Rani Jones’s winning entry for the Library Redesign Competition, which is ‘heavily inspired by students’ desire to sleep and features a sleeping room and a kitchen, as every library should’.

As the English Department has evolved into the Language and Literature Learning Area, so to has this week-long enjoyment of languages – plural – and film, poetry, reading, writing and signing.

Staff book club discussing Trent Dalton’s Love Stories over morning tea

Reading flash-mobs met food stalls. Homesteads came together to communicate with British -Jamaican Deaf poet Raymond Antrobus, live from London. Students redesigned the library using Minecraft.

Members of the Year 11 English team and Raymond Antrobus, live from London (2:00am local time!)

Our Language Acquisition Indonesian students skewered and barbequed hundreds of satay sticks to raise $1,000 for COVID-affected Indonesian communities. French classes made crepes. International movies were on show.

Indonesian Food Stall in the Agora, raising money for Indonesian communities and coinciding with a staff reading-flash-mob.

As Franz Kafka wrote, ‘A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.’ In late autumn and after 2 years of lockdowns, the 2022 Lang and Lit Festival was a playful disco ball to illuminate the joy around us.

ZACHARY SHINKFIELD Learning Area Leader – English