MAY NEWS | Early Harvest, FutureMakers & More
It’s been a busy and exciting time at 100 Story Building, with young writers, artists and educators bringing bold ideas to life across our programs. Here's a little of what's been happening.
Early Harvest 2026 is officially underway, and this year's anthology has a wonderfully wild theme: Otherwise: A mapping of miscellaneous worlds by curious, young writers. This year's author mentor is bestselling children's author Hilary Badger (H.I. Larry), of Zac Power fame. Hilary will contribute a super-special written piece to the anthology, once it makes it past our scrupulous editorial committee of students, of course! Our guest illustrator is the wonderful Tam Bower, who you might remember from our 2025 flood recovery publication, We Watched Our River Rise. The equally excellent Regine Abos returns as book designer, having shaped nearly every Early Harvest book to date, and we're delighted to welcome back Hardie Grant Children's Publishing as publisher. More world-building updates soon!
Our youth advisory group, the FutureMakers, continues to inform and shape our programming, bringing their lived experiences, bold ideas and honest perspectives to keep our work relevant to the children and young people we serve. Over the autumn holidays, they created a vibrant two-panel mural under the tagline "Building confidence and creativity through storytelling." Bursting with neon rainbow hues and bold black outlines, it's filled with birds in flight, city streets, vending machines, ghosts, galaxies and more in-jokes than we can count: a joyful celebration of imagination. Later this year, they'll unveil their biggest project yet, an end-of-year exhibition celebrating the creativity of young people across our community. As the FutureMakers remind us, the future isn't something that happens to us. It's something we make together.
And looking ahead to the winter break, we've got two holiday workshops at 100 Story Building this July. Wise Quacks 2: The Squawk-uel (Wed 8 July, ages 8 to 12) is back for another round of beaky bird comedy, with comic-making, costume creation, physical theatre and group sketches, all with a fresh feathery twist. Second Edition (Thu 9 July, ages 13 to 16) invites quiet observers and curious minds to become journalists, piecing together a real newspaper documenting the mysterious creatures said to roam Footscray.
Thank you for being part of a community that champions creativity, storytelling and young voices.
100 Story Building team
