Notre Dame students get \u27smART\u27 in 2008

Third year Marketing and Public Relations students from The University of Notre Dame Australia‘s Sydney Campus are creating a featured event for the Sydney City Council’s Youth Week festival, smARTarts. The week-long festival, which showcases the talents and initiatives of young Australians aged 15-26, culminates on Saturday April 12 with a free event to be staged at Pine Street Creative Arts Centre in Chippendale. The students have produced the creative careers forum titled “yOUR space, yOUR Future.” This will involve four accomplished speakers who talk about their personal experiences, and the obstacles they faced on their journey to success. The speakers include Pauline Nguyen, who triumphed over a tragic childhood as a Vietnamese refugee to write the recently published “Secrets of the Red Lantern”, and George Hodge, a charismatic young up and coming artist. This project is part of Notre Dame’s new School of Business Events Management course, which provides practical experience in devising, producing, and promoting events. Later in the unit, the students start training for a much larger event, working in the International Media Centre for World Youth Day, advising and facilitating the global media coverage by the hundreds of journalists and photographers who will arrive in Australia from around the world. The new unit at the Sydney Campus is designed to make students ready for the workplace. “You can’t really learn how to produce and manage an event from reading a textbook”, says student Edward Martin, “so this unit provides a chance to work with two real-world clients”. “We’re working to tight deadlines and producing our smARTarts forum on a zero budget, so it requires creativity and real team work. With World Youth Day, we’ll get to work on one of the largest events that Australia has ever hosted.” Sydneysiders can see the smARTarts Festival forum being produced by the Notre Dame students on Saturday April 12. The free community youth event will start at 2:00pm and conclude at 8:00pm, based in the Pine St Creative Arts Centre, and the surrounding locale. Media contact: Moira Saunders 02 8204 440