SE 22 Dec – Cath Keenan from Sydney Story Factory

Today Justine will speak with Cath Keenan, a Sydney Morning Herald journalist and co-founder of the Sydney Story Factory.

There can never be enough of a good thing as the Dave Eggers founded 826 Valencia centre – a physical learning space and program connecting writers with disadvantaged kids and in turn connecting the children with their creative side – shows, with permutations and mutations finding its way across the USA, across the Atlantic to the UK (the Ministry of Stories started by Nick Hornby) and now to Sydney in the form of the Sydney Story Factory.

With increasing numbers of studies and government policy acknowledging the importance of creative arts learning to the development of other skills such as problem solving, as well as the boost in confidence that comes with the ability of children to express themselves, programs like the Sydney Story Factory aim to provide free writing programs, taught by professional writers and teachers, targeted at disadvantaged children to open their eyes to new horizons of possibility.

Perhaps fittingly, the shopfront for the Sydney Story Factory will be a Martian Embassy and Gift Shop filled with everything the intergalactic explorer needs to go traipsing off into the fantastic unknown territories of the galaxy.