrator – Andrew showed how he creates animal characters, with a special focus on his collaborations with author Ursula Dubosarsky.
• Music Performance -The ASO and Immanuel College students collaborated to bring to life a book by Kobi Yamada titled ‘What do you do with an idea?’
• Paul Rutter – Illustrator – held an animation for beginners workshop whereby students learnt the principles of animation, drawing forms, styles and techniques.

The boys who attended from 5Z were asked to reflect on their day at the festival.  We hope you enjoy reading their responses:

“My favourite part of the festival was seeing Jarred Thomas who is the author of the Gam eDay series. I found the story of Patty Mills very interesting. We learnt about his childhood, how he was the victim of racism and how he coped with it. I really enjoyed finding out about Jared’s culture and his family. I was grateful to be selected to go to the festival.”
Gus Focareta

“The thing I liked most about the Once Upon a  Festival is Paul Rutter’s fabulous lesson in animation. I learned how to make a character realistically walk in 8 scenes and how to squash and stretch objects for bouncing or jumping.”
Matthew Tran

“The workshop I really enjoyed the most was with Jared Thomas and learning about how he wrote the Game Day series. Jared shared lots about himself and Patty Mills, reflecting on the partnership they formed to write the Game Day series. His word to describe Patty Mills was dedication. We also learnt lots about Jared and how he became an author.  I was interested in learning about his culture and about who he would work with next to write a novel.  He was very nice sharing his life with us.”
Josh Bell

“The highlight of the Once Upon a Festival for me was Andrew Joyner teaching us how to draw. I really enjoyed Andrew Joyner teaching how to draw characters from his book. I think it was good because I have never been confident with drawing, and he taught us how to draw easier pictures and then turn them into harder drawings.”
William Harper

“I loved having a variety of schools, having the opportunity to go.  I have never in my schooling career had the opportunity to go to something like this. Thank you.”
Aarav Bhatnagar

“I really liked the performance from the book ‘What Do You Do With An Idea?’ because there were so many instruments and lots of dancing and I learnt that what you can do with idea is use it to change the world and use it for good.”
Amit Bhat

“Jared Thomas was great because he talked about the series that he made with Patty Mills – the Game Day series.  He shared information about Patty Mills how and he partnered with him to write the Game Day series.  Jared also talked about his aboriginal family and other people he has worked with.”
Harry Baker

“At Immanuel College I really loved how we got to meet Andrew Joyner, Jared Thomas and how we got to see the amazing performance.”
Dimitri Diamantis

Alison Winter and Sue Dansie
Junior School Teacher-Librarians