A Relational Imaginery

Imagine a school, settling into its plateau community of forests, swamps and waterways. The forests of this “mountain place” are rain makers, the rains that fall are gift of the relationship between forest and sky, a gift sent downstream to biodiverse ecological communities and the communities of people in the immediate region and beyond.

This is a school imagining and enlivening its educative role, as storyteller, as seeder of imaginations, for a community embedded in relationship with Country. The school is Kindlehill, meaning to kindle light and warmth on the hill. It has been doing so for 25 years in our Blue Mountains World Heritage Place.

Around 10 years ago, when our School was seeking ways to be in tangible relationship with local First Nations people, Dharug elder, Aunty Carol, advised us as a starting place, to adopt a totem. Our school is close to the beautiful Wentworth Falls Lake that was likely once a flourishing swamp.   Soon after we were visited by Petalura Gigantea, the Giant Dragonfly. This is an endangered species and one of its few habitats is in the swamp that sweetens the waters of the lake. This became our totem.

Dragonfly Kinship

In the first few years, the giant dragonfly, its lifecycle, its habitat and its mythology, inspired our science, our art, our performing arts, our craft and our community celebrations. We invited Dharug artist Leanne Tobin to work with the children to create a mosaic mural. The dragonfly mural appropriately bounds our sandpit, place of play and imagination. We walked and talked with scientist and dragonfly man, Ian Baird. Jo Clancy, of Wagana Dance, taught the children a dragonfly dance, and invited us to be custodians of this dance. So many lessons that transformed into a relationship with dragonfly, but also with our local lake-swamp (its habitat), and then in widening circles to the many swamps in the Blue Mountains and beyond.

In the high school, students undertake a local swamp project which renews this connection to our local place and our totem and also becomes a grounding for a critical understanding of the importance of swamps in mitigating the impacts of bushfires, and of the extreme weather events connected to climate change.

Responding to Climate Change

In 2024, we collaboratively designed a Climate Change Statement, so that the decisions we make about curriculum, activities, building, are made “in the presence of our children” and in the context of our manifold relationships to the place where we live (environmental and people).  Our teaching and learning are both responsive and resonant with the place where we live and to future generations. In this, we strive to come into alignment with the wise and beautiful community of life that we now know as the Blue Mountains. This place is breath and water for regions around and beyond. We tell this story so that it lives in the feelings and imaginations of the children and young people who pass through our school, who we hope will carry this deep sense of belonging in place, together with its obligations to care and protect, into their futures.

Currently, we are working with scientist, conservationist and artist collaborators on a community project called Connect to Protect. What began as a geographical investigation into the leaching of heavy metals from an abandoned coal mine into the headwaters of the pristine Grose River, became so much more. Dharug Uncles Chris and Lex, encouraged us use Bulgamatta, the Dharug word for mountain place, when we speak of and to this  river and valley; which is of utmost cultural significance past and present. They shared that while we have World Heritage status for biodiversity, we don’t yet have it for its extraordinary cultural values.

We have petitioned the NSW Environment Minister for action on restoring health to the headwaters of Bulgamatta. We are inviting people of all ages to gather on Country for storytelling and art making, experiences to enliven our connection to place, and hence our will to actions that protect and restore.

Seeding Our Storytellers

Schools are storytellers, seeders of imaginations for present and futures. It matters the stories we tell and live by. In striving to learn from and with our surroundings and peoples as living text, we “are stronger together”, as Uncle Lex says while twisting the individual strands of stringy bark into resilient twine.

We are a school bound by the NSW curriculum. We are a place-based Steiner School practicing artistic education for connected, resilient individuals who can become earth-centred in their thinking and living.

And  our elders and teachers are all around us in First Nations elders and artists, in forest and swamp, in the migratory journey of eel and birds, in the lessons from damage and exploitation, in the people who love this place and have promised to protect and care for it; because it is beautiful, because it is breath and water for communities here and beyond, because we too may one day be the wise elders for those who come  with their curious questions that are ways of listening in to the inter- relatedness of all.