We have been singing ...

Community members gathered at Berninneit on Monday for an event featuring poetry and music from students of the Bass Coast Adult Learning’s English as an Additional Language Program.

​By Daryl Pellizzer
 
WE HAVE been singing. Laura Brearley has set some of our beautiful poems to music, Rhythm And Poetry and other lovely melodies. She came in to rehearse the songs and share her lovely creative spirit with us at BCAL.

​It’s a joy. We read and sang, and I improvised some interpretive dance, which I quite enjoyed and it helped the students to laugh. ​

​Terry Melvin is capturing some of this work on video, as he is a wonderful photographer and videographer.

For our project’s first public event we performed our songs at Berninneit. After basking under the sunlit sculpture of Marie Clarke’s beautiful Glass Canoe (hanging high in the Grand Hall, an art piece we are paralleling the journey of), we sang and danced our poems of long journeys in the Library.

Photostory by Laura Brearley

It’s difficult to write how important and powerful today’s event was for me. We created an event in stark contrast to the blatant racism of the recent March for Australia and the mayhem of the ICE disappearances and associated violent, divisive events in the USA, plus the terrible wars happening around the world.

EAL students Lukman and Khadija Ali with Laura Brearley, who has turned their poems into songs.

EAL students and community lifted their voices in a joyful act of connection.

​Our day, a beautiful light shining out of our hearts; a celebration of our connectedness with each other and with our world of wondrous nature. It floated like the Glass Canoe, reflecting the happy colours and long journeys of our lives. It felt like a small yet powerful act of resistance.
 
We exercised our power to create, unite, care, learn and have fun together. It was brilliant.

Daryl Pellizzer is co-ordinator of Bass Coast Adult Learning’s English as an Additional Language (EAL) Program.​