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CEO First of the month update
May 2025
Dear Colleagues
Steiner Voices XYZ
Out this week on Steiner Education Australia’s podcast series Steiner Voices XYZ is Sophia Montefiore whose day job is Senior High School Coordinator at the Newcastle Waldorf School. Sophia’s various side interests include being a professional artist and illustrator, and more recently developing a worldwide practice in Projective Geometry. The title of this episode of Steiner Z is Meeting Infinity: Seeing the World Differently, and you can listen in at:
Conferences
We’re gearing up for the GLAM conference later this week at Orana Steiner School in Canberra and look forward to a stimulating and warm community weekend. We’re also looking ahead to the end of term as we prepare for the 2025 National Teachers Conference at Noosa Pengari Steiner school, Queensland on July 7-10th.
There will be many highlights:
Bernd Ruf from the Ernst Stockmeyer Waldorf School in Karlsruhe, Germany will be a leading keynote speaker. Bernd is the founder of Emergency Pedagogy which has become a worldwide movement providing disaster relief to traumatised communities in emergency situations, all based on Steiner pedagogy. For 20 years they have sent teams on over 120 missions to crisis zones in Gaza, Lebanon, China, Philippines, and Africa. Their interventions are based on a detailed Steiner education methodology that addresses trauma in crisis situations. Bernd will describe the work and provide a preliminary training in emergency pedagogy: his workshop however is already full but his keynote that will open the conference will be available to all.
Unofficial national treasure Hugh McKay will speak on his book The Way We Are (every person registering will receive a copy).
Netanela Mizrahi Principal of Milkwood Steiner school in Darwin (Larrakia Country) will speak on her creative work with First Nations communities, and will present five Children’s Songs that she and Aunty Bilawara Lee have written, especially commissioned by Steiner Education Australia for the conference.
Shelley Davidow will speak on what Steiner schools can do to preserve our innate humanity as AI works its way into every aspect of our lives.
All this and much, much more will make an enriching and powerful experience for all Steiner educators. Early bird registration closes on 7 June.
Click on the button below to see full details of our National Teachers Conference at Noosa, Qld, in July:
Loss and Hope…. Richness and Resilience
The Mt Barker Waldorf School suffered a significant loss during the holidays, when one of their longest serving buildings was burnt down in an arson attack. The loss is substantial, both physical and symbolic: the building has been most recently used for the Business office and IT centre with staff and financial records being destroyed, as well as an office for some teachers. But the cultural significance has also been substantial: the building has been used as a classroom for many years, even housing Eurythmy at times. Many teachers with long connections to the school will be feeling the loss of a building that served them and their students so well.
But as Principal Liam Waterford pointed out, there are silver linings to the whole experience that are worth pondering for their deeper significance. Most remarkably, there were participants at a Bothmer Gym workshop staying at the school, one of whom was camping on the oval and was able to raise the alarm before the fire spread. Without that intervention the damage could have been far greater and affected more buildings. The damaged building was not a classroom, so students are not suffering a direct sense of loss, and the school is not needing to find another classroom at short notice. The fire happened on one of the first days of the holidays so there has been time to regroup and manage the issue. The community has rallied around, and while mourning the loss, the mood is one of resilience.
This mood of resilience was palpable on Monday when I enjoyed a very positive day with all staff from the South Australian Steiner schools at the Mt Barker school, a gathering of about 100 people. While this annual get together day was full of professional development, it was also a day of meeting and greeting, deep conversations, and sharing the vision of Steiner education among the two independent Steiner schools of Mt Barker and Willunga, and the two Steiner streams at Sheidow Park and Trinity Gardens schools.
Coincidentally Mt Barker school is also hosting a remarkable piece of theatre this weekend and next: the Parsifal Project is a reimagining of the medieval legend of a young man’s journey to maturity by Wolfram von Eschenbach and is the culmination of nearly three years work. Inkpot Theatre directed by Jo-anne Sarre has been working on the Parsifal Project since 2022, with input from an international playwright, background research into the mythic and historical origins of the text, and art and music. Their aim has been to find “a process of meaningful resonance between this iconic story and the challenges we are navigating in our current world, including alignment with an Australian First Nations perspective. You can get a glimpse of the depth of their work from this earlier newsletter:
The story has been a Main Lesson in the Year 11 curriculum of Steiner high schools for generations, providing a deep and nourishing experience for the growing young person of the challenging path to maturity. The first performance last Saturday has been hailed as outstanding with two more this weekend.
As part of the reimagining, and to ground the work on Country, a First Nations performer added interludes of indigenous culture into the performance, fusing western and First Nations artistic elements into a powerful and unified whole.
The performer David Booth, a First Nations man with connections to the local Peramangk community, has already worked with the school in a cultural exchange between indigenous art and Steiner education.
Eurythmy teacher Anna Kotanidis describes the two day cultural immersion workshop for staff members run by David last year:
Staff members embarked on a journey of discovery, visiting the local summit to paint symbols of ochre onto their bodies. As they ascended the summit, David played the didgeridoo, creating a harmonious backdrop to the natural surroundings. This immersive experience set the tone for the collaborative journey to come.
Upon returning to the Eurythmy room, the didgeridoo once again played a central role. As participants engaged in the three-fold walking exercise, the rhythmic sounds of the instrument created a sense of unity and connection. This organic and intuitive movement, synchronised with the didgeridoo's pulsating rhythm, fostered a deep sense of harmony.
Inspired by the gestures, David created a mural which expressed in Indigenous iconography the eurythmy and the zodiacal forms, linked with the seven stars of the Pleiades. The mural now hangs in the school’s eurythmy room, and as Anna puts it, 'will inspire staff and students for years to come.'
I came away from Mt Barker with two words firmly on my mind: richness and resilience. They are deeply linked as they show how a Steiner school’s culturally rich, socially connected community can stand strong in the face of adversity and give the gift of resilience to all its members.
With best wishes,
Andrew Hill
CEO, Steiner Education Australia
