Story Hub: Geelong Hub
We recently finished evaluating our three-year Story Hubs pilot program.
We’re sharing the stories of those first Hubs in this series of articles.
‘A magical portal of pipes’
The Geelong Hub was a partnership between Whittington Primary School and St Leonards Primary School and was delivered from 2021 onwards , following the first round intake of Hubs and the onset of COVID restrictions.
The output from co-design was a portable set of control pipes for each school that can be plugged into various socket pipes attached to the walls.
The Geelong Story Hub was co-designed with the students and teachers from both schools, facilitated by 100 Story Building and two talented local artists, Lucy Allinson and Gretel Sharp. Together they imagined and designed a creative space for students and teachers to experience storytelling and creativity as part of their everyday teaching and learning.
“Engaging with the two primary schools has been a really fun process! The kids really brought out new levels of imaginative ideas for us and we’ve had a great time creatively pinning them together, it definitely made lockdown more colourful!”
Following a series of co-design workshops with the artists, a working group of students from grade 3-6 from both schools was formed. They investigated the mysterious events in their schools, and asked for ideas from other students about what creatures lived below the school which they called Operation Whip!
Both schools participated in 100 Story Building’s teacher professional learning program ‘Sparking Creativity’ followed by ongoing curriculum coaching. The structured PL was delivered to the entire teaching cohort, and the curriculum coaching was delivered on an as-needs basis.
The schools received direct funding to cover CRT costs from a grant they applied for. The two schools had a writing improvement focus, and were already working together on the principal network level to improve student voice and agency.
