YOL 2010 Archive

Youth Online 2010 (Archive)

The Youth Online (YOL) project is a writing program developed by the New England Writers' Centre to take writing skills to youth in the region—particularly in isolated areas—via the internet.


John Marsden, takes an interactive creative writing workshop from Melbourne with around 1,000 children in New England and other areas of NSW in the 2010 Youth Online program	Armidale City Public School - taking part in the interactive creative writing workshops in the 2010 Youth Online program	Children at Armidale City Public School, taking part in the Youth Online creative writing program in 2010.

The program this year has been sponsored by Copyright Agency Ltd with support from Arts NSW and New England Mutual.

One of the most successful novelists in Australia, John Marsden—much acclaimed by critics and much loved by young readers—leads the line-up of tutors for our Youth Online project 2010.

The other visiting writers are performance poet, Miles Merrill, who has previously toured in the project to great success, and best-selling fantasy author, Cecilia Dart Thornton.

Local writers, Lesley Sly and Susan McMichael will also offer online workshops.

For this year’s program, ten (10) online workshops will be conducted live online, through the Department of Education's video conferencing system to interactive whiteboards in classrooms, with sound and vision both ways.

This is a technological quantum leap from the methods we had available to us previously to deliver online workshops to isolated children—phone and typed live chat—not great for non-touch-typists!

With the new technology we can take creative writing workshops to hundreds of children at a relatively low cost whereas—even with the grant we have from Copyright Agency Ltd this year— we could not possibly afford to fly in several authors and tour them around the New England region by car for several weeks.

Gloucester Public School was one of the schools that participated in the Youth Online Program in 2010.
In response to the “Magic Mouth” session run by Cecilia Dart-Thorton, MOLLY DANTON from year 4, wrote a story entitled: “Magic Mind”.

If you would like to read Molly's story, click here or download from here (pdf 70 KB).

Youth Online Program 2010

A series of ten (10) online interactive workshops for Primary School and High School students.
(Please click on the title for full details of each individual workshop)

Day	Date	Time	Tutor	No.	For	Title
Tuesday	10 August	10:00-10:45 am	Lesley Sly	1	Years 2-4	Hey – I’m going to be in a Harry Potter Movie!
Tuesday	10 August	11:00-11:45 am	Lesley Sly	2	Years 4-6	In Someone Else's Shoes
Thursday	19 August	10:00-10:45 am	Susan McMichael	3	Years 2-4	The Present
Thursday	19 August	11:00-11:45 am	Susan McMichael	4	Years 4-6	You are a House
Tuesday	24 August	10:00-10:45 am	Cecilia Dart-Thornton	5	Primary School	Magic Mouth
Tuesday	24 August	11:00-11:45 am	Cecilia Dart-Thornton	6	High School	What If?
Friday	10 September	10:00-10:45 am	John Marsden	7	Primary School	Writing that Glows in the Dark
Friday	10 September	11:00-11:45 am	John Marsden	8	High School	So Much to Tell You
Thursday	16 September	10:00-10:45 am	Miles Merrill	9	Primary School	Word Play
Thursday	16 September	11:00-11:45 am	Miles Merrill	10	High School	Slam Wordshop

Online Interactive Workshop No. 1
Tutor	Lesley Sly
Date	Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Time	10:00 - 10:45 am
For	Years 2 to 4

Title	*Hey – I’m going to be in a Harry Potter Movie!*
Description	Harry Potter is inviting you to act a part in his next movie. He wants you to invent the person or creature you will play. The movie will be about Harry’s search for a secret book that will give him (if he finds it first) new powers, or if someone else finds it first, this person will have those powers. In this story you don’t want to help Harry find it, you want the book and the powers for yourself. Why? What powers do you want? What do you want to do with these powers? What sort of person or creature are you? Think about the character in a way that fits with the story, about what the character has to do in the story, and why the character is like that. To beat Harry in finding the book, what will your character need to be like in personality? Remember, when you start inventing a character to play a part in a story, it isn’t you anymore. So, this character can be anything you want and it doesn’t have to be human, you can invent a character that isn’t in this world at all! So, we will be looking at ideas for this story to be written after the workshop.

