Collaborate

“We are very grateful that our writer-in-residence, Ms Kirsten Fogg, fondly known as Miss Kiki at school, has been holding creative writing sessions regularly in our library at lunchtimes for the past two years [2015-2017]. As part of our Book Week celebrations, Kirsten also gave engaging hands-on lessons during class time to our junior and senior students. The students surprised themselves with the way their language unfolded and developed through the fun, kinaesthetic activities, resulting in some delightful poems and musings.

Kirsten’s sessions focus on the students’ self-empowerment through the creative use of language, using their senses and imagery to create rich descriptions of their experience. She helps the refugee and immigrant students build their own “sense of belonging,” so that they not only feel that they belong to their new place, but also to their new language. Developing the students’ sense of belonging on all levels then helps them to form an integrated identity.

Thank you Miss Kiki from all of us here at Milpera SHS, for your time, care, compassion and expertise! You have made a very special and significant contribution to the well-being of our students, their language development, and their sense of belonging.

Milpera, “a meeting place of brothers and sisters”, is an intensive English-language school for young people of refugee and migrant background. It helps children settle in Australia and aims to create a strong sense of belonging “through carefully chosen learning experiences, an extensive extra-curricular program and by valuing the cultural identity of each student.”

“Kirsten’s essay Nana Technology is a unique personal story written in an intimate way which translates so well into radio. Her spoken presentation for radio is natural, thoughtful, and warm. Kirsten takes direction well and workshopped her essay with us to make the text suitable to audio. We look forward to seeing how she explores the medium in the future.”

2016 has been our ‘Year of Belonging’ at SLQ.  Many people have participated in our program; many have told their stories of belonging or shared images of how they belong in Queensland.  Gathering this material is not always easy, so we were privileged to have Kirsten here at SLQ initially as the “Pop-Up Story Catcher” interviewing community members as part of the Anywhere Theatre Festival and then at our Big Day of Belonging on June 18.

Thousands of people flocked to the Big Day of Belonging, which featured a BrisStyle craft market and an innovative range of storytelling tents.  Kirsten collected 17 beautiful stories of belonging which she wrote up and which are now being shared on the SLQ  Today blog .

Kirsten’s contribution was seen as one of the most successful to our objective “Focus on a sense of Queensland identity, belonging, and story as seen through the eyes of Queensland writers, crafters, foodies, musicians, and artisans”.