Humans of Brunswick

Chanel Mohamad

Year 11

As part of the VCE Vocational Major Personal Development Skills class, we collaborated to create a Humans of Brunswick book. This was inspired by the Humans of New York book. 

We had to form questions that we would use to interview people around and about Sydney Road and in our school community.  After forming the questions we branched out to other students and teachers around the school asking them the questions we developed before moving onto the Brunswick community.  We were given the Humans of New York book to gather inspiration of the type of quotes and images to include. 

A challenge we encountered was finding people that were willing to have their photo taken; we even asked a security guard if we could include him in our project by interviewing him, but he advised us to speak to the manager of the store, which we did. We were informed that we weren’t allowed to interrogate the security guards as they must keep their information extra private. 

I interviewed a lady that worked at a supermarket in Barkly Square. As I was gathering more information about her, we found comfort in each other as we found we could deeply understand each other. I later returned to the store out of school hours to buy something I was interested in. We continued to talk and exchanged a lot of our past to each other, and found comfort in each other’s exposure. 

Overall I really enjoyed the task as it allowed us to meet new people and for us to step outside our comfort zone.

Sally Goss

Teacher - VCE Vocational Major (Personal Development Skills)

Humans of New York, a popular storytelling book by photographer Brandon Stanton. Stanton features a photograph of someone he encounters on the to an intimate, probing question posed by Stanton.  

As a class we have created our own Humans of Brunswick book. 

Students stepped out of their comfort zones to respectfully ask community members if they could be photographed, and if they would be willing to speak to them briefly. The project required students to ask people 'about their lives, their struggles, their disappointments and their hopes'.  

Individual students then shared their photo with the class, along with a caption gleaned from the conversation. The caption captured the essence, or most important part, of the conversation they had. 

Students showcased their work on a Canva software presentation, and in a process of collaboration the classmates developed the class book. 

I am very proud of the students work. Not only did they demonstrate exemplary skills in collaboration, but also developed their communication skills and gained confidence in completing this task as a team.