Lorne on the Lawn welcomes 600 visitors from 15 Victorian schools

MORE than 600 students from across the state converged on Lorne for Lorne on the Lawn event, a unique live music and sustainability-focused event organised by Lorne P-12 College VCAL students and teachers.

Regardless of being moved from the lawn out front of Lorne Main Beach to the Mantra Hotel due to poor weather, the one-day festival on Friday, October 28, welcomed a crowd from 15 schools in Victoria.

Friday’s festival included a range of sustainability-based activations, entertainment from alternative pop singer Hope D and a range of stalls that promoted the ways that the community can save the planet for future generations.

Lorne P-12 College student Sophie Larcombe was a member of the VCAL class who co-ordinated Lorne on the Lawn and said the event was a joy to organise, particularly for students who have experienced two difficult years due to the pandemic.

“We wanted to hold a celebration after the two years we’d had with COVID,” Larcombe said.

“It’s been a difficult two years, being in and out of school and we thought it would be good to have an opportunity to socialise with other schools again and have that human interaction we’ve missed.

“We started organising the event in March and we brainstormed who we should invite.

“We were ambitious and decided to put on a massive event – the bigger, the better.

“We also thought the event should focus on the UN Global Goals for sustainable development, and what people attending can do to help achieve them.”

 

The Lorne on the Lawn event provided students with an applied learning project that allowed for students’ interests, passions and skills to be put on show.

Students were thrilled to be exposed to opportunities to use their leadership, organisational and problem-solving skills in a real-life situation and hoped to continue honing these skills to help them in the future.

” It was an amazing event and one of the best things about hosting it in Lorne, is that people can see the beautiful scenery of the bush and the beach,” Sophie said.

“The environment was a strong theme of the event.

“The UN Global Goals are what we want to reach by 2030, so each stall tied into the goals whether it be no poverty, zero hunger, climate action or gender equality.”

The 18-year-old Moriac resident said the VCAL class had learnt valuable team-building and organisational skills the past seven months planning for the event.

Personally, Sophie said it had added to her event coordination skills, which is she is gaining through a Certificate III in Business traineeship at Mantra Lorne.

“I’m hoping to finish the traineeship in the next year, then I’ll have a year working as a grain test stand operator in the agricultural field before I start veterinary nursing in 2024, that’s my goal.”

Lorne on the Lawn was supported by Victorian Government initiative FReeZA.