We made the news on SBS

We made the news on SBS

06 Sep 2017

Kids from Plunkett Street School came along to our fundraising art exhibition to explore their responses to the artworks. SBS came too and their story was broadcast on national news. You can view it here.

In the story, Cath explains what Sydney Story Factory is all about:
“We work with lots of kids who are Indigenous, or from culturally diverse backgrounds, and we run free programs that will get them excited about writing, that will improve their writing skills, and boost their confidence and engagement with education.


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“We work with a lot of kids that have low literacy levels, that are disengaged from school, that don’t feel that writing is something that they’re good at. And if you feel like that, you can never get the most from your education. So what we’re really trying to do is show that writing can be really fun, and really empowering, and send them back to school with that motivation and enthusiasm to learn and flourish.”

We’ve been working with students at Plunkett Street Primary for a while now and they loved the chance to do something a bit different, and explore what creativity is all about in a different way. 


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Shannon, for example, felt that Jasper Knight’s print, ‘Red Key Study’, made him feel nervous and gave him a sense of unease, because the car looks smashed.

Ayshe likened Gabrielle Courtenay’s ‘Night & Day, Celestial Garden’ to being in a rose garden – but better, “because the colours are much nicer”.

Troy thought Narelle Autio’s ‘Pink Thong from the Summer of Us’ was beautiful and he wanted to give it to his sister. He also said that talking to us about it made him feel “quite mature”.

Our art auction and exhibition were a great success and, with all winning bids and donations taken into account, helped us raise $80,000!

This money will go straight to delivering more programs with more great students like everyone at Plunkett Street Primary, and will also take us one step closer to being able to open our brand new creative writing centre in Parramatta in 2018.

Watch the story here.

Listen to the SBS article in Vietnamese here.