Tell us how your artwork addresses this year’s theme ’We belong’:
In our school, the deaf and hard of hearing students come together once a week for ‘Deaf Time’ This time gives us a chance to get to know our DHH friends in other classes and to build our community. In Term 1 of 2026 Deaf Time encouraged students to reflect on their identities. We talked about our skills, communication preferences, families, hobbies, identities, and communities. Whether, it is a friendship group, sports team, family, class, school or community… People who are deaf of hard of hearing belong there. We made a model of the world to show that people who are deaf or hard of hearing (we) all belong in this world.
Tell us about the ideas or themes your artwork explored with the theme ‘We belong’:
The world would be a boring place if everyone was the same. It is important that deaf and hard of hearing people are in our classrooms, our school, our community, and the world because we have a right to be there, we bring unique perspectives and make any place we go a better place. Students collaborated for weeks, slowly building the layers of paper mache to make our world sculpture. We chose the words that would be placed on the sculpture (deaf pride, belonging, friends, family, community, inclusion) and took photos of students’ hands showing signs they thought relevant to the theme (family, harmony, inclusion) and these became the land of our earth model.
What type of art have you submitted and why? :
The students wanted to create a 3D sculpture after collaborating on a 2D artwork in 2025. ‘We belong’ was extrapolated to understanding that it is important to have deaf and hard of hearing people in our world. Consequently, it was decided we would make a model of the world and paper mache would be the easiest way to do so. Students added layers to the model twice/week for 5 weeks to complete the sculpture.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Our Year 5 and 6 students were leaders in completing this project. The responsibility and kindness they showed to the younger students helping them add layers was commendable.
