2022 Victorian School Design Awards

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We acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Custodians of this land. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We extend that respect to any other Elders and First Nations people here tonight.

[Upbeat music]

[On screen, short videos are shown of guests arriving to the Conversation Quarter at the State Library of Victoria, students from the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School playing guitar and cello and guests mingling prior to the awards commencing.]

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2022 Victorian School Design Awards

Shelley Ware: Good evening, everyone and welcome to the 2022 Victorian School Design Awards. My name is Shelley Ware and I'm going to be your MC tonight. I do a little bit of media work which could have got me this gig, but I'm a teacher as well and have been for 25 years and passionate about embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture within your classrooms, schools and your community.

[Collated images from this year’s entries are shown on screen]

Shelley: I am working as an education consultant with staff and students and am really honoured to be here and join you for these special awards, celebrating the innovation of building and modernising schools and kindergartens across the state. This evening, we are here on the lands of with the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. I would like to acknowledge them as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and those emerging from these great schools that you are helping to create. I extend that respect to any other elders and First Nations people who are here tonight. We will begin shortly with Minister Stitt, who is announcing our first ever award for kindergarten design. Please make her feel welcome to say a few words to kick off our celebrations.

[on screen text: The Honourable Ingrid Stitt MP, Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep and Minister for Workplace Safety]

Minister Ingrid Stitt MP: Thank you so much, Shelley, and thanks, everybody, for your warm welcome.  I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we're meeting this evening and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge any Aboriginal elders and First Nations people who are joining us this evening.

I'd also like to acknowledge my colleague Natalie Hutchins, who is the Minister for Education and the Minister for Women. I'd also just like to give a shout out to the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School and their very talented quartet that we were listening to when we arrived. We make it easier to develop all sorts of talents when we create the right environment for that learning to occur. This applies to all school types, primary, secondary and the special ones to kids with additional needs.

For years, these awards have reflected and celebrated the transformation you're helping to make right across the school sector and the education system in Victoria.

For the first time, I'm particularly proud that we will be recognising the best work that you're doing in kindergartens in our state. That's important because the next step to achieving our education state reforms are in the area of early childhood education and care, and it will continue to be a growing component of the work that you do with the Victorian School Building Authority.

Since coming to Government, we've invested nearly $13 billion to modernise Victoria's school system and to ensure that it's equipped to prepare our young people for the changing world and the new types of challenges that they'll face in the 21st century and to make it easier to unlock and develop their talents.

Our Best Start, Best Life reforms mean a massive expansion of early learning and the state's largest investment in kindergarten buildings.

We've already committed $1.6 billion to kindergarten infrastructure as we've rolled out our nation leading three-year-old kindergarten reforms.

As we'll see tonight, those reforms and the building programs that support them are well and truly underway.  With your help over the past two years, we've built and expanded enough kinders to ensure every three-year-old in the State can get at least 5 hours of early learning a week. No small feat.

We became the first Australian State to fund two years of kindergarten and from next year we're making kinder free for every child enrolled in a three and four-year-old kinder program.

Over this decade, we'll triple those early learning hours for three-year-old kinder and double them for four-year-old kinder, with the creation of a Pre-Prep year.

We're going to need more kinders and bigger kinders. Kinders designed to inspire the curiosity of young minds in new ways, and kinders designed to inspire staff, making it easier for them to try new activities or teach in new ways. We need kinders designed to be inclusive, so children of all abilities can get the very best start in life.

We'll also be building 50 government owned and operated early learning centres to support families, access affordable and quality, early childhood education and care in communities, in childcare deserts.

I've seen right across the state examples of how good design can support and enhance great teaching, so just as your ideas have pushed Victoria to the forefront of global school design in recent years, there'll be new opportunities for you to apply those skills and your innovation and talents to early learning design in the future.

I'm really looking forward to recognising and celebrating your efforts tonight. Thanks.

Shelley: Thank you, Minister. My son, who is in year 10 still says his favourite time at school was kindergarten, he absolutely loved it and kinder teachers are very special people, so it’s great to see spaces that are created to help our children flourish.  

Before we get proceedings underway, I would like to thank our judges Jill Garner, the Victorian Government Architect, Dr Philippa Soccio, a lecturer from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, who specialises in teaching and learning environments, Avril Shihab-Smith, who leads the Victorian School Building Authority’s Delivery Division, and Jessica Speirs and Dan O’Brien, who jointly manage the VSBA grants that are funding the massive expansion of Victoria’s kindergarten system.

They have asked me to pass on their thanks to you for making their job extremely difficult. It was very hard for them to pick a winner.  They had to weigh up the architectural merits of compelling collections of school and kindergarten projects completed between June 2020 and June this year. As you will see shortly, the judges had some very unique projects to consider and for the first time ever, there are a couple of categories where the judges simply couldn't decide between two outstanding entries, therefore for the very first time, we will have joint winners in the history of these awards.

Stay tuned, we're in for a very interesting night. That made some people very excited I saw there, more chances to win!  We have nine winners to announce this evening, including a special Minister's Award. All entries are considered for that special award. It might recognise a particular aspect of outstanding design that promotes innovation in education, or perhaps a project that doesn't fit neatly into the regular award categories.

[on screen text and image: Image of the 2021 Minister’s Award, Maddison Architects, Haining Farm Campus – Alpine School]

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