The Wrap Up

It is now a week since our festival experience and we have had a chance to really think about what we saw and what we liked...

Pirates has remained the favourite of Fasa, Sina and Sefo. It has inspired many crazy pirate, dragon and gravelly singing game around here. Sina and Sefo have developed 3 balancing tricks that they like to show to our visitors (and us - ad nauseum!).

Faysie and I still liked Grug the best - simple and effective. Beautiful storytelling.

The Sticks workshop for me was a stand out in terms of set up and facilitation but the butterflies from Flutterby were literally loved and flown to death... The last one ended up in the recycling yesterday after an unfortunate incident with the bath.

Everything we saw at the Festival was great but for me the overall vibe was lacking a bit. Fasa and I really missed The Island, the free stage from previous festivals and thought that The World Stage didn't quite cut it. For us The Island and the way it presented work from the Pacific Rim was really Brisbane. We also obviously loved the Pacific Island content which was lacking in this festival. I also really missed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performances. We missed Sand Song which I am so disappointed about, even more so after reading The Bondies account of it however in previous years there has been so much more of this, particularly on the free stage, and I think that this was really lacking in the festival this year.

We usually go as a family to two days of the festival and I have also thought that I would like to do more.... however I think that maybe this is enough for us.

Finally we would like to thank QPAC - it takes a lot of courage to open up for constructive criticism, particularly as they have had no control over what we write. We are really grateful for the opportunity to see and do so much and had a wonderful time.

I will leave you with an overheard interaction between Sina and Sefo when discussing why she got to go to the opening of OOTB and he didn't.... " You see Sefo I am 8 this year and this is the last year that I am allowed to go... next time you will be the only kid in this family that is allowed to go so you will get to go to the opening." And so the OOTB baton is passed down through Team Pojo!

Thanks