In this workshop participants will creatively explore Wollongong Botanic Garden's spectacular Dragon Tree. Working from the mythologies and origin stories of the Dragon Tree, Karen Cummings will take participants through exercises using sound, writing and drawing to respond to the tree and its stories, in embodied and creative ways.

Karen Cummings is a SCWC/Wollongong Botanic Garden Writer in Residence, and is a performer with over 30 years experience in opera, music theatre and the performance of song. She has an abiding interest in the many ways the voice can colour words and the relationship of the sounds of words and the human voice. She is currently a lecturer in voice at Wollongong university and the Conservatorium of music (Sydney). She has a particular interest in the ways that voice and words can empower communities who are the voices we most need to hear from.

She is a member of the Short Black Opera Company which toured Australia telling the story of the first walk off from an Aboriginal Mission in Echeuca. The piece was written by Deborah Cheetham and workshopped on country with elders who knew the story. She is currently part of Creation, a text based music theatre work responding to the climate crisis. Karen has composed a work for this piece. Karen is interested in exploring further the interaction between psycho-geography and the resonance of space.

Please click here for a high resolution unedited version of the map above on the Wollongong Botanic Garden website: https://wollongongbotanicgarde...

This workshop presented in partnership between the South Coast Writers Centre and Wollongong Botanic Garden.