Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences Schools Enrichment Program

Delve deep into the history, politics, economy and culture of the Middle East and Central Asia. 

This session is offered by the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, led by Dr Karima Laachir, Director of The ANU Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.

This educative workshop is designed to introduce students to basic archaeological principles. Various themes and activities related to the work archaeologists do will be explored through hands-on activities involving 3D replicas of artefacts.

The ANU School of Art & Design (SOA&D) prepares students for professional careers in visual arts, curatorship or design. It has built a reputation as a leading arts educator offering specialist training across a range of visual arts and crafts disciplines, design, art history and curatorship, and art theory.

Tours of the School of Art & Design will include visiting a range of discipline areas including Ceramics, Glass, Painting, Photography & Media Arts, Printmedia & Drawing, Sculpture & Spatial Practice, Textiles, and the School’s galleries.

Art History introduces students to painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, architecture, film, digital images and the decorative arts within their historical, social, cultural and political contexts.

Art Theory is primarily designed to meet the needs and interest of visual artists, designers and makers by informing their practice with sustained critical inquiry into the social, cultural, ethical and historical contexts of contemporary art.

Studies in these areas prepare students for careers in art galleries, museums and other cultural institutions, and support careers in visual arts and design.

In Part 1 of this short, interactive workshop, you will briefly learn the basics of human skeletal analysis, including bone identification and skeletal inventory, age-at-death and sex estimation, how to estimate someone’s height from their bones, and how to identify bone diseases and skeletal trauma. In Part 2, you will be hot on the trail of a dastardly killer! You will apply your expertise in human skeletal analysis to identify a fictitious missing person and determine how they died.

Monkeys and apes are the closest living relatives to humans, yet due to habitat destruction they are disappearing at an alarming rate. This tutorial style workshop will explore some of these endangered species and various conservation strategies being used to save them and their habitats.

The ANU Classics Museum contains over 600 objects from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Students gain a taste of everyday life in the ancient world through some of its fascinating objects and their stories.

This program includes a hands-on experience in the new Object-Based Learning Room (adjacent to the museum). Workshops provide students with the opportunity to handle ancient objects including ceramics, glass, metals and sculptural fragments.

For Year 11 and 12 students, this program includes a pre-visit consultation with the curator in order to tailor tour content to your class focus area.

Additional short talks for Year 11 and 12 students on specialist subjects by ANU academic staff are available upon request and subject to availability (flat-rate $50 add-on fee). Please get in touch to discuss your preferred topic.

This activity can be further customised upon request and can be made available for other year groups – please get in touch directly to discuss.

Can a novel set in a dystopian future have an impact on the real world of the present? In this session you will get a taste of how university literary studies explores the relationship between literature and social change. You will dive into questions like: how does dystopian literature act as a mirror of the contemporary social world? How do facts make their way into fiction? How can the critical methods that define modern literary studies, from close formal analysis to feminist philosophy to genre theory, give us new frameworks for understanding political change in the world around us?

How does Jane Austen's work reveal and reflect the time in which she lived? Experience a foretaste of university level literary studies by seeing how Austen's work is studied and discussed at the university level. 

Arabic is the mother language of over 250 million people in the Middle East (West Asia and North Africa), and one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It was the language of an ancient civilization, which contributed greatly to human knowledge. Arabic is also the living medium of a contemporary dynamic literature and culture. Its rich and magnificent poetry, classical and modern, is especially captivating. Persian (otherwise known as Farsi) is spoken today primarily in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan and was once widely understood from the Mediterranean to India, and has a rich historical and cultural legacy.

In this interactive calligraphy workshop, students will learn to write their name in Persian, Turkish or Arabic.

Have you dreamed about being a songwriter, producer or audio engineer? Ever wanted to mix and play with sounds and music? We will introduce you to Logic Pro X, an industry standard piece of software, allowing you to compose, record, edit, and mix high-quality music or sound. No previous musical experience necessary!

Humans improvise every day and music students have nothing to fear when it comes to learning how to improvise. Learn how to improvise using the tools that you already know! Open to all instruments including vocals.

Tour the School of Music facilities with our technical staff to see the many performance spaces and how technology plays an important role in the constantly evolving delivery of tertiary music education.

Unlock your inner music producer in just one hour! Join our dynamic Music Production workshop and jumpstart your journey into the world of beats and melodies. In this power packed session, you'll learn the basics of digital audio workstations, simple recording techniques, and easy mixing tips. No prior experience needed—just bring your enthusiasm and creativity.

This workshop is for anyone interested in songwriting. You will learn the basics of song structure, melody, and lyrics while using your voice to explore musical ideas. Through guided exercises, you will practice crafting melodies and writing lyrics that express your ideas and emotions. No prior experience is required—just bring your voice, creativity, and, if you have one, your guitar!

Can studying English give you the extra edge in life? Make up your own mind when you experience a foretaste of university level literary studies by choosing a session on one of the texts studied at school.

"In “Slam! The Power of Poetry” we’ll bring the written word to life by learning about the poetic form, discussing how it operated in the past and where you can find it now (it isn't just in your textbooks!).

We will also practice creating our own works to help you understand the building blocks of the craft and learn a practical method of reading and understanding poetry that will help you in your own studies.

So why not fall for metaphor? Get silly for similes! Join us for “Slam! The Power of Poetry"!

An interactive workshop in which students will handle and complete exercises on casts of fossilised human ancestors and bone casts of other mammalian remains to show how the skeletons of extinct species are adapted to their environments.

Discover the world and prepare yourself for the multilingual and global life of the 21st century by learning another language! In this session, you will get a taste of what university language study is like, and see how knowledge of another language gives you insights into other cultures and societies, and opens your eyes to other ways of seeing and being. (Both language-specific sessions, and more general sessions looking across multiple languages are available)