Unleashed : roadshow finale 2010 exhibition

This exhibition, as part of the Queensland Government Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific Program, showcased the unleashed: queensland design on tour 2010 Exhibition and outcomes from the aligned goDesign Travelling Workshop Program for Regional Secondary School Students, delivered concurrently by the Design Institute of Australia Queensland Branch and QUT, between February and September 2010 in the six regional Queensland towns of Chinchilla, Mt Isa, Quilpie, Emerald, Gladstone and Bundaberg. Mirroring the delivery of the exhibition opening in the local gallery of each regional town, student design work produced during the workshop program was displayed alongside the award winning work of professional visual communication, interior and product designers and design students from the DIA qdos Awards Program of 2008 and 2009. The resulting linkages and connections made possible by the aligned programs, and the students’ creative product, based on their own interpretation of the local culture, environment, economy and politics of their town developed through a design process, were the subject of the exhibition, captured through photos and dialogues (digital and print format) and sketchbooks. The two programs and resulting final ‘retrospective’ exhibition, addressed the key objectives outlined in the Queensland Government Arts Queensland Design Strategy 2020 (2008-2012 Action plan), which focuses on the promotion of a better understanding of the value of good design across all of the state, by enhancing the collaboration between industry, the professional body for design, the government and the education sectors, and by providing opportunities for young people to engage in design. The exhibition highlighted the benefits for regional communities in being exposed to design exhibitions, and linking with tertiary educators and design practitioners to participate in design-based learning activities which broaden student understanding of their learning and subsequent career opportunities, by establishing a meaningful connection with real world issues of place, identity and sustainability.

Learning by design workshop

The Learning by Design Workshop Program 2010, a part of the Queensland Government Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific Event Program, was a one-day professional development design thinking workshop run on October 9, 2011 at The Edge, State Library of Queensland for self-selected public and private secondary school teachers from the subject areas of Visual Art, Graphics and Industrial Technology and Design. Participants were drawn from a database of Brisbane and regional Queensland schools from the goDesign and Living City Workshop Programs. It aimed to generate leadership within schools for design-led education and creative thinking and give teachers a rare opportunity to work with professional designers to generate future strategies for design-based learning. Teachers were introduced to the concept of design thinking in education by international keynote speakers CJ Lim (Studio 8 Architects) and Jeb Brugmann (The Next Practice), national speaker Oliver Freeman (NevilleFreeman Agency) and three Queensland speakers, Alexander Loterztain, David Williams and Keith Holledge. Inspired by the Unlimited showcase exhibition Make Change: Design Thinking in Action and ‘Idea Starters’/teaching resources provided, teachers worked with a professional designer (from a discipline of architecture, interior design, industrial design, urban design, graphic design or landscape architecture) in ten random teams, to generate optimistic ideas for the Ideal City of tomorrow, each considering a theme – Food, Water, Transport, Ageing, Growth, Employment, Shelter, Health, Education and Energy. They then discussed how this process could be best activated and expanded on to build interest and knowledge in design thinking in the classroom. Assisted by illustrators, the teams prepared a visual presentation of their ideas and process from art materials provided. The workshop culminated in a video-taped interactive design charette to the larger group, which is intended to be utilised as a toolkit and praxis for teachers as part of the State Library of Queensland Design Minds Website Project.

Generation workshop 2010

The Generation Workshop Program 2010, a part of the Queensland Government Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific Event Program, consisted of two one-day intensive design thinking workshops run on October 7-8, 2011 at The Edge, State Library of Queensland, for 100 senior secondary students and 20 secondary teachers self-selected from the subject areas of Visual Art, Graphics and Industrial Technology and Design. Participants were drawn from a database of Brisbane and regional Queensland private and public schools from the goDesign and Living City Workshop Programs. The workshop aimed to facilitate awareness in young people of the role of design in society and the value of design thinking skills in solving complex problems facing the Asia Pacific Region, and to inspire the generation of strategies for our future cities. It also aimed to encourage the collaboration of professional designers with secondary schools to inspire post-secondary pathways and idea generation for education. Inspired by international and national speakers Bunker Roy (Barefoot College) and Hael Kobayashi (Associate Producer on "Happy Feet" film for Australia's Animal Logic), the Unlimited showcase exhibition Make Change: Design Thinking in Action and ‘Idea Starters’/teaching resources provided, students worked with a teacher in ten random teams, to generate optimistic strategies for the Ideal City of tomorrow, each considering a theme – Food, Water, Transport, Ageing, Growth, Employment, Shelter, Health, Education and Energy. Each team of 6 was led by a professional designer (from the discipline of architecture, interior design, industrial design, urban design, graphic design or landscape architecture) who was a catalyst for driving the student creative thinking process. Assisted by illustrators, the teams prepared a visual presentation of their idea from art materials provided. The workshop culminated in a video-taped interactive design chatter to the larger group, which will be utilised as a toolkit and praxis for teachers as part of the State Library of Queensland Design Minds Project. Photos of student design work were published on the Unlimited website.

QUT Design Lecture Series

The QUT Design Lecture Series 2010 was a partnered event between QUT School of Design and the State Library of Queensland. The series, spanning from July to September 2010, involved 10 lectures delivered by international, national and local academics, researchers and practitioners. The QUT Design Lecture series 2010 was a public event which examined the cross over between design, digital technologies and artistic practices focusing upon research themes of intangible media, experimental eco-technologies and artistic-design production. Gold Medal Australian Institute of Architects, Clare Design opened the series, whilst internationally awarded and recognised Spanish design group Cloud 9 concluded the series, both focusing on new eco-technologies in the development of contemporary architecture.

Utilizing industry-led innovation capacity to enhance supply chain performance : an empirical study

A fundamental principle of the resource-based (RBV) of the firm is that the basis for a competitive advantage lies primarily in the application of bundles of valuable strategic capabilities and resources at a firm’s or supply chain’s disposal. These capabilities enact research activities and outputs produced by industry funded R&D bodies. Such industry lead innovations are seen as strategic industry resources, because effective utilization of industry innovation capacity by sectors such as the Australian beef industry are critical, if productivity levels are to increase. Academics and practitioners often maintain that dynamic supply chains and innovation capacity are the mechanisms most likely to deliver performance improvements in national industries.. Yet many industries are still failing to capitalise on these strategic resources. In this research, we draw on the resource-based view (RBV) and embryonic research into strategic supply chain capabilities. We investigate how two strategic supply chain capabilities (supply chain performance differential capability and supply chain dynamic capability) influence industry-led innovation capacity utilization and provide superior performance enhancements to the supply chain. In addition, we examine the influence of size of the supply chain operative as a control variable. Results indicate that both small and large supply chain operatives in this industry believe these strategic capabilities influence and function as second-order latent variables of this strategic supply chain resource. Additionally respondents acknowledge size does impacts both the amount of influence these strategic capabilities have and the level of performance enhancement expected by supply chain operatives from utilizing industry-led innovation capacity. Results however also indicate contradiction in this industry and in relation to existing literature when it comes to utilizing such e-resources.

National Environmental Law Review Issue 2011: 3, Editorial: Federal Developments

Clean Energy Agreement of the MPCCC On 10 July 2011, details of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee’s Clean Energy Agreement for implementing a carbon price were released. This included an agreed package of measures that the Committee considered would enable Australia to meet its emissions reduction targets in an environmentally and economically efficient way. A copy of the agreement can be found on the website of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency...

YODEX (Young Designers Exhibition)

The annual YODEX (Young Designers Exhibition) in Taipei as the largest student design show in Asia presents a substantial opportunity as a profiling event for QUT. In 2011 an interactive and highly engaging QUT exhibition ensured direct communication with participants and first hand exposure to innovative design approaches.

Illustrating fashion - Brisbane Square Library exhibition

Creative Practice exhibited at the Brisbane Square Library Illustrating Fashion exhibition. Accompanied works from acclaimed fashion labels, Easton Pearson Julie Tengdhal and Dogstar.

ArtConnexions series

The exhibition consists of a series of 9 large-scale cotton rag prints, printed from digital files, and a sound and picture animation on DVD composed of drawings, sound, analogue and digital photographs, and Super 8 footage. The exhibition represents the artist’s experience of Singapore during her residency. Source imagery was gathered from photographs taken at the Bukit Brown abandoned Chinese Cemetery in Singapore, and Australian native gardens in Parkville Melbourne. Historical sources include re-photographed Singapore 19th and early 20th century postcard images. The works use analogue, hand-drawn and digital imaging, still and animated, to explore the digital interface’s ability to combine mixed media. This practice stems from the digital imaging practice of layering, using various media editing software. The work is innovative in that it stretches the idea of the layer composition in a single image by setting each layer into motion using animation techniques. This creates a multitude of permutations and combinations as the two layers move in different rhythmic patterns. The work also represents an innovative collaboration between the photographic practitioner and a sound composer, Duncan King-Smith, who designed sound for the animation based on concepts of trance, repetition and abstraction. As part of the Art ConneXions program, the work travelled to numerous international venues including: Space 217 Singapore, RMIT Gallery Melbourne, National Museum Jakarta, Vietnam Fine Arts Museum Hanoi, and ifa (Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen) Gallery in both Stuttgart and Berlin.

Athletes series

The researcher was invited to photograph athletes in the lead-up to the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne. She photographed four indigenous athletes, to produce a series of four large-scale cotton rag prints, 1 meter x 1 meter, printed onto photorag paper from digital files. “My photographic practice can be described as both political and spiritual, in the sense that as an Aboriginal Indigenous artist I take stock of the rationalising effect of the technologies I use, and create work that evokes nature and spirit. My methods often involve re-photographing or digitally re-working landscape photographs and adding historical or cultural icons of significance. Working with Indigenous athletes has been an honour and a pleasure. I admire the athletes’ passion and dedication to their chosen sport, and above all their humility, which seems a trait somewhat in contrast to what it takes to attain the highest levels of achievement. Indigenous athletes are wonderful role models for all Australians, and in making creative work that places their luminary presence with the land, I am aligning sportspeople with a deep sense of nature and spirit.” – Leah King-Smith. These works were commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition FLASH: Australian Athletes in Focus. The exhibition was a significant element in Melbourne2006 Festival, the cultural festival of the Commonwealth Games. The exhibition was prominently reviewed in Portrait: Magazine of Australian and International Portraiture and was subsequently remounted at Old Parliament House, Canberra (15 July to 12 November, 2006). One image was used for the front cover of Art Monthly, (March 2006).

Driving for work : a series of organisational audit results

Previous research has indicated that road crashes are the most common form of work related fatalities (Haworth et al., 2000). Historically, industry has often taken a “silver bullet” approach developing and implementing a single countermeasure to address all their work related road safety issues, despite legislative requirements to discharge obligations through minimising risk and enhancing safety. This paper describes the results and implications from a series of work related road safety audits that were undertaken across five organisations to determine deficiencies in each organisation‟s safe driving management and practice. Researchers conducted a series of structured interviews, reviewed documentation relating to work related driving, and analysed vehicle related crash and incident records to determine each organisation‟s current situation in the management of work related road safety and driver behaviour. A number of consistent themes and issues across each organisation were identified relating to managing driver behaviour, organisational policies, incident recording and reporting, communication and education, and formalisation of key work related road safety strategies. Although organisations are required to undertake risk reduction strategies for all work related driving, the results of the research suggest that many organisations fail to systematically manage driver behaviour and mitigate work related road safety risk. Future improvements in work related road safety will require organisations to firstly acknowledge the high risk associated with drivers driving for work and secondly adopt comprehensive risk mitigation strategies in a similar manner to managing other workplace hazards.

Understanding learning and teaching : elementary teacher trainers in Papua New Guinea engaged in cultural authorship in the context of national educational reform

Over the last decade, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has pursued educational reform in elementary teacher education. Because elementary teachers and teacher education are central to the reform agenda, there is a need to gain empirical evidence about how PNG teacher trainers’ understandings about learning and teaching impact on their practice. The study uses cultural-authorship as a theoretical framework to investigate the nature of changes in understanding about learning and teaching for 18 teacher trainers as they progressed through a two-year Bachelor of Early Childhood upgrade course. It addresses the research question: What do elementary teacher trainers in PNG understanding about learning and teaching and how has this changed during their course? The focus on such understandings provides valuable insights into their professional identities at a critical time in PNG’s education reform agenda. Analysis of journal entries at the beginning and end of the course showed that, over time, teacher trainers described increasingly more complex ways of understanding learning and teaching. These views shifted from a focus on learning and teaching as transmission of ideas to one in which the critical role played by communities and families in educational processes and the teacher as a change agent became focal. This watershed finding demonstrates notable shifts in teacher trainers’ professional identities from trainers to community leaders in elementary education.

How effective is the new child restraint legislation in Queensland? A mixed methods evaluation

Research Interests: Are parents complying with the legislation? Is this the same for urban, regional and rural parents? Indigenous parents? What difficulties do parents experience in complying? Do parents understand why the legislation was put in place? Have there been negative consequences for other organisations or sectors of the community?

Stop whining and make the best of it : a cross-national comparison of responses to regional disadvantage in the wine industry

Our cross-national field study of wine entrepreneurship in the “wrong” places provides some redress to the focus of the “regional advantage” literature on places that have already won and on the firms that benefit from “clusters” and other centers of industry advantage. Regional “disadvantage” is at best a shadowy afterthought to this literature. By poking around in these shadows, we help to synthesize and extend the incipient yet burgeoning literature on entrepreneurial “resourcefulness” and we contribute to the developing body of insights and theory pertinent to the numerous but often ignored firms and startups that mostly need to worry about how they will compete at all now if they are ever to have of chance of “winning” in the future. The core of our findings suggests that understandable – though contested – processes of ingenuity underlie entrepreneurial responses to regional disadvantage. Because we study entrepreneurship that from many angles simply does not make sense, we are also able to proffer a novel perspective on entrepreneurial sensemaking.