A theatre company is searching for the next Bendigo school willing to spend a term creating extraordinary experiences for children.
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It heralds the start of a new project for the city's only professional theatre company, Arena Theatre Company.
The group has begun scouring Bendigo for primary schools open to hosting artists two days a week for a term in 2024.
There are no costs to the school if they win a Department of Education grant, Arena program development manager Kristen Beever said.
"We are looking for a school that understands the value of having professional artists in their school to work with their kids," she said.
Arena sometimes finds it tricky to get its foot in the door for early meetings with time-poor school leaders even though they were running programs schools throughout the state had used, artistic director Christian Leavesley said.
"If schools aren't tapped into this program, they don't know its potential," he said.
Ms Beever was keen to sit down with school leaders and run through the concept.
"It's hard to convey what we do and how we do it by email, so I feel like I need to sit in front of them, show them our videos and talk about the possibilities of what we do," she said.
"What some schools might think is that we are going to come in and teach drama or art, and that's just not it. We can explore anything."
The artists can be actors but they are often "makers" like sound designers, filmmakers and musicians.
Their brief is to work with children to elevate their ideas to a place they would not be able to take them without professional artists.
Children and artists have in the past worked with everything from poetry to 3D printing and augmented reality.
The term of work culminates in an end-of-term exhibition the entire school community is invited to.
Ideas that come out of workshops with children often find their way into other work artists and the theatre company are working on.
Arena used some of the ideas children in schools had played with around live motion capture technology for its 2018 production Robot Song, a show that premiered in Bendigo and will next year tour Canada.
"We are trying with our professional shows to do as much research as possible with young people, to see if it resonates with them, and we have the right age group for certain ideas," Mr Leavesley said.
"Kids love that, and our artists love that opportunity to really understand their audience, because without understanding every moment their works are not as rich as they should be."
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Tom O'Callaghan
I grew up in Bendigo and I want to tell your stories.
I grew up in Bendigo and I want to tell your stories.
