Page 4215 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 26 November 2013
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The centenary team also worked closely throughout 2013 with young people in our schools, with the multicultural community and with seniors. The Centenary School Coordinators Group met regularly to discuss centenary projects of interest to the education sector, and schools developed their own centenary activities as a result of those meetings. Importantly, this group, established for the centenary, will not dissolve at the end of this year. The network has plans to meet beyond 2013, under the coordination of the Tuggeranong Arts Centre.
The “harmony bus” brought together various multicultural communities and the broader ACT community to travel by bus to visit various ethnic and cultural venues, to foster ongoing community relations and to empower prominent community leaders and local communities to gain a better understanding and appreciation of diversity and shared values. The “museum of the long weekend” was an intergenerational project with convoys of caravans travelling from all over Australia to converge on Lake Burley Griffin. The project also engaged a group of young people who were mentored in film-making and who interviewed ACT seniors about their recollection of their recreation and their holidays.
Canberra’s oldest community members, those who were 100 years or older in 2013, received a specially commissioned centenary medal this year. I was present at a very moving event where people spoke of their lifelong experiences in Canberra and the Chief Minister presented their medallions. Babies born in Canberra on 12 March, who shared their birthday with the city, also received centenary medallions. It was great being present at the event with the babies, their siblings, partners, parents and grandparents, and many other people who were there on that day to celebrate.
Fifty-one individuals and groups shared in the $1 million centenary community initiative fund, for projects and activities that commemorate and celebrate the year. In addition, there were a number of large-scale community engagement projects that engaged our community under the centenary banner. The “portrait of a nation” initiative is a great example, inviting the community to research and share the history of where people live.
The centenary of Canberra has also celebrated the nation’s and the city’s national and international standing as a hub of learning, politics and art. It is home to the nation’s greatest treasures, the custodian of the Australian story. When Labor’s second Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, stood on Capital Hill in March 1913, he shared his wish that the city would come to be “the seat of learning, as well as of politics, and … the home of art”.
The centenary has delivered an extensive arts and culture program, with a range of exhibitions, performances, theatre, cinema, festivals, dance and music, featuring over 1,000 performers, mostly local but including visiting artists as well. Some of the events appear in Canberra’s regular arts and culture calendar, such as Enlighten, the National Multicultural Festival, and the Canberra International Film Festival. This year the centenary of Canberra contributed to those events to make them even bigger. There have also been new projects from the centenary of Canberra, such as the alternative arts festival “You are here”, the centenary symphony commission, and the
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