[Q]ueen Elizabeth Grammar School in Penrith hosted award-winning writer and filmmaker Matt Dickinson on Wednesday 15th November.
Beginning the day with a year 7 creative writing class entitled, “What’s Your Everest?”, Matt used lots of photographs and stories from his own experiences of filming in the Himalayas and his ascent of the world’s highest mountain to inspire students to imagine and write about being lost in a storm on Everest. He then worked with year 11 English students to consider moral, cultural and environmental issues around climbing Mount Everest such as, Is it right that local Sherpas risk their lives to help Westerners to summit? and What about the rubbish that has been left behind? and to produce written, balance arguments.
Matt fed his extensive travel experience into a workshop for year 12 geography students, describing his adventures and how students could use a geography qualification to pursue careers in filmmaking. Helen Lawrence attended the session. She said,
“I’ve always liked photography so it’s nice to hear from him first-hand how you can get into that industry. I’m interested in taking geography at university so it’s good to see how my photography might link in with that.”
At lunch time, Matt signed copies of his teen fiction books for students and staff before a final, and very lively, interactive session of the day with year 8 geography students, describing his ascent of Everest in 2016 for National Geographic.
Sorakup McGroarty enjoyed the afternoon seminar. He said: “I think he’s a very brave person because so many deaths and crazy stuff have happened up there. I learned how harsh it is up mountains and that the real world can be a scary place!”
Matt said: “I do more than 100 school visits a year and QEGS has been a real highlight, with very engaged students and lots of fascinating questions. The creative writing classes produced some really outstanding work.”
