Hosting Storyfest Gold Coast

Over the past few days, we’ve seen the campus transformed ready for Storyfest. Our Somerset Community sees this large event staged every year, sometimes I wonder if we may forget its purpose and more importantly it’s impact. When we become very familiar with something it’s often harder to see with fresh insight, in fact we may be reminded of the familiar quote, “don’t take it for granted”. Somerset lives and breathes Storyfest (Gold Coast ) every year and it is marked by a feeling of a carnival including food trucks and marquees, yet if we stop for a moment and cast our minds right back to the very beginning when the Somerset Celebration of Literature was first held, over 30 years ago, it’s express purpose was to bring authors and students together to inspire and encourage a love of reading. As we know from an abundance of research, developing a love of reading at an early age is a huge factor in ongoing success in learning. How much more important is that message today in a world dominated by screens and short attention spans? So, when we bring authors into the mix to share their passions, to encourage young readers and to celebrate the importance of literature, we are embarking on something truly important and remarkable.

I do appreciate with the advent of social media and online streaming, it is more challenging to capture the hearts and minds of students. As a father of four young adult children, raised in a reading household, some of whom now rarely read books in paper form, I cannot stress how important it is to get the foundations set when children are young. This is why events like Storyfest are more important than ever, particularly as the programme now reaches out far beyond the Gold Coast.

So, as the tents go up, the bookstalls are unloaded, the infamous Dipping Dots arrive, and we prepare ourselves to welcome so many onto our campus, I am hoping to encourage you all to stop and take a moment to be incredibly humbled by what our College does in hosting Storyfest Gold Coast and sponsoring Storyfest’s work more broadly. I believe we are helping impact the lives of not only our own students, but all those who come to these events and this is something we shouldn’t take for granted; we should enthusiastically embrace and celebrate it!

My thanks and best wishes go out to Andrea and her team, and also to the many student and parent volunteers who give so much, in a myriad of ways, to support this event.

Enjoy the festival and happy reading.