PIPP #1 - Pedestrian Interaction Patch Project

The Pedestrian Interaction Patch Project (PIPP) seeks to exert influence over and encourage abnormal pedestrian behavior. By placing an unadvertised (and non recording) interactive video manipulation system and projection source in a high traffic public area, the PIPP allows pedestrians to privately (and publically) re-engage with a previously inactive physical environment, like a commonly used walkway or corridor. This system, the results of which are projected in real time on the architectural surface, inadvertently provides pedestrians with questions around preconceived notions of self and space. In an attempt to re-activate our relationship with the physical surrounds we occupy each day the PIPP creates a new set of memories to be recalled as we re-enter known environments once PIPP has moved on and as such re-enlivens our relationship with the everyday architecture we stroll past everyday. The PIPP environment is controlled using the software program Isadora, devised by Mark Coniglio at Troika Ranch, and contains a series of video manipulation patches that are designed to not only grab the pedestrians attention but to also encourage a sense of play and interaction between the architecture, the digital environment, the initially unsuspecting participant(s) and the pedestrian audience. The PIPP was included as part of the planned walking tour for the “Playing in Urban Spaces” seminar day, and was an installation that ran for the length of the symposium in a reclaimed pedestrian space that was encountered by both the participants and general public during the course of the day long event. Ideally once discovered PIPP encouraged pedestrians to return through the course of the seminar day to see if the environmental patches had changed or altered, and changed their standard route to include the PIPP installation or to avoid it, either way, encouraging an active response to the pathways normally traveled or newly discovered each day.

Art in early childhood : the discourse of 'proper' teaching

This thesis is a problematisation of the teaching of art to young children. To problematise a domain of social endeavour, is, in Michel Foucault's terms, to ask how we come to believe that "something ... can and must be thought" (Foucault, 1985:7). The aim is to document what counts (i.e., what is sayable, thinkable, feelable) as proper art teaching in Queensland at this point ofhistorical time. In this sense, the thesis is a departure from more recognisable research on 'more effective' teaching, including critical studies of art teaching and early childhood teaching. It treats 'good teaching' as an effect of moral training made possible through disciplinary discourses organised around certain epistemic rules at a particular place and time. There are four key tasks accomplished within the thesis. The first is to describe an event which is not easily resolved by means of orthodox theories or explanations, either liberal-humanist or critical ones. The second is to indicate how poststructuralist understandings of the self and social practice enable fresh engagements with uneasy pedagogical moments. What follows this discussion is the documentation of an empirical investigation that was made into texts generated by early childhood teachers, artists and parents about what constitutes 'good practice' in art teaching. Twenty-two participants produced text to tell and re-tell the meaning of 'proper' art education, from different subject positions. Rather than attempting to capture 'typical' representations of art education in the early years, a pool of 'exemplary' teachers, artists and parents were chosen, using "purposeful sampling", and from this pool, three videos were filmed and later discussed by the audience of participants. The fourth aspect of the thesis involves developing a means of analysing these texts in such a way as to allow a 're-description' of the field of art teaching by attempting to foreground the epistemic rules through which such teacher-generated texts come to count as true ie, as propriety in art pedagogy. This analysis drew on Donna Haraway's (1995) understanding of 'ironic' categorisation to hold the tensions within the propositions inside the categories of analysis rather than setting these up as discursive oppositions. The analysis is therefore ironic in the sense that Richard Rorty (1989) understands the term to apply to social scientific research. Three 'ironic' categories were argued to inform the discursive construction of 'proper' art teaching. It is argued that a teacher should (a) Teach without teaching; (b) Manufacture the natural; and (c) Train for creativity. These ironic categories work to undo modernist assumptions about theory/practice gaps and finding a 'balance' between oppositional binary terms. They were produced through a discourse theoretical reading of the texts generated by the participants in the study, texts that these same individuals use as a means of discipline and self-training as they work to teach properly. In arguing the usefulness of such approaches to empirical data analysis, the thesis challenges early childhood research in arts education, in relation to its capacity to deal with ambiguity and to acknowledge contradiction in the work of teachers and in their explanations for what they do. It works as a challenge at a range of levels - at the level of theorising, of method and of analysis. In opening up thinking about normalised categories, and questioning traditional Western philosophy and the grand narratives of early childhood art pedagogy, it makes a space for re-thinking art pedagogy as "a game oftruth and error" (Foucault, 1985). In doing so, it opens up a space for thinking how art education might be otherwise.

The Patches program : supporting the development of Malaysian pre-service teachers' academic literacy

The Patches program involves Malaysian pre-service teachers working closely with Australian pre-service teachers on a series of academic and intercultural communication tasks. A recurring problem for international students is the challenge to develop social relationships with Australian students. Similarly, it is often difficult for Australian students to step outside their accustomed social worlds to establish relationships with international students. The Patches Program supported rich cross-cultural social and academic exchanges among the students facilitating the development of students' academic literacy skills, their knowledge of self and knowledge of learning, and their skills in cross-cultural communication.

