Writing and Editing Services
  Rosebud Communications
  • Home
  • About
  • Projects
    • Clients
  • Rose's Red Pen Blog
  • A Rose in Oz Blog
  • Photos Down Under
  • Contact

Street Art for Everyone

2/21/2019

4 Comments

 
Picture
Imagine someone with a spray can, painting graffiti on a wall. How do you picture that person? Chances are you envision someone young, in a hoodie, standing in a dark underpass. Last August in Canberra, the Streetwise Project decided to change that perception and transform a drab public place into something more colorful and dramatic.

The call went out to find people, age 55 or older, who wanted to work on an intergenerational street art project. Two professional graffiti and street artists served as mentors and planned to teach their techniques in workshops. The professionals, both younger artists, would then paint murals with the new group of older artists at a bus station.

The Streetwise Project had several goals: to combat ageism, reduce stereotypes about graffiti and street artists, and give an intergenerational experience to older people, to bring them into the community and lessen feelings of isolation.

A few months later, 35 enthusiastic people, all over the age of 55, attended three workshops. Calling themselves the Silver Sprayers, they were passionate and inspired to paint. The result can be seen in the wonderful, quirky murals at the Woden Bus Interchange.
The Silver Sprayers all loved their first experience in making street art, and the public’s reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Since the project is ongoing, the group is hoping to paint more in Narrabundah, another suburb of Canberra. Next stop, Narrabundah!
Picture
4 Comments

Yellow in Yarralumla

2/15/2019

2 Comments

 
Picture
Yarralumla is a southern suburb of Canberra, located around 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) away from the city. Although the formal suburb was established in 1928, the land has been known as Yarralumla for a much longer time, at least since 1834, when the area owned by Sydney merchant Henry Donnison was given the name in a land survey. The word “Yarralumla” comes from an aboriginal word meaning “echo.”

The streets in Yarralumla have the names of governors and botanists, such as Hopetoun Circuit, named for Australia’s first governor-general, and McGillivray Street, named for botanist Donald McGillivray.

Yarralumla stretches along the southwest bank of Lake Burley Griffin. The lake was created in the early 1960s by blocking the Molonglo River with a dam. Many Canberrans are drawn to the lake, to enjoy the outdoors and have some fun. On a recent visit, I was struck by the sunny yellows all around me.
Circling the lake is a bike trail that is 28 km long (17.39 miles), divided into three loops and connected by two bridges.
Colorful wildflowers and birds dot the trail.
Like the Canberra suburb of O’Malley, Yarralumla is home to more than 30 embassies and high commissions. Eight of the countries represented in Yarralumla feature yellow in their flags.   
Belgium embassy
Myanmar embassy
Near the Yarralumla shops, away from the lake, I found a reminder of my sunny morning there. 
Picture
2 Comments

Back to School

2/7/2019

10 Comments

 
Picture
My daughter headed back to school this week, and shopping for school supplies really highlighted the many differences in how we talk about schools in Australia versus the United States.

If my daughter were starting tenth grade in the States, we’d be shopping from a tenth-grade school supply list. Here we used a Year 10 List of Requirements. In Australia, students are in different years rather than grades. And there are no references to freshman, sophomores, or juniors, although there are seniors. However, that term refers to students in Years 11 and 12. Also, my daughter doesn’t attend high school but rather secondary school.

Schools here are referred to as either primary or secondary. (The terms junior school and senior school are sometimes used as well.) Primary schools serve students from age five to around eleven or twelve, while students aged thirteen to around seventeen attend secondary school. There are no middle schools. Sometimes a secondary school is a college, which means it serves Years 11 and 12 only. After secondary school, students may attend university, or uni.

Here are some of the items from the requirements list:

  • Binder book: This is a bound book of lined loose-leaf notebook pages. It is not spiral bound but drilled with holes to fit in a binder. They look more like our composition books. Similar products are called exercise books, which also contain lined notebook pages, but they are not drilled.
  • Grid book: Like exercise books, these are bound, but they are filled with graph paper. We’d probably call them a graph paper notebook.
  • Document wallet: Like a file envelope for us.
  • Diary: Her old school in the States called this an agenda; it’s a daily planner.
By the way, all these products are Size A4, which measures 210 mm × 297 mm (8.27 in × 11.7 in). It is the most commonly available paper size in most of the world’s countries (except for the United States and Canada).
 
You might also find yourself buying rubbers at Officeworks, which are what Australians sometimes call erasers.

School started in late summer here and we’ll soon be entering autumn, not fall. The first day at my daughter’s school was the fifth of February, which would be written here as 05/02/2019, putting the day before the month.

Her first stop that day was tutor group, which is loosely equivalent to our homeroom. In her school, however, the tutor plays a much more significant role than does a homeroom teacher. We have no real equivalent in the United States to what Australians mean by a tutor in the school. This person is kind of a combined teacher, mentor, and advocate.

The school subjects are much the same, except that my daughter takes Maths, not Math. Her assignments, tasks, and tests are part of her assessment. She is accessed with marks rather than grades.

At lunchtime, she goes to her school’s canteen instead of a cafeteria.  Students purchase the food and leave with it, to eat somewhere else on the campus.

I’ve always enjoyed school shopping, particularly the ads. This ad from several years ago was one of my favorites back in the States. This one is an Australian example. Comparing the two led me to conclude that Australians are much nicer people.
10 Comments

    Author

    Rose Ciccarelli is an American writer and editor living in Canberra, Australia.

    Archives

    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018

    Categories

    All
    Daily Life
    Events
    History
    Holidays
    Nature
    People
    Places

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.