Story Hub: Carlton Primary School
One view of the Carlton Primary School Story Hub. Photo by Gianna Rizzo.
We’re sharing the stories of our 2023 Hubs in this series of articles.
Cloudtopia
In 2023 we worked with Carlton Primary School to co-design their Story Hub with Artist Abbey Rich.
“Our Story Hub will be a place where we can have fun, fly out of this world in our imagination, have top secret creative thoughts and write stories. It will feel like a welcoming, inspiring, writing, idea-boosting, creative and fun kind of place. It will include things like a writers’ process table, an idea magic-8 ball, bookshelves and a spaceship full of ideas. Our Story Hub will make people say: ‘wow’, ‘I like this place’, ‘cozy!’, ‘I don’t want to leave’, ‘it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen’ and ‘it’s so cool’, when they come in.”
A fantastical place called “Cloudtopia” can be found in the library at Carlton Primary School. The space includes multi-sensory prompts for creativity like the “fluffy cupboard”, Cloudtopian creatures, cloud-shaped cushions and more. One corner of the library has a backdrop of angel wings and a halo - painted by some of the co-design students - for students to take photos in front of for their “wing licence”.
The final Story Hub design was achieved through 8 co-design sessions in Term 2 facilitated by 100 Story Building’s Brenna. In these sessions the group narrowed down a theme from submissions and seed ideas collected from the whole school.
After landing on a theme, the prototyping session was a big hit with students as they could explore what the design could look like using different materials to come up with ideas and uses for the Hub. These were shared with Story Hub Designer, artist Abbey Rich. Abbey presented some concept designs sketches to the co-design team and the students gave structured feedback on those to get to the final design.
Members of the Carlton Co-Design team with artist Abbey Rich. Photo by Gianna Rizzo.
From the beginning of the project, the school was keen to engage the wider school community and allow the families and parents to weigh in on some of the decision making. This meant the launch had a big parent turn out and the school community continues to have meaningful interactions with the Story Hub.
In 2024, the Carlton Primary School Story Hub continues to integrate learning and teaching practice with the creative space and have successfully ingrained the space in everyday use. They have blocked out their timetable specifically for Story Hubs and they’ve allocated a teacher to this. Students have a lesson in their Story Hub every week in creative literacy, storytelling and project-based learning.
