A State of variety
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Morwell East, Moe Heights, Glendonald, Churchill Heights & Traralgon East
Youth, life and the valley
The Latrobe Valley, a hundred and eighty kilometres to the east of Melbourne, contains the broad-acre housing estates of Morwell East, Moe Heights, Glendonald, Churchill and Traralgon East.
Quantum Support Services provides housing and community support services across the Gippsland region.
Digital Story-Telling
Digital Story-Telling was organised in partnership with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, which has an on-going Memory and Place program through which the public can, with professional assistance and tuition, digitally record personal photographs and life experiences.
Quantum successfully developed a Houses, Homes and Neighbourhoods theme within the Memory and Place program and took eight Latrobe Valley residents to Melbourne to complete their projects. Their contributions to a national treasure house of memories is available at http://www.acmi.net.au
Trusting to the Rhythm
Quantum's second arts project began when adult residents from Morwell East told Quantum they wanted their kids to learn music but that they could afford neither lessons nor instruments. Steve Schultz, a percussionist, composer and conductor agreed to work for a term with the kids, after school hours, at their primary school.
The kids selected and encouraged to beat their drums were not well-known for being particularly amenable to discipline. Yet twelve weeks later the group performed three especially composed works in a concert for the school and went on to play at the second anniversary celebrations of Neighbourhood Renewal.
"These were kids who weren't especially well behaved. What they learnt was music, yes, but more than just musical skills. People don't stop to think about what a musical program can mean to such kids. If they were to get to a good performance level --- and they did --- then they had to pick up organisational and social skills as well as strict self-discipline. The project encompasses more than a dozen kids just banging on drums. One kid mucking up for a second can spoil the whole effect. The discipline has to be very strict. You sit and you don't as much as make a sound until it's your turn and it's time to do what you've been practising to do with the others. And they did it very well. The parents just doted. The pride on their faces when they watched what their kids could do ... no amount of money can buy it."
Leanne Blake and Grant McNeill, Quantum.
