The biennial StoryArts Festival Ipswich commenced its fifteenth season with the launch of the festival at the Ipswich Community Gallery. This was also the launch of the illustration exhibition.
The room was filled to capacity with onlookers of all ages dressed in their best magical attire. Attendees wandered the walls of the gallery, taking in the artworks, with exhibits from students from Goodna Special School, Goodna State School and Springfield Central State School. The students created 3D images, multimedia images, textural art and traditional drawings to be displayed in the centre of the gallery.
Covering the remaining walls were exhibits by renowned Australian illustrators Sarah Davis, Frané Lessac, Lucia Masciullo and Tony Flowers.
Mr Fye, the magician, captivated the younger audience with his sleight of hand, real rabbit and bird tricks. Teacher-librarian Megan Daley emceed the event, with recognition and special mention given to SAFI Director Jenny Stubbs, the organising committee, the Ipswich District Teacher-Librarian Network, Ipswich Libraries and Ipswich City Council for supporting the week-long festival.
The celebrations continued outside, with magical cupcakes and a pop-up bookshop from A Lot of Books, who supported the festival at three sites with well-stocked pop-up shops that promoted and made available published works of the authors, illustrators and storytellers presenting throughout the festival.
The festivities in the Ipswich City Centre were hosted at four venues. The 1 Nicholas Street spaces in the Ipswich City Council building hosted programs in their foyer, the Dandiiri Room and Event Space 1 and 2, with Ipswich Libraries staff in the rooms to assist. The open plan spaces catered well to presenters and students. Throughout the week, these spaces hosted illustration workshops, author talks and storytelling sessions.
This location also hosted the family sessions, which ran from 4-5pm Monday to Thursday. These sessions proved highly popular among families and were at capacity most days. Matt Stanton and Remy Lai ran creativity and drawing workshops that had many parents joining in on the imaginative fun alongside their kids. The youngest audience of the festival would have been at Tanya Batt and Peter Forster’s storytelling session on Thursday afternoon. The under-5s made up nearly half of the room.
Jacqueline Harvey’s high tea had attendees travelling from Brisbane and the Gold Coast to attend the event, which did not disappoint. The audience was entertained by Jacqueline’s recounts of how her stories came to be and insights into more stories on the way. As she spoke, the young audience was spoiled for choice with three-tiered stands laden with cupcakes, petit fours, sandwiches, fruit and bubble tea!
The other multi-roomed venue for the city program was the Ipswich Civic Centre. This venue hosted three presenters and a pop-up bookshop over the five-day children’s festival. Presentations at this venue ranged from the highly energetic sound-and-light-show concert of Lucas Proudfoot to more intimate sessions that really connected the audience to the creator, as was the case for the interactive digital illustration workshop by Peter Cheong and the gripping History Hunter workshops wi th Mark Greenwood.
Between the Ipswich Civic Centre and 1 Nicholas Street venues in D’Arcy Doyle Place, the Community Gallery continued to house the illustrators’ and schools’ exhibition. The illustrators presenting at the festival also ran daily hands-on creative sessions in the highly inspiring gallery space.
The fourth and final city venue hosting author sessions from Monday to Thursday was the Ipswich Masonic Centre, just a little further past the Civic Centre on Nicholas Street. This was a sizeable open hall well-suited to large groups. On one of the days, this big space enabled author Louise Park to host Boy vs Beast battles in which students had to engage their imaginations to transform beach balls into rock boulders of mass destruction during a particularly entertaining group activity.
Over the four days, nearly 3000 students, teachers, parents and children attended StoryArts Festival Ipswich sessions at the city venues. Whether the attendees were jumping and singing in the auditorium of the Civic Centre, inputting ideas into an illustration discussion or having a one-on-one chat during a book signing, this year’s festival has conjured wonder, awe and fun to encourage more magical experiences with books and reading.
Written by Victoria Ellen – Book Links Qld
