Page 978 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 2018
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literacy, such as craft-based literacy activities. Libraries ACT also attend a South Sudanese playgroup at West Belconnen Child and Family Centre where they collaborate on Dinka story times and the cyber safety story time programs. There is an Arabic playgroup at the Gungahlin Child and Family Centre. Also in Gungahlin, the library has been facilitating story sessions to playgroups organised by the Gungahlin Child and Family Centre, such as learning, giggle and grow, and one of our multicultural groups. The library also participated in the centre’s growing healthy families health expo last year.
In relation to the work of libraries with children and young people, I would finally like to highlight an exciting new ongoing partnership between the child and family centres and libraries to develop the children’s sanctuary during the National Multicultural Festival. The children’s sanctuary, in its second year this year, provided a safe festival space at the Civic Library and Canberra Museum and Gallery for children and their families to play, create and take part in a range of cultural activities, including bilingual storytelling, multicultural craft and language activities. Both venues of the children’s sanctuary were well attended and feedback from children and families was consistently positive. Comments received included:
My daughter loved the craft. The people are lovely. We’re going to come next year if it is on. Keep up the good work.
And:
So many activities to choose from and good quality material. Air-con and water. We’ve been to many kids craft museum events and this was one of the best by far. Thank you.
Madam Speaker, talking about the children’s sanctuary is a good way to conclude by mentioning the wonderful work libraries do with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and multicultural communities. Libraries regularly celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture through lectures, workshops and story sessions, for example, Ngunnawal language story time, lectures on scar trees and their cultural importance, and dot painting and artefact-making workshops. NAIDOC Week later this year will feature an exhibition with photographs and interviews with 18 local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Libraries have developed digital literacy sessions for Gugan Gulwan’s young men’s group and held information sessions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, including the Murrumbidgee elders group and the Boomanulla Oval committee.
Libraries hold collections in more than 18 languages other than English, for example, an Arabic collection at Woden, a Senegalese collection at Gungahlin, Chinese collections at Dickson, Tuggeranong and Gungahlin, and a Bengali collection in Gungahlin. They also hold newspapers and magazines in community languages.
For people wanting to improve their English, libraries have an English-learning collection, and facilitate and host English language classes with regular sessions that include basic digital literacy. Libraries also hold bilingual storytelling once a month in languages including Mandarin, Hindi, Bengali and a public expression of interest has been realised to recruit storytellers from within other CALD communities.
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