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 2
Tutor	Lesley Sly
Date	Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Time	11:00 - 11:45 am
For	Years 4 to 6

Title	*In Someone Else's Shoes*
Description	When it comes to creative writing, it is important to be able to imagine situations beyond your own. The way a story is told is from someone’s point of view. As a writer you need to be able to see from different points of view. We will be looking at how to write a story putting yourself in the shoes of someone you have had an argument with – it could be a member of your family or a friend or someone you don’t like at school or elsewhere. If you haven’t had an argument with anyone for a long time, you’ll have to imagine it. First, you will need to write down how this argument was from your point of view, why you think the other person was wrong, unfair, mean or whatever. Then, put yourself in the other person’s shoes, and see the argument from his or her point of view, and write your story about this. You will need to look carefully at yourself (through the other person’s eyes) and you will need to try to understand why the person you are now pretending to be was so upset or angry or mean or unfair.

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 3
Tutor	Susan McMichael
Date	Tuesday, 19 August 2010
Time	10:00 - 10:45 am
For	Years 2 to 4

Title	*The Present*
Description	Tell me about a present someone has given you. It can be a real present or a made up present. If you can't think of something, these are some questions when you get stuck: * Is it for Christmas—can you see it under a Christmas tree? * Have you picked it out and has someone bought it for you? * Have you waited for ages? * What does the present look like? * What does it do? * Is it wrapped in a box... Then... it disappears, or it blows up, or there are four of them, or it changes colour... What happens next?

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 4
Tutor	Susan McMichael
Date	Tuesday, 19 August 2010
Time	11:00 - 11:45 am
For	Years 4 to 6

Title	*You are a House*
Description	Write a poem or short story. You are a house. Describe what you look like. Where are you? In the city, another country? What kind of house? One with verandahs or a flat? Are you old and run down or brand new? Were you especially built for a family? Someone is moving in—tell me why they are moving in—are they happy to be living in your rooms? Or are you derelict and abandoned. Do only a few ghosts climb up your stairs. Describe the house's morning … for example, busy with creaks and boxes.

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 5
Tutor	Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Date	Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Time	10:00 - 10:45 am
For	Primary School

Title	*Magic Mouth*
Description	What if something magical happened to you? What if you ate an apple that happened to be enchanted, and your voice became magical? When you look at an object or person and command something to happen, it happens. But you don’t know how long the power will last, and the magic only works on people and things that are close by. What would you do? How would your parents and friends react? What mistakes might you make? How would this affect your life?

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 6
Tutor	Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Date	Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Time	11:00 - 11:45 am
For	High School

Title	*What If?*
Description	What if a boy woke up on his eleventh birthday to an invitation to Hogwarts? What if a boy and girl from feuding families fall into a star-crossed romance? What if shire needed a hero hobbit to drop a magic ring into the fires of Mount Doom? I will then ask the students to identify the 'what ifs' in their favourite stories… For example, 'What if a girl was suddenly confronted by a watcher and told she was a vampire slayer?' I will get them to suggest a list of possible 'what ifs' and then have them select one, develop their own character and tell a story beginning with 'It began as an ordinary day..."

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 7
Tutor	John Marsden
Date	Friday, 10 September 2010
Time	10:00 - 10:45 am
For	Primary School

Title	*Writing that Glows in the Dark*
Description	"What I want to do in these workshops is to wake you up, shake you around some, then turn you upside down so that new thoughts and ideas and stories come pouring out... in new words. I love writing that has energy. A lot of writing is flat, dull, stale. By the end of the workshops I hope you will have some quite different ideas about writing, and about how to write."

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 8
Tutor	John Marsden
Date	Friday, 10 September 2010
Time	11:00 - 11:45 am
For	High School

Title	*So Much to Tell You*
Description	"What I want to do in these workshops is to wake you up, shake you around some, then turn you upside down so that new thoughts and ideas and stories come pouring out... in new words. I love writing that has energy. A lot of writing is flat, dull, stale. By the end of the workshops I hope you will have some quite different ideas about writing, and about how to write."

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Online Interactive Workshop No. 9
Tutor	Miles Merrill
Date	Thursday, 16 September 2010
Time	10:00 - 10:45 am
For	Primary School

Title	*Word Play*
Description	Features a performance by Miles Merrill using humorous characters, "wild and witty wordplay", and fun physical theatre. Kids learn about writing and how to perform it. They may, for example, turn into alien salespeople wildly gesticulating their own poems in gibberish or find themselves reciting their verbal magic as a Simpsons character, footy player, TV newscaster, or what ever they can imagine. Students express their ideas through writing, sound and movement while going on a hilarious adventure with Miles.

Youth Online Tutors 2010 (Archive)

One of the most successful novelists in Australia, John Marsden—much acclaimed by critics and much loved by young readers—leads the line-up of tutors for our Youth Online project 2010.

