ECO-ZONE & THE WAKAKIRRI NATIONAL STORY FESTIVAL

Eco-Zone is proud to be a major partner of Wakakirri National Story Festival - a creative and performing arts competition available to every school in Australia.

Within the Wakakirri National Story Festival, Eco-Zone:
- Encourages schools to create stories with environmental themes
- Encourages schools to reduce, reuse and recycle to make their props and costumes
- Provides environmental awards
- Provides PR & public awareness campaigns on reduce, reuse, recycle


Environmental Stories
Eco-Zone encourages schools participating in Wakakirri to create stories around themes of cultural diversity, environment and health.

Many stories are created around these three themes because it often aligns with the school curriculum. Creating a story with an environmental theme drives students to become intensely focused on a particular environmental theme for the six-month participation period.

The result of this intense focus and energy is the opportunity to perform that story to other schools and the general public - thereby educating themselves and the community. The PR outcome of this process is for the ‘winning schools environmental story’ to be promoted to the mainstream media.

Example Environmental Story
School: Holy Cross Primary School
Venue: Hills Centre NSW
Story Title: The invasion 2004
Synopsis: The Great Barrier Reef is a picture of colour and movement. The crown of thorn starfish arrives and bullies the animals. An oil spill occurs, anchors drag through the reef and manmade rubbish start to kill the reef. The reef is now just hanging on to life. With increased awareness the reef starts to be cleaned up by the people from all walks of life who respect this natural wonder.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle performing arts materials
Participating schools in Wakakirri are required to actively demonstrate their re-use of materials in making their sets, props and costumes. Schools are encouraged to reduce, reuse and recycle. This saves schools money and provides an excellent educational opportunity for teachers and students alike.

Eco-Zone trains teachers on how to think ecologically with the students to build an enhanced appreciation of the lifecycles of performing arts materials. It successfully achieves this through the application of these principles on an entertaining platform of which they are an integral part.

An emphasis in the Wakakirri judging criteria is placed on resourcefulness and there are special awards courtesy of Eco-Zone for schools that excel in this area. Each school is judged and must provide evidence on their environmental endeavours to the judging panel.

The judges inspect every school’s props, costumes and sets and award prizes on a local, state and national level. The national award is announced on the TV special at the end of every year.

Eco-Zone also provides a special ‘most creative use of aluminium cans/ plastic bottles’ award at a state and national level.