Cr Danita Potter - Community Portfolio Report - 20 September 2017

South Burnett Libraries

This year’s Children’s Book Week theme was “Escape to Everywhere”.  To celebrate this special week the Nanango Library invited local childcare and kindergarten groups to join the library for a BEAR HUNT.  The Nanango Kindergarten community arrived bright and early, dressed in costume and ready to enjoy the Bear Hunt story and activities.  After being engaged with stories, the first group of 28 children and 11 adults then retraced the steps of the hunt to find the bear lounging in the cave with his mates. They went through the long wavy grass, a deep cold river, thick oozy mud, a big dark forest, a swirling whirling snowstorm and the narrow gloomy cave - but they weren’t scared!

In Kingaroy, participants at a special dress up story time came along as their favourite characters, including Spider Man, a lady bird, Elsa and Anna from Frozen.  The library staff also dressed up for the day, with Arthur the Aardvark, Thing 1 and a Minion making special appearances.

Book Week was a huge success in Proston this year, with festivities beginning with a visit to the local eKindy, run from the Proston State School.  Following this, 17 children from grades 2 and 3 visited the library along with 2 teachers.  Bushkids Playgroup visited with 10 children and 7 adults whilst another group from grades 3 and 4 with 2 teachers visited later that morning. 

Janice Gallen enthralled an enthusiastic group of listeners at Nanango Library where Janice spoke of her writing process focusing on her ‘Meg and Clyde’ mysteries.  Janice also spoke of her romance and family saga novels as well as her love for writing. Janice Gallen’s books are available to borrow from South Burnett Libraries.

Local author Sharon Pearson visited the library in the last month to launch her first book “Fences, gates and posts of rural Australia”, which is a collection of historic, unusual and at times quirky images of the diversity of fences, gates and posts across Australia.  40 people were in attendance for this event.

Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF)

Council has been advised that the 2017/2018 bid to Arts Queensland for the RADF partnership program has been decided.  With $7,500 approved by Arts Queensland and Council’s contribution of $5,000, the total funding available in this category of the Community Grants Program is $12,500.

Round one (1) is currently open for applications and I would like to encourage local artists and art organisations to contact Council to discuss how to apply for the funding.

Community Grants Program Round One (1) for 2017/18

The Community Grants Program Round One (1) has been assessed by the Committee with Council receiving fifty (50) applications across four (4) categories within the program, requesting a total of $125,952.88. 

I am pleased to announce Council has approved $58,449.55, with the successful applications as follows: