Art Competition Submission 2022 – Maria from WORONGARY

School Plus Worongary Neighbourhood Tree 2022
In 2021 School Plus Worongary designed a NAPCAN Art project entry around what our ideal community/ Neighbourhood would look like? We were amazed at how wide the children thought about this and how inclusive their ideas were and what a sound sense of social justice was embedded in our service.
This year we thought we would explore this further in Group times and asked the children to think about what makes a ‘fair’ community? What does it look like to have a fair community? During Group times we brainstormed what a fair community would look like? Again, we were overwhelmed with the responses the children gave. They gave a number of human qualities that reflected fairness like Thoughtful, Caring, Sustainable, Safe, Responsible, Including everyone and Rights for all. Over time the group extended this to include community services that a fair neighbourhood would have, including School, Library, Playgrounds, Disability service, Nursing homes, Farms, Ambulance and even a Buddy bench.
To reflect this, the children created flags in the leaves of our tree to symbolise cultural inclusion, they drew pictures of children in the tree and made signs that included the words they came up with when brainstorming.

Bonnie 10 years old, summed it up and this has become the heart of our NAPCAN Child Protection Week entry for 2022.
‘Not leaving people out because they are different makes it fair. Including difference makes our community stronger’