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Editorial
‘It’s the way we do things here.’
As a simple means of describing the culture of a place, it’s not bad, is it?
Our lead feature for this edition takes us through an exciting shift in the way we do things here. The Wesley College Melbourne Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), 18 months in the making, is being launched this month, and heralds a deepening engagement with Indigenous Australia, recognising and embracing the age-old cultures of the lands upon which we live and learn. The focus is on celebrating our local Indigenous cultures by making them a tangible part of what we do at Wesley.
We also take this moment to celebrate the Yiramalay/Wesley Studio School, both for its lasting impact on our own community and for its shining success as a lighthouse school for wider Australia. This transformative educational model has set the direction for Indigenous education into the future. Last month, Yiramalay formally transitioned to Studio Schools of Australia, the flagship school for a burgeoning network of studio schools springing up across northern Australia.
Our outward-looking ‘way we do things’ at Wesley continues to manifest in all sorts of other ways, of course. Our page 10 feature on designer Alex Goad (OW2008) highlights the international name he is making for himself as an environmental designer and artist, and how his example and generous mentoring of our current students is sparking similar aspirations for them.
At Glen Waverley, mentoring of a different kind has recently opened up the world of science for our younger girls. The Wonderous World Project created an opportunity for them to explore a science topic under the guidance of a like-minded student mentor from the Senior School. Year 12 science students Lauren Mayhood, Ting Luo and Chloe Scholes write about this unique cross-age project on page 7 and share an interview they had with our new President of College Council, astrophysicist Professor Rachel Webster AO, who was our special guest at the project presentation evening.
The impressive new building program at Clunes is now complete. On page 8, Head of Wesley at Clunes, Dan Lukies takes us back to the start of our Clunes journey, leading us through to the present day and explains how the new-look campus and its new-look curriculum will take our Year 9 students into the future.
And on page 18, our Curator of Collections Margot Vaughan shares the new way we do things with the many treasures in the Wesley archive collection. New online archival platform Recollect is up and running and gives all members of our community access to our huge collection of historical, text-based, art and photographic materials.
I’ll leave the final word to Professor Webster. When asked by the Year 12 girls for advice about pursuing a career in science, she said ‘Find the things that are fun and fascinating.’ Not a bad way to do things…
Paul Munn, Lion Editor and Features writer