Memories in Motion

Memories in Motion is a Gallery Sunshine Everywhere Project, with Sunshine Primary School.
The project was funded by the CASS Foundation and enabled grade four students to work with a local photographer, a community historian and a community artist to explore memories of the Sunshine Railway Station, the history of the area and how they also are involved with making history.

here is the link to the film about the project ! :http://youtu.be/ZlOesYW_i-Q

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Welcome to Memories in Motion a Sunshine Primary School year four project. The culmination of this project is a fantastic ceramic public art installation about trains made with artist Debbie Qadri.  These trains appear at a number of intersections between the school and the Sunshine railway station.   As you can see the students were actively engaged in reflecting on the railways over time in Sunshine. This involved a series of visits by Nigel Gillies a former railway signal box worker who shared his stories of the Sunshine railway station.  Nigel also treated us to a number of objects connected to the railways such as station master hats, coats, old tickets and stamps. After the discussions about train’s students, wrote down their own memories associated with trains.  Sometimes these memories were single words, sometimes they told a longer story. These words and stories were engraved on ceramic tiles. Images of the way the railway station looked in the past were contrasted with the way the station looks today. Armed with these images students walked to the Sunshine railway station compared the changes and recorded sounds of trains. The culmination of the exploration of the railway line was trip on a V Line train to Ballarat.  The recorded train sounds and memories make up a digital image and sound scape that is available… The artistic representation of the exploration of local history is an innovative blend of history and art.  The year four students are to be congratulated as they have made a contribution to the railway history of Sunshine that they and others can view over time.

                              Dr Karen Charman

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Walking to Sunshine Station

We all went on a walk to sunshine station and had a look at historical sites, places which have changed recently (such as the new railway station) and thought about:
the things we could see
hear
smell
and what memories came to us as we were walking.
Some memories were about trains and travelling on trains.
Some memories were about sunshine and the railway station.
We saw the Signal Box where Nigel used to work.
We also saw things such as:

• where the first village cinema was ( at the computer shop)
• The masonic Hall
• where the council buildings used to be (Pollard Gardens)
• the new railway station

Here are some of the photos that we took!




above: a mural on the wall of the Sunshine art spaces studio

something in the window of the artists studio

the Masonic Hall

one of the walkways up to the station. We all talked about how this was a recent change. You used to walk down into a tunnel to access the railway station platforms.

the roof of the pergola at Pollard Gardens

We talked about these lights in class and Nigel told us that these were the signals that he controlled. The lights are always red and then the person working in the signal box will change them to green when it is safe for a train to leave the station. The lights have little hoods on them to create a shadow so that you can see them brightly if you are a train driver.

In this photo you can see the construction still going on around the railway station.

from up on the station platform you can see may things easily.

As part of our memories in motion Project we explored how to make our ideas and memories out of clay

here are some of the photos of making the claywork.
We used the photos that we took to make some clayworks and we also made words and letters related to the train station, the history of Sunshine and our memories.









Concrete Poetry is poetry that is not made by writing words in the traditional way.
A lot of concrete Poetry is still written on paper, but the words make shapes and structures across the page that might reflect the idea in the poem.

We made concrete poetry out of ceramic letters one day to record some of our experiences in thinking about the Sunshine Railway Station, our excursion there, the history of the place, changes in the place, what we saw, heard, felt or remembered on our excursion.

We photographed the artwork and then the photographs were wheat-pasted onto a wall at pollard gardens to make an artwork. This is another of the Collaborative artworks that we made, which means we made it together.
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Our Public Art
We glued our ceramic artworks onto plywood carriages and they have been installed between the school and Sunshine Station. The carriages are representations of our learning, our stories and our experiences during this project.
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Thanks to 

The CASS Foundation
Maureen Ryan of Gallery Sunshine Everywhere
Staff at Sunshine Railway Station
Staff at Sunshine Primary School