Future generations of students at Woady Yaloak Primary School's four campuses will learn in the shadow of the Indigenous art created by the pupils who are current members of the school's Koorie Club.
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The school recently received $9.14 million for capital works across the four campuses at Ross Creek, Smythesdale, Scarsdale and Snake Valley and art from the school's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pupils will feature on glass doors and windows in the redevelopment.
On Wednesday, Koorie Club members met at the Smythesdale campus for a day of activities which included designing the artwork for the building project and a cooking class in which they made chicken and roast vegetables infused with native herbs.
Woady Yaloak Primary 'Koorie Champion' Megan Webb said 19 children from foundation to grade six helped design the artworks with the help of Indigenous staff, an artist and a representative from BADAC.
"They worked on creating four different artworks but we wanted them to have a common theme where we have four campuses but are one school," Ms Webb said.
"The general design for all four artworks was to have four different parts in the picture but join together in the middle."
Before getting creative they talked about symbols and story-telling using Indigenous symbols.
Images of the completed artworks will be sent to the architect designing the school redevelopment projects to be put on to glass.
Ms Webb said the artworks would open up conversations about Indigenous culture now and in the future.
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"Whether we are Indigenous or not, it's an important part of our history and we are teaching that to all our kids," she said.
"It's not just about our Koorie kids. Something we are really aware of with Koorie Club is that we want them to bring friends in to Koorie Club as well so we are not just teaching one group of students because at the end of the day we ... want to empower them and educate everybody as well.
"I think our society is becoming more open to conversations about Indigenous history and hopefully (these artworks) will bring about conversations about how it was created and open up wider discussions."
It is hoped the first stage of building works at Woady Yaloak will begin in September or October.
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