CO-ORDINATOR GUIDELINES, SHARED STORIES ANTHOLOGY 2017

THEME: Journey

LAUNCH: November 2017

WHEN ARE THE PIECES DUE? 
Feel free to send batches of materials on usb or Dropbox as they are ready. Please submit as much material as possible in August /September. Please remember that due to the need to proofread written text, it is much more time-consuming than artwork in terms of editorial preparation.  
The final date for submission of materials is Monday 9 October 2017.

Materials can be sent on USB to:
Peter Farrar
Star of the Sea College
PO Box 7001, Gardenvale LPO
Brighton VIC 3186
OR
Hand delivered to the Administration Office of Star of the Sea College at 80 Martin Street, Brighton, in a sealed envelope marked to the attention of Peter Farrar.

CO-ORDINATOR ADVICE
 
THEME: Journey
Teachers are encouraged to develop their own local themes for writing and artwork; the theme for 2017 (Journey) is not intended to limit the range of pieces that can be supplied for the anthology. Some of the sub-themes that have been suggested are:
  • Chaos & order,
  • Journey & wonder
  • Exploration & discovery
  • Expectation; and
  • Ubuntu (I am because we are).
 
WRITTEN PIECES
  • Written pieces in Times New Roman 12 point Word doc
  • Please do not send any written documents using Pages (Mac)
  • Please ensure that each piece has a title and the name of the student, their year level and school are included with the title at the top of the page
  • Please do not exceed 820 words per page
  • If you include a piece of artwork with the written text on a single page, the word limit would be around 400 words, depending on the size of the image
  • Name documents so that they show the page allocation(s) for each piece
  • Please note that you need to proofread thoroughly; yours is the main proofreading
  • Each school chooses the best written pieces to spread across the school’s page allocations
  • The pieces can be in any form (journal, poem, letter, first person narrative, fiction, blog)
 
VISUAL PIECES
  • For each visual piece, you will need the file saved in a format as outlined below. Please also supply a Word doc containing the title of the visual piece + the student artist’s name + year level + school name. This could also include a comment from the student on what inspired the piece
  • All images saved as JPEG and provided on high resolution scan for maximum quality
 
SAVING FOR PUBLICATION
  • Save all docs, JPEGs, etc. with the page number allocated to them 
  • You have been given a list of pages allocated to your school (all full colour)
  • You are free to use these pages in any way that suits your needs. For example, you may wish to publish 6 full-length written pieces of 1,000 to 1,400 words each, using the opposite page for a related image such as a photograph or artwork. In this way, a school may use 12 pages for six pieces. You may also wish to have one artwork image on a page, with a student’s commentary on their inspiration for that work
  • I have used CRC Melton as an example of how to label written text and related artwork where the school has used a double page spread for one piece of writing + one piece of artwork:
            John Tran’s story is saved as p.41 & 42_JT_Melton
            His artwork is saved as p.42_JT_photo_Melton

VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS
  • The parameters are broad and the art can be in any form: paint, sculpture, pencil, linocut or digital. The chosen pieces must be reproduced on high resolution
  • An art label must be provided, naming the artist, their year level, school and a comment on what inspired the piece. The use of comments for artwork where the student explains their inspiration is always valuable in this publication. There are plenty of examples from the 2013 to 2016 editions where this has been used effectively (for example, see pages 115 and 145 from the 2016 edition). This allows the reader to observe the details of the pieces
  • When you are assembling your artwork, put the artwork and art label (which is typed in Word) into separate docs and save as follows:
            p42_WK_art_Avila
            p42_WK_art label_Avila.doc

ADVICE REGARDING THE SELECTION OF MATERIALS
  • For 2017, it is suggested that schools limit the number of visuals per page to a maximum of three where the student has written notes to accompany the piece. In 2016, it was good to see more schools featuring only one or two images on a page to gain maximum impact for the artworks.
  • For written pieces, please make sure that you do not exceed 820 words per page. For a double page spread, do not exceed 1,700 words.
  • All schools have double page spreads to allow the flexibility of having lengthier pieces of writing or combinations of writing and artwork on the one double page. For example, imagine that you have chosen a lengthy piece of writing (1,200 words) together with a piece of artwork from another student, which has an art label attached.  You have allocated two pages to these pieces. To present this for upload, you would first create a folder with the allocated page numbers, for example, labelled simply as ‘Pages 2 & 3’.  Inside that folder, you would then save the pieces, clearly labelled with the student’s initials and the school’s initials, indicating what the file contains (writing, art or art label). The designer will then know that the school wants the contents of this folder to be spread across those specific pages
  • It is great to see that schools are willing to feature their most outstanding artwork on an individual page (i.e. one page for a special piece). This adds to the artistic feel of the anthology and is less ‘busy’ than uploading multiple images onto a page that reduces the visual impact of the pieces
  • All images must be high res.

Most importantly, I would be very happy to speak with anyone involved in this project at your school, including your Arts KLA Heads if they have queries.

Thank you in anticipation of another magnificent edition in 2017,
Peter.
pfarrar@starmelb.catholic.edu.au