In today's episode we learn about the Travelling Film Festival, the history of the School of Arts, a new Botanic Gardens Kids Activity, and hear a new Art as an Act of Optimism song from Ella Mars.
Local news highlights include Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's announcement of $42 million toward the East Bundaberg Flood Levy if Labor is re-elected, the Annual Rotary Book Sale, the new Gin Gin Emergency Services Cadet Unit and more.
You can also listen on Google, Apple, Spotify and TuneIn.
Podcast transcript to follow
Dana Maggacis 0:06
Hello and welcome to the weekly Bundaberg Now podcast. I'm Dana Maggacis from Bundaberg Regional Council. Today we have another interesting programme with news and information from across the Bundaberg Region. Soon we'll hear about the Travelling Film Festival, a fun activity for kids at the Botanic Gardens, the history of the School of Arts and hear a new tune from Art as an Act of Optimism. But first, here is Michael Gorey with the news headlines.
Michael Gorey 0:37
Thank you, Dana. Making news this week, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, announced $42 million towards the East Bundaberg Flood Levy if Labour is re-elected. Mayor Jack Dempsey welcomes the funding.
Jack Dempsey 0:49
I welcome the Premier's commitment of $42.5 million to start implementing a key element of the 10 Year Flood Action Plan. The Bundaberg East Levy is a significant Project that's vitally important to enable investors confidence, reduced insurance costs and keep people safe. This is one part of the bigger picture for flood mitigation. More funding will be needed and more work needs to be done. Engineers have identified the levy as the most effective option to prevent much of the devastation which occurred in previous flood. So we've had calls to get boots on the ground and this $42.5 million goes a long way to getting that started, and we hope that both the State and the Federal Government can work together for the benefit of the citizens of Bundaberg.
Michael Gorey 1:35
Thousands of books were sold at the Annual Rotary Book Sale last weekend. The funds raised support Rotary initiatives and help with literacy programmes at Bundaberg Regional Libraries. More than 25 young people joined the new Gin Gin Emergency Services Cadet Unit last week. It follows a successful training programme earlier this year to encourage young people into volunteering. The programme is open to anyone aged 12 to 17 years old and is free to all participants. In sport, Netball returned to the Bundaberg Superpark on Saturday for the start of the Spring Cup. It's a shorter season following COVID restrictions holting competition earlier this year, but players are just happy to be back on the court. 53 teams from five clubs are taking part over the 10 week season. Finally, congratulations to Kepnock State High School Teacher Danni Hibbert, who has received a prestigious award. Let's hear now from Danni and some of her students. Then back to you, Dana.
Danni Hibbert 2:36
I recently received the highly accomplished teacher certification. So this year, I have implemented a literacy programme, the outcome of the programme has resulted in improved student academic results as well as staff and student well being. So the programme is targeted towards all students in the class, but it's specifically supporting students with literacy, and so it's enabled them to use the learning tools on their iPads to actually access the literacies as well as supporting them, so it's actually improved all the students in the class academic results, which is really great.
Jacob Heaton & Toby Graham-Bailey 3:12
It has definitely, especially when those two teachers around helped me a lot and technology makes it so much easier. It's different than your like your old boring English work, like stuff like spelling or just writing down stuff. It's a brand new thing.
Hope Testro & Mackenzie Hyland 3:27
There's another teacher in the classroom and we've been doing a lot on iPads, which makes it easier. It's fun, because there's more things we can do.
Danni Hibbert 3:37
Yeah, we have two teachers that are at a private school that achieves certification.
Dana Maggacis 3:43
Thanks Michael. Now, here's a little taste of what you can expect from the Travelling Film Festival. Over to you Rod.
Rod Ainsworth 3:50
Gooday. I'm Rod Ainsworth, Manager of Arts and Cultural Services at Bundaberg Regional Council and just wanting to have a little bit of a chat about the Travelling Film Festival, that's coming again from the 16th to the 18th of October. The Travelling Film Festival is an annual event, we've been really blessed to be able to have the Travelling Film Festival at the Moncrief Entertainment Centre for at least the last 10 years. We blitzed a box office records for Bundy last year, and we were so scared that it wasn't going to happen again this year, but we're really really pleased that the Travelling Film Festival have got behind us and that they're really keen to have a festival again in 2020 despite everything that's happened. So we'll have six international films some of the films that have won awards all over the place at Film Festivals all over the world. So the Festival starts on Friday the 16th of October with a film called ‘The Perfect Candidate' at 7pm, and then on the 17th of October on Saturday, there are three films throughout the day starting at 1.15 in the afternoon, going right through into the evening, and then Sunday the 18th of October, there are two films. Bearing in mind, so these are all international films, films from all over the world. There are a range of really exciting Australian short films that are being played as part of the season as well. We would normally have visiting artists, we'd have visitors from Sydney, from the Film Festival itself. This year, we won't have that, we would normally have more films this year, we've got six, but they're six fantastic films and great value, so we've got individual ticket prices, and there's a season ticket for the weekend as well. So we really encourage people to come out, really try and let's try and break those records again, despite COVID and all those things. Let's show the Travelling Film Festival what Bundy has to offer in terms of a really receptive audience for film and we know that this Travelling Film Festival gets great support from Bundaberg.
