The Corroboree Sydney Festival wrapped up on the 30th of November. The State Library of New South Wales was excited to host a number of events to celebrate Aboriginal Sydney

The main highlights of Corroboree Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales were:

My Sydney Writer’s Workshops

The workshop was led by writer Cathy Craigie with assistance from the the Sydney Story Factory. The my Sydney Story Workshops got young students  to interact with colonial Aboriginal Sydney objects in the State Library’s collection such as Maps Of Port Jackson,Cora Gooseberry’s breastplate and rum mug, a historic sexton to give them inspiration to write poems and short stories

Redfern Conversations Now

To coincide with our lunch time film festival of the critically acclaimed tv series Redfern Now, the Library hosted a conversation about the series featuring some of the driving forces behind the show writer and director Leah Purcell (pictured left) and writer, director and producer Rachel Perkins (pictured right) talking about their inspirations and their experiences when working on the series.

Your Sydney Stories

Inspired by Esme Timbery’s famous shellwork Sydney Harbour Bridge sculptures, the Macquarie street foyer became home to an oversized shell adorned Harbour Bridge created by Sydney based Aboriginal Artist Jonathan Jones. Visitors wrote their stories about Sydney onto shell shaped cards and then affixed them to the Bridge, creating a diverse collection of Sydney stories.

Original manuscript by Kevin Gilbert

During Corroboree, Kevin Gilbert’s original literary manuscript ‘Poem’ was on display at the in the Library’s Amaze gallery. Written during his time in jail it would become the basis for his published collection of poems “End of Dreamtime”, was also exhibitied

If you view both the original manuscript and the published works on display side by side and you will see the differences between what was first written and what was eventually published.

As you can see, there was a lot of exciting events that happened at the Library during Corroboree Sydney 2014 and we’ll again have more exciting events and displays for Corroboree 2015.

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Photgraphs taken by the State Library of New South Wales

All photographs are displayed with permission