Workshop update: Creative Writing, Book Making and Computer Gaming

I've been really enjoying my workshops at the Taylors Hill Youth and Community Centre, Taylors Hill Neighbourhood House and Twilight School at the Rupertswood Mansion in Sunbury. It's been great meeting so many interesting, creative and productive residents of Melbourne's outer western suburbs - my home town. We've shared a lot of laughs and learnt a ton from each other. 

While I've felt confident instructing and engaging workshop groups for some time now, I'm still astonished at the quality and amount of work many of the participants produce after only the first few weeks. Quite often, after I explain a few general principles, talk about common ways to approach a given task, answer a couple of questions and encourage the group to unleash their creativity, the group produces inspirational bodies of work.

If you've been in any of my workshops, thank you for your support and encouragement. Seeing you develop new skills and explore your creative sides has given me the confidence to offer workshops to a number of new community-based organisations. I can't say much about some of the initiatives at the moment apart from *cough* sessional teaching for Victoria University in 2014 *cough* watch this space!

In the mean time, 12-25 year olds can join my FREE creative writing and book making workshop next Saturday (26 October) without missing much from the first few weeks. We will spend the next three weeks making our hand-bound journals, befire the creative writing side of the program begins. While participants are welcome to join any week, they will get the most out of the workshop if they join on the 26th of October, or 16th of November.

If you or someone you know have any questions, or would like to book a place in this program, please call Kat on (03) 9747 5421, or send an email to her @ katrionag@melton.vic.gov.au. I'll most likely return your call or email myself.

Another program I'm currently running is Pro GamerS [PGS], a weekly computer gaming group for 12-18 year olds based at the Taylors Hill Youth Services Centre.

We are playing the most popular PC games (League of Legends, Planetside 2, Starcraft 2: HoTS, Minecraft, Terraria, FTL: Faster Than Light, Civilization V, Tropico 4, Game Dev Tycoon, Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Plainswalkers 2014, Don't Starve) on a bunch of super-fast, top-of-the-line gaming rigs.

If the list of games doesn't impress you, how about a room full of 22inch HD LCD screens and PCs with 2gig graphics cards, Quad-Core AMD processors, 12gigs of RAM and a super-duper fast internet connection.

Still not convinced? We've also got XBoxs, Playstation 3s, and Wiis, not to mention free refreshments and an awesome workshop facilitator: me!

And that's not all! Group members will choose which games feature in our quarterly tournaments and be able to enter for the chance to become the Pro-est Gamer and win a swag of awesome prizes.

If we attract enough members, we can buy even more games and go on excursions to the Melbourne gaming conventions.

Join Pro GamerS NOW by calling Melton Youth Services on 9747 5421!

*Pro GamerS look away!* Parents and guardians can be confident knowing their teens are having fun in a safe setting outside of their bedrooms. The participants will be socialising with like-minded people and becoming aware of the importance of ergonomics, healthy eating, balancing thier gaming with regular exercise and a homework-first attitude.


Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you or someone you know in one of my workshops.
Emanuel