Authors to tour Victorian regional schools as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival [28.04.2010]

Over the past 25 years the Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) has been at the forefront of Melbourne’s surging love affair with the literary arts – Melbourne is now a UNESCO City of Literature - and the festival has become one of the pre-eminent cultural events in Australia. Staged over ten days and night each August, the festival promotes the art and talent of more than 300 writers from Australia and around the world, with attendances of over 50,000.

The Melbourne Writers Festival Schools’ Program is an important part of the Festival. It engages young readers with the best writers in a series of events over three days. The Melbourne-based program attracted more than 10,000 students and their teachers in 2009. The program comprises presentations and workshops by authors with the school students.

While some regional schools are able to travel to Melbourne to participate, there are many others who cannot do so. In 2009, the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust funded a pilot with the Festival to undertake a Victorian regional tour of the MWF Schools’ Program to five Victorian centres. The primary goal was to offer more students aged 12-16 years, particularly those who find travel to Melbourne a barrier, the opportunity to engage with authors and other readers at a festival event held in or near their community. This proved to be very successful and the tour welcomed many students and schools which had not previously attended Festival events.

As a result of the successful pilot, the Trust has decided to fund an expanded three-year MWF Schools’ Program Regional Tour in 2010-2012. The pilot model undertaken in 2009 showed that the reach into the regions and program delivery to students would be more effective if the Program focussed on one region per year – Western Victoria in 2010, North/Central Victoria and Eastern Victoria in the two subsequent years. By concentrating on one region per year, MWF will develop stronger connections with individual communities, and enable more effective publicity and marketing of the tour.

The Festival will work with Regional Arts Victoria and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to produce the tour.

For more information on the Melbourne Writers Festival, visit www.mwf.com.au