Author John Marsden to open arts-focused secondary school

Children’s author John Marsden has bought the former Macedon Grammar School site and plans to open a new secondary school focused on the arts…

Last week Mr Marsden bought the site of the former Christian college, where he plans to open a new secondary school focused on the arts.

“There is such a huge passion for the arts among young people,” the author of Tomorrow When the War Began said.

“It can be taken much more seriously nowadays. A generation ago it wasn’t really a viable industry for most people, but now there are heaps of ways you can make a career in the arts. It is no longer something treated as airy-fairy or lightweight.”

Macedon Grammar was closed by the state government in December after it accumulated about $1.8 million in debt and was deemed financially unviable.

It will be the second school founded by Mr Marsden, who also runs the alternative Candlebark School in Romsey in the Macedon Ranges.

Mr Marsden said the school would open its doors to creative students by the start of 2016, or possibly even later this year “if the bureaucracy allows for that”.

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“So many children are learning or experiencing the world in a completely artificial way through computer games, [that] even relationships are conducted at a distance. We are very much the opposite way. We put kids into the bush, send them up mountains and down rivers and into snow.”

via Author John Marsden to open arts-focused secondary school.