Written and visual work, 2019
In order to combat negative perceptions and stereotypes in the region, Outloud (formerly BYDS) has teamed up with Sydney’s independent youth broadcaster FBi radio’s All The Best and local Western Sydney high schools, to train up young people to collect stories of “strength” from their community.
Stories of Strength is an Outloud project developed and delivered in Bankstown local high schools from 2019. The project shows that storytelling as a from of communication connects us with our humanity, is a tool to celebrate culture and language, and share knowledge across generations. In 2019 Stories of Strength released an anthology publication, commissioning contributions from 10 local writers including Nardi Simpson whose work is featured below. We dream of making our Stories of Strength program that teaches narrative therapy and interview techniques to teenagers into a licensable product (we’ve already had several copycat projects spring up) and bringing new and existing recordings into a podcast.
The images below were commissioned by local visual artists, responding to interviews by local teenagers with people in their community. We taught interviewing skills using narrative therapy techniques, helping them to talk to people in their lives, to reframe tales of hardship into stories of strength. local writers responded to the themes within the interviews with essays that introduced each chapter of the book.
Mural commissioned by Lotte Smith
Commissioned visual response by Michael Sun
Commissioned visual response by Joanna Frank
Commissioned visual response by Lewis Inhatko
Commissioned visual response by Alexis Pepper
