Would you like to learn in fun and relaxed environment?

The Brain Gym has been operating within The Canberra College at both campuses, Weston and Phillip for many years. The aim of the night college is to provide practical and helpful assistance in learning and training for the community, and assist people in a relaxed and supportive environment. We run 4 terms per year within the 4 school terms.
 

The College offers new avenues for learning and a chance to build on life’s experiences, and to enjoy courses that add spice and variety in your daily living and meet new friends and associates.

We have courses for people from all walks of life and to suit all ages. There are courses that will help you to upgrade and learn new skills to help with employment or for your own enjoyment. 

Subjects covered include Computing, Cake Decorating, Photo processing, Painting, Languages, Cooking, Jewellery Making, various exercise classes, Dancing, Wine Appreciation, and other special interest classes.  We are always on the lookout for new classes to run, so if you are interested in teaching a subject not currently on offer, or if you would like to learn something we are not offering, please get in touch and we may be able to offer it in a future term.

Our next term will begin on 28th July, with final day for enrolments being 23rd July.

More information can be obtained by emailing us – [email protected] for Woden classes (Phillip) or [email protected] for Weston classes.

Canberra kids had a blast when local children’s author Ingrid Jonach dropped into their primary schools to celebrate the release of her latest book Frankie goes to France.

Ingrid visited eight schools on her June tour, which kicked off at the French-Australian school Telopea Park School and included Fraser Primary School, St Peter and Paul School, Mawson Primary School and St Jude’s Primary School amongst others. She spoke to students about how to write a story, using examples from her books, which are about a girl who starts her own newspaper.

St Jude’s teacher-librarian Kathy Laudenbach said having Ingrid at the school was a “fabulous learning experience” for the students. “The humour and real life experience Ingrid used had the children focused on all that she was saying.”

Since the release of her first children’s novel The Frank Frankie in July last year, Ingrid has performed author visits at schools and hospitals across Australia. She has also been a speaker at literary festivals, including the National Young Writer’s Festival, the Canberra Readers and Writers Festival and the Somerset Celebration of Literature. She also addressed the Australian Literacy Educator’s Association’s conference when it was held in Canberra last year.

Ingrid holds a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing with Honours from the University of Canberra. She completed her cadetship in journalism at The Canberra Times, where she worked for three years before entering public relations. The Frank Frankie and Frankie goes to France are suitable for ages seven and up and are available from all good bookstores. She is also the author of a children’s picture book called A Lot of Things, which is available from Paperchain Bookstore and Amazon.com

For those schools who missed out, Ingrid will conduct another round of free author visits targeted to Years 3 – 5 during Children’s Book Week, which runs from 18 to 22 August this year. For details visit www.ingridjonach.com But be quick, because places are limited! Teachers are also encouraged to get their students involved in the new online newspaper The Frank Frankie, which can also be found on the website. It has already attracted a lot of attention from keen contributors!
 

Presenter: Andrew McKinnon & Malcolm Cooke
Description: One Man is a two-act social satire consisting of two short plays.

Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted by Berkoff.

Surely one of the scariest tales of demantia and murderous compulsion ever – a gothic tale of horror.

Dog by Steven Berkoff

A hilarious day in the life of a football hooligan and his pit bull terrier, Roy. One minute Berkoff is the skinhead and the next he is Roy as he reacts to his master’s cruel but sometimes loving antics.

Venue: The Playhouse
Duration: 90 minutes including interval
Prices: Adult: $69.00
Concession: $62.50*
Group(8+): $60.50**
U27: $44.00***
Child (15yrs & under): $34.00****
Additional Information: *CONCESSIONS Consession tickets available to Full-time students, Pensioners, Unemployed and NGA members. Concession price does not apply to Seniors Card holders. If purchasing concession priced tickets, proof of eligibility of concession must be presented to Canberra Ticketing staff upon collection of tickets or full price may be charged.
**Group tickets are not available online. To make a group booking, please phone (02) 6243 5709 during business hours or email [email protected]
***U27 tickets not available on the Friday and Saturday nights.
****CHILDREN are not recomended for this show.
*FREE FORUM There will be a pre-show forum before the first performance at 7pm in The Link.
*AUDIO DESCRIBED performance 8pm 17 September. Click the access link below for more details.
*CAPTIONED performance 8pm 18 September. Click the access link below for more details.
Suit Children: Not recomended
Categories Drama, Comedy
Performance Times Tuesday, 16 September 2008
8:00 PM
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
8:00 PM
Thursday, 18 September 2008
8:00 PM
Friday, 19 September 2008
8:00 PM
Saturday, 20 September 2008
8:00 PM

Status: On Sale
 

Related Events – Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome
– Lands End – Compagnie Philippe Genty
– Mathinna
– My Fair Lady
– The Red Shoes
– The Year of Magical Thinking

Related Links – Access Performance dates
– Check out Andrew McKinnon website here
– Keep up-to-date with the latest events on sale in Canberra – sign-up for our fortnightly email newsletter!

