Congratulations to Canobolas Rural Technology High School principal Chad Bliss, community engagement officer Vince Lovecchio, and all Canobolas High staff and students for developing  this event. For an event in its inaugural year it was a fantastic result.

Orange City Council was pleased to offer funding as well as support from our community development team. 

The council’s migrant support service was also involved in some of the festival’s activities including:

l  Working with the Together For Humanity Foundation, Fusion, Hayden Gibbs-O’Neill, Daesop Yoon and Sulamain Siddiqui to offer cultural awareness with a range of young people from a variety of schools including Canobolas High School.

 l Developing a circle of understanding to engage conversation between Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal and multicultural community members.

l Liaising with the Orange Culture Hub (a new multicultural group for Orange) to offer French, Singaporean, Indonesian and Malaysian culture and culinary delights to hospitality students, who then prepared the launch dinner using this theme. Particular thanks to  Grace, Praveen, Lanny and Fifi for their contributions.

 l  Contributing to the drum, song and dance evening. It was great fun with over 50 in the drum circle.

l  Assisting with the hangi preparation for the Cultural Festivity Day held at Canobolas High School as a conclusion to this great youth arts festival week. Particular thanks to Gerald Power, Feleti and Seini Fosio and Jane Punivai, as well as Chad, Kate, Stuart and Vince who all rolled up their sleeves along with their staff members.

Special thanks must go to the many artists who offered workshops at the school, including Kate Bracks, Freya Blackwood, Tim Winters, Charlotte Calder, Heather Valance, Margrete Lamond and the many who made artistic contributions from other schools.

Vince Lovecchio worked tirelessly to achieve this dream of raising the profile of youth art, including a new example of street art in a walkway from Summer Street. Well done Vince. 

What a pleasure it is to see your selfless use of skills in creating so many community connections to the benefit of so many young people in Orange. I look forward to seeing the festival becoming bigger and better in the future, with support from so many who will now want to be involved. 

Ron Gander,

Councillor - Orange City Council