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 enabled 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 allowed 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 were intended to 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 also assisted in community building of a network of writers in the region, which was nurtured following the workshops, and culminated in a publication / performance and launch.

The project, therefore, not only aimed 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 project included a series of expert-run workshops in memoir and song writing for Central Queensland writers in Rockhampton and Emerald. Local writers worked 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 were 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, trained psychologists or social workers formed part of the workshop team.

For information regarding the workshops, see the flyers here and here. Writing developed during the workshops is presented to the left under the Emerald and Rockhampton tabs.