FILM REVIEW: Iron Man
SOUL IN THE IRON
The shallowness of this film is purely superficial.
It sets adrift from the familiar superhero doodles’ formula, namely: invincible preternnatural powers (girded in fancy dress) fighting Manichaean battles against freaky villains. But it sticks like a leech to the conventions of the genre (threadbare characterisation, over-the-top plot, jejune jokes) and panders to the ‘juvenile demographic’ with token sex and torture. In doing so it plumbs obscene depths, in which we see ourselves in caricature: magnificently trite and profoundly repugnant.
Tony Stark is half Victor Frankenstein (wanting so much from his creation, but ‘hoist with own petard’); half Mr Hyde (a doolally altered ego wanting nothing from his creator). We see, in sum, a renaissance hit-man designing death engines; firing back – with slingshot brilliance – at each missile his own ‘outrageous fortune’ can manufacture to hurl at him.
But science is pecking away at the chained carrion of this Stark tormented spirit. Trapped in his own private Jericho (‘Plato’s cave’ as a failed state of fatalism) ‘Professor Marvel’ tranmogrifies this mundane wretch into a callow Icarus: a point-device persona lurching up to heaven on napalm-fuel.
By its fatefulness Iron Man actually passes muster as ‘prescience-fiction’. The mother of invention manufactures a fey, feral, ferric, fatidic banshee wailing at the walls that the military-industrial complex has built for its nation-state. As those walls come thundering down we hear an elegy to our lost future as a booming echo.
So, Iron Man is the perfect metaphor for mercenary commerce exploiting evanescent freedom; and the Nemesis of zealotry pitted against venal liberalism. It heralds the new world order of the ‘market state’: where the weak perish in order for the greedy to profit. Therefore, no glory may be won; for there is no good to fight for. The most a hero can do is lead his tribe through a sea of red ink away from the slavery of moral bankruptcy.
As such, the film is an eerie reverberation of McLuhan’s creed that Satan is a great electrical engineer. The Stark panoply extends and assimilates. A ‘Tinman’ trope cursed to continually hack off whatever makes him human and artificially replace it – till he carves out his own heart. Iron Man is a sardonic inversion of John Stuart Mill’s philosophy that art determines ends; while science supplies means. Technology is a full metal straitjacket. A heart-piercing, soul-spiking iron maiden. An iron glove manacling a velvet fist: a shrapnel-ridden heart rusted on to anomic armour. The man in the iron mask suffers a secret identity crisis. Unmasked he is us.

SOUL IN THE IRON
The shallowness of this film is purely superficial.
It sets adrift from the familiar superhero doodles’ formula, namely: invincible preternnatural powers (girded in fancy dress) fighting Manichaean battles against freaky villains. But it sticks like a leech to the conventions of the genre (threadbare characterisation, over-the-top plot, jejune jokes) and panders to the ‘juvenile demographic’ with token sex and torture. In doing so it plumbs obscene depths, in which we see ourselves in caricature: magnificently trite and profoundly repugnant.
Tony Stark is half Victor Frankenstein (wanting so much from his creation, but ‘hoist with own petard’); half Mr Hyde (a doolally altered ego wanting nothing from his creator). We see in him a renaissance hit-man designing death engines, who – through his own slingshot brilliance – fires back at each missile his own ‘outrageous fortune’ can manufacture to hurl at him.
But science is pecking away at the chained carrion of his tormented spirit. Trapped in his own private Jericho (‘Plato’s cave’ as a failed state of fatalism) ‘Professor Marvel’ tranmogrifies him into a callow Icarus: a point-device persona lurching up to heaven on napalm-fuel.
By its fatefulness Iron Man actually passes muster as ‘prescience-fiction’. The mother of invention manufactures a fey, feral, ferric, fatidic banshee wailing at the walls that the military-industrial complex has built for its nation-state. As those walls come thundering down we hear the booming echo of an elegy to our lost future.
So Iron Man is the perfect metaphor for mercenary commerce exploiting evanescent freedom; and the Nemesis of zealotry pitted against venal liberalism. It heralds the new world order of the ‘market state’: where the weak perish in order for the greedy to profit. Therefore, no glory may be won; for there is no good to fight for. The most a hero can do is lead his tribe through a sea of red ink away from the slavery of moral bankruptcy.
As such, the film is an eerie reverberation of McLuhan’s creed that Satan is a great electrical engineer. The Stark panoply extends and assimilates. A ‘Tinman’ trope cursed to continually hack off whatever makes him human and artificially replace it – till he carves out his own heart. Iron Man is a sardonic inversion of John Stuart Mill’s philosophy that art determines ends; while science supplies means. Technology is a full metal straitjacket. A heart-piercing, soul-spiking iron maiden. A velvet fist manacled in an iron glove – raised in dead-weight anger against itself. A shrapnel-ridden heart rusted on to anomic armour. The man in the iron mask suffers a secret identity crisis. Unmasked he is us.