The Song Room is a national not-for-profit organisation that provides opportunities for enhanced learning and development for disadvantaged children through music and the arts.
Gandel Foundation provided funding support to The Song Room in the past. Most recently, they received a two-year grant to deliver the Tuned in For Life program, an in-school creative arts program, to reach primary school students in up to 12 disadvantaged and culturally diverse primary schools in the Hume region of Victoria.
During term four of 2015, Meadow Heights Primary School students in year six worked with the Song Room Teaching Artist Debra Goldsmith to produce a graduation banner for their school to celebrate their time at Meadow Heights Primary School. Debra worked with the students to learn basic painting techniques and explore themes of their homelands, families etc.
Each child painted their own square, that would come together to create a design of four people in a circle holding hands. Each person in this picture represented a season of time at the school and linked in with the Meadow Heights School song that was simultaneously being created by students at Meadow Heights through another Song Room project.
Some of the students had very little experience with using paint brushes, paint, or expressing their thoughts through art. Throughout the project, Debra worked very closely with the children to help each child come up with a design to express the story they wanted to tell.
Debra said that working with the children on this project has been a very touching experience and she felt privileged to have worked with them, not only to teach them art techniques, but to help them tell their stories. The end result is vibrant and celebratory and the students and staff of Meadow Heights are very proud of the work that has been created.