Dana Maggacis 5:55
Thanks Rod. Now, here's former Bundaberg City Councillor Janet Tallon to take us through the history of the School of Art building in Bundaberg.
Janet Tallon 6:04
As part of our English Heritage, we have School of Arts was started in the 1830s as part of the Industrial Revolution, and when the settlers came to Australia, the first thing that they did in most regional areas was set up a School of Arts even if it was only in a little one room hub at the time. Well, a School of Arts, originally it was for technical training, and it gave who were well educated the opportunity to help their workers to learn how to read and write and once they could read the written word, they began to read prose and poetry and progressed into the other cultural pursuits of Music and Art. The people realised they wanted a place to meet at that time, they've put up a small building and began having meetings. So Council actually only took the building over in the 1970s. At that time, the only chance people had to exhibit their works was either at their regional show, and when this space became available, the Arts Society said they'd like to set up a Gallery and the Council gave them permission to use. I joined the Art Society so I could practice Art but soon took over of being Assistant Director. The Director was more a figurehead, but they needed someone to run it so I just organised exhibitions. Shortly I became a Director of Queensland Regional Galleries Association which was set up by the Local Government, and I'd been going down to Brisbane also. I became a member of that mainly to get to exhibitions for here because they were the main body. The two exhibitions around the State and once I became involved with them, and they could not believe that Bundaberg didn't have professionally run Galleries that were all volunteers, we established that the new Library which was housed in where Bragg is today. The ability of Councillors thinking what they could do with that building and of course some of the Council though oh goodie well sell it off, its prime real estate, well get a lot of dough to do something with but once we had a professionally run Library, I couldn't see why we could never have a professionally run Gallery, and I was on Council at the time, so I resigned from here so that I could lobby without having a Conflict of Interest and influence the Council of the day to go ahead and have that building refurbished as a permanent Regional Gallery for this area. The School of Arts which we're still fortunate to have, after so many years of use in all pursuits of the community is still the main insentive for the Arts in Bundaberg.
Dana Maggacis 9:14
What an amazing history. You can hear more stories like this from our Region, on our CBD and North Bundaberg Storywalks. Head to discoverbundaberg.com.au for more information. Now over to Ro from Parks for some fun Botanic Gardens news.
Roana O'Neill 9:31
The school holidays are over so if you're looking for something to do with your little ones, come and grab a garden kids activity sheet from the Bundaberg Botanic Gardens. There are nine fun activities to do which relate to what you can find at the Botanic Gardens at this time of year. Kids can complete the turtles by adding on legs and a head, draw in a stripe on the Kreffts turtle, discover a secret word, count the number of flowers on the Maha janka mango tree, spot the differences on the Azaleas, practice spelling and writing, colour in the Cassia Pea flower and drawing the missing parts on the Pelican and count the dots on the ladybird to solve a simple math problem. The activity sheets are free and you can pick them up at Hinkler Hall of Aviation, Cafe 1928 or the Bundaberg and District Historical Museum. Just bring along your own colouring pencils and find a sunny spot in the gardens or do the activities up at the nature playground, or keep the sheet for an at home activity. But be quick as they'll only be available until 31st of October. Then keep your eye out for our next garden kids activity sheet in December and January.
Dana Maggacis 10:35
Thanks Ro, and finally today we've got another great tune. The Arts and Cultural Services Team have been working with local artists through the Regional Arts Development Fund to showcase their original work right here on the Bundaberg Now podcast. A total of 11 artists will be featured throughout the upcoming weeks. And this week, we hear from Ella Mars.
Arts Bundaberg Advertisement 10:56
The Moncrieff Entertainment Centre, Bundaberg Regional Galleries and Bundaberg Regional Libraries and together were Arts Bundaberg. We love the Arts just as much as you do, and whether you're a book lover, an Art lover, or a Theatre lover, the Arts and Cultural Services of the Bundaberg Regional Council are connecting locals all in one place. To keep up to date with the things you love, jump online to artsbundaberg.com.au
Ella Mars 11:27
Hi everyone. My name is Ella Mars. I'm 17 and I'm the featured artist for this week's Bundaberg Now. I was really excited to take part in this project, after songwriting for a few years and not getting on to producing any of my works. The piece that you're going to hear today is called ‘Red Rum'. There's actually no real meaning to this piece, but I was inspired by the film The Shining. So the whole song is literally just references to the movie. My other originals have been inspired by my own experiences, but I thought I'd try a new approach. So here's my debute. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy.
Arts Bundaberg Advertisement 15:02
Art as an Act of Optimism the podcast series, brought to you by the Regional Arts Development Fund, a partnership between the Queensland Government and Bundaberg Regional Council to support local Arts and Culture in Regional Queensland. Keep listening to the Bundaberg Now podcast to discover more talented artists within our Region. To keep up to date with all things Arts, jump online to artsbundaberg.com.au.
Dana Maggacis 16:23
That's all for today. We hope you enjoyed the programme. Join us next week for more news and stories from across the Bundaberg Region. Bye for now.