The other visiting writers are performance poet, Miles Merrill, who has previously toured in the project to great success, and best-selling fantasy author, Cecilia Dart Thornton.

The project this year began with visiting poet, Martin Langford giving four workshops to Year 10-12 students at the Armidale and Duval High Schools.

Local writers, Lesley Sly and Susan McMichael will also offer online workshops. See YOL Program 2010.


		John Marsden has had a string of huge best-sellers highlighted by the Tomorrow series and the Ellie chronicles. John has now sold more than two-and-a-half million books in Australia alone, but is also an international best-seller, with many major awards to his credit. In 2006, he started a school of his own on his property in Victoria and this currently has a four-year waiting list.

		Cecilia Dart-Thornton was ‘discovered’ on the internet after she posted the first chapter of her unpublished trilogy to an online writing workshop. Subsequently an editor contacted her, and within a few weeks Time Warner (New York) had bought her three-part Bitterbynde series. On publication the books were acclaimed in Amazon's Best of 2001, Locus Magazine's Best First Novels of 2001 and the Australian Publishers' Association Award: Australia's Favourite Read of 2001. In Australia, they reached the top of the Sydney Morning Herald best-seller list. They have also received accolades in the Washington Post, The Times, Good Reading Magazine, Kirkus Reviews and more. Cecilia's books, including the four-part Crowthistle series, are available in more than seventy countries and have been translated into several languages.

		Miles Merrill combines poetry with theatre, experimental audio, hip-hop beats, stand-up and political confrontation, flinging words in a rapid-fire onslaught of versified emotion. Born and raised in Chicago, now living in Sydney, he has opened for Saul Williams, jammed with Shane Koyczan, written and directed a show in the Sydney International Arts Festival, performed solo at the Sydney Opera House, created Australia’s first spoken-word festival—the Night Words Festival—and is founder of the national literary performance competition: the Australian Poetry Slam. Internationally, Merrill has performedin Krakow’s Audio Art, at writers festivals in Ubud, Calgary, Beijing and regional China. In Australia he has performed at festivals in Sydney, Perth, Byron Bay, Darwin and Adelaide. Merrill tours music festivals, theatres, galleries, bars and a wide variety of classy joints—anywhere his words will travel. He has toured to schools for the New England Writers Centre several times, and they always want him back.

		Lesley Sly is a journalist, composer, author. Her music has been used in many soundtracks, won an international award in Berlin, and she has toured and recorded with bands in Australia, UK, Europe. As a freelance journalist her work has appeared in many national and overseas publications, she was a columnist for Rolling Stone for ten years and an arts writer for The Bulletin, she has worked as a magazine editor, consulting editor, travel writer for BBC Radio and newspapers in UK, subeditor for the Sydney Morning Herald and Financial Review. Her 400-page book, The Power & The Passion, A guide to the Australian music industry, sold out its first print run and is a core text for contemporary music studies. She has taught at TAFE, and has run many creative writing workshops for children.

		Susan McMichael is a poet and also writes fiction. She has been published in various anthologies and online in Australia, America and Egypt. She writes micro stories about the school playground, going on holidays, and the beach. This year she received a Publishers Fellowship from Varuna—The Writers House—to finish a novel.

		Martin Langford is the author of six volumes of poetry, including Sensual Horizon and, most recently, The Human Project. Other publications include Microtexts, a book of aphorisms about poetics and Harbour City Poems, an anthology of Sydney poems. He has directed the Australian Poetry Festival three times and was, until recently, the NSW Poetry Development Officer. Reviewers have said of his work: "One of Australia’s foremost poets—profoundly generous and important poetry." (ANDY KISSANE) "Here is a book (The Human Project) with the courage of its convictions, and here is a poet who convinces us that poetry matters." (PETER KIRKPATRICK)

The project this year began with visiting poet, Martin Langford giving four workshops to Year 10-12 students at the Armidale and Duval High Schools.

Greg Bugden of Armidale High's English Faculty, says of these workshops:
"Martin's approach was very good. We are appreciative of the poems and commentary that he provided for the Year 12s on the Area of study: Belonging. I was able to tell the students that they could include his poetry reading as their additional text, which would be a unique approach for the examiners. His second workshop was very useful in combating scepticism in students by developing an understanding of writing and poetry. Martin systematically led the students through the context and audience of poetry, and through his inspirations and purpose: a very valuable approach, which gave our students insight."

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The New England Writers' Centre is assisted by the NSW Government through Arts NSW.