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The Resurfacing Stronger Project

The 2010/11 floods devastated our Central Queensland Region. In the towns of Rockhampton and Emerald and their surrounding regional areas, people are even now suffering from the devastation and continued uncertainty.

The Resurfacing Stronger project enables the people of Central Queensland to share their personal stories through life writing, creative non-fiction and songs to describe and record their experiences about the recent events as part of the community healing and recovery process.

A series of writing workshops will allow participants from around Rockhampton and Emerald to work together with experts over a period of months to develop and disseminate their writing regarding the recent Queensland floods.

These workshops will build knowledge and confidence in these writers, develop understandings about professional practice as a writer in Australia, and refine their manuscripts about the floods in a supportive and ethical environment. The workshops will also assist in community building of a network of writers in the region, which will be nurtured following the workshops, and culminate in a publication / performance and launch.

The project, therefore, not only aims to support arts development in regional Queensland, building connections between art forms (memoir writing and song writing) to enhance professional outcomes in the region, but also to assist our region to heal through writing stories and song.

The proposed project is for a series of expert-run workshops in memoir and songwriting for Central Queensland writers in Rockhampton and Emerald. Local writers will work closely with very experienced writer-teacher-editors-publishers on writing and editing for publication their flood related experiences and/or stories, and to ensure they are well aware of the demands and expectations for the public dissemination of that work, and that they are prepared to meet those expectations. Due to the nature of the subject matter, it is expected that trained psychologists or social workers will form part of the workshop team.

For information regarding the workshops, see the flyers here and here. Writing developed during the workshops to date is presented to the left under the tab Flood Stories.