CEO's Welcome

Woven Together

One of the special hallmarks of our MITS boarding house at 371 Church Street is the many beautiful pandanus weavings dotted throughout.  These remarkable pieces – from master weavers in Ramingining, Maningrida, Jabiru, Galiwin’ku and Milingimbi – contribute to the sense of cultural safety and celebration that our students and families tell us that they experience in the house.  Beyond this, they also help to explain the story of MITS.

In fact, our MITS logo – with a student at its centre, surrounded by layers of community support, and with a flash of electric brilliance streaking between their hands and over their head – was based on the pandanus mats of Arnhem Land.  These remarkable pieces provide two important stories for MITS and our students: stories about education and community.

First, the mats are stories of hard work, of care, diligence and persistence.  This is the story of education.  For the women who make these mats, there is no substitute for hard work.  They must harvest the pandanus from palms, requiring strength, skill and care to avoid the spiky edges on each frond.  Collecting enough pandanus for just one basket or mat can take several days.  Back home, the pandanus must be stripped into fine strings quickly, before it dries out – time is of the essence.  The women then leave it to dry in bundles, requiring time and patience.  They must forage for bush dyes, using their skill and expertise to find different dyes at different times of year, then dye the strings and, finally, embark on the careful and skilful work of weaving.  This last step is one that is mastered only through a lifetime of practice.

Just as in education, there is no substitute for hard work, care, diligence and persistence.

Secondly, these mats are stories about our MITS community.  Because in one pandanus string there is nothing particularly strong, beautiful, or useful.  It is only when they are brought together that they become all of those things.  Some of the fibres carry brilliant, bright colours; others are muted, providing contrast; and others still are not seen at all, but provide the essential “core bundle” around which the more strikingly coloured fibres are wrapped.

Our MITS community is made whole by the many people who contribute to it: many visible, others working quietly to provide support in so many different ways.  In our brilliant MITS weaving we twine together fibres from so many essential groups: families at home, our staff here in Melbourne, our Pathways School communities, our many Melbourne supporters, and of course the students themselves.  This diversity and scale of contribution – with each person playing a unique and important role – is what makes MITS such a beautiful, strong and powerful place for our students.

Ed Tudor

CEO