Music is a Wordless Knowing of Others : Resilience in Virtual Ensembles

Music making affects relationships with self and others by generating a sense of belonging to a culture or ideology (Bamford, 2006; Barovick, 2001; Dillon & Stewart, 2006; Fiske, 2000; Hallam, 2001). Whilst studies from arts education research present compelling examples of these relationships, others argue that they do not present sufficiently validated evidence of a causal link between music making experiences and cognitive or social change (Winner & Cooper, 2000; Winner & Hetland, 2000a, 2000b, 2001). I have suggested elsewhere that this disconnection between compelling evidence and observations of the effects of music making are in part due to the lack of rigor in research and the incapacity of many methods to capture these experiences in meaningful ways (Dillon, 2006). Part of the answer to these questions about rigor and causality lay in the creative use of new media technologies that capture the results of relationships in music artefacts. Crucially, it is the effective management of these artefacts within computer systems that allows researchers and practitioners to collect, organize, analyse and then theorise such music making experiences.

Strategies to engage engineering students in group project work

Project focused group work is significant in developing social and personal skills as well as extending the ability to identify, formulate and solve engineering problems. As a result of increasing undergraduate class sizes, along with the requirement for many students to work part-time, group projects, peer and collaborative learning are seen as a fundamental part of engineering education. Group formation, connection to learning objectives and fairness of assessment has been widely reported as major issues that leave students dissatisfied with group project based units. Several strategies were trialled including a study of formation of groups by different methods across two engineering disciplines over the past 2 years. Other strategies involved a more structured approach to assessment practices of civil and electrical engineering disciplines design units. A confidential online teamwork management tool was used to collect and collate student self and peer assessment ratings and used for both formative feedback as well as assessment purposes. Student satisfaction and overall academic results in these subjects have improved since the introduction of these interventions. Both student and staff feedback highlight this approach as enhancing student engagement and satisfaction, improved student understanding of group roles, reducing number of dysfunctional groups whilst requiring less commitment of academic resources.

Alternative futures of globalisation a socio-ecological study of the world social forum process

Inspired by the initial World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil, over the past decade over 200 local and regional social forums have been held, on five continents. This study has examined the nature of this broader social forum process, in particular as an aspect of the movement for 'another globalisation'. I discuss both the discourses for 'another world', as well as the development of an Alternative Globalisation Movement. As an action research study, the research took place within a variety of groups and networks. The thesis provides six accounts of groups and people striving and struggling for 'another world'. I provide a macro account of the invention and innovation of the World Social Forum. A grassroots film-makers collective provides a window into media. A local social forum opens up the radical diversity of actors. An activist exchange circle sheds light on strategic aspects of alternative globalisation. An educational initiative provides a window into transformations in pedagogy. And a situational account (of the G20 meeting in Melbourne in 2006) provides an overview of the variety of metanetworks that converge to voice demands for global justice and sustainability. In particular, this study has sought to shed light on how, within this process, groups and communities develop 'agency', a capacity to respond to the global challenges they / we face. And as part of this question, I have also explored how alternatives futures are developed and conceived, with a re-cognition of the importance of histories and geo-political (or 'eco-political') structures as contexts. I argue the World Social Forum Process is prefigurative, as an interactional process where many social alternatives are conceived, supported, developed and innovated into the world. And I argue this innovation process is meta-formative, where convergences of diverse actors comprise ‘social ecologies of alternatives’ which lead to opportunities for dynamic collaboration and partnership.

Unpacking Japan's 21st century "National Conversation" : images of the future beyond the iron cage of the "Catch Up" model

How does the image of the future operate upon history, and upon national and individual identities? To what extent are possible futures colonized by the image? What are the un-said futurecratic discourses that underlie the image of the future? Such questions inspired the examination of Japan’s futures images in this thesis. The theoretical point of departure for this examination is Polak’s (1973) seminal research into the theory of the ‘image of the future’ and seven contemporary Japanese texts which offer various alternative images for Japan’s futures, selected as representative of a ‘national conversation’ about the futures of that nation. These seven images of the future are: 1. Report of the Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the 21st Century—The Frontier Within: Individual Empowerment and Better Governance in the New Millennium, compiled by a committee headed by Japan’s preeminent Jungian psychologist Kawai Hayao (1928-2007); 2. Slow Is Beautiful—a publication by Tsuji Shinichi, in which he re-images Japan as a culture represented by the metaphor of the sloth, concerned with slow and quality-oriented livingry as a preferred image of the future to Japan’s current post-bubble cult of speed and economic efficiency; 3. MuRatopia is an image of the future in the form of a microcosmic prototype community and on-going project based on the historically significant island of Awaji, and established by Japanese economist and futures thinker Yamaguchi Kaoru; 4. F.U.C.K, I Love Japan, by author Tanja Yujiro provides this seven text image of the future line-up with a youth oriented sub-culture perspective on that nation’s futures; 5. IMAGINATION / CREATION—a compilation of round table discussions about Japan’s futures seen from the point of view of Japan’s creative vanguard; 6. Visionary People in a Visionless Country: 21 Earth Connecting Human Stories is a collection of twenty one essays compiled by Denmark born Tokyo resident Peter David Pedersen; and, 7. EXODUS to the Land of Hope, authored by Murakami Ryu, one of Japan’s most prolific and influential writers, this novel suggests a future scenario portraying a massive exodus of Japan’s youth, who, literate with state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICTs) move en masse to Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido to launch a cyber-revolution from the peripheries. The thesis employs a Futures Triangle Analysis (FTA) as the macro organizing framework and as such examines both pushes of the present and weights from the past before moving to focus on the pulls to the future represented by the seven texts mentioned above. Inayatullah’s (1999) Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) is the analytical framework used in examining the texts. Poststructuralist concepts derived primarily from the work of Michel Foucault are a particular (but not exclusive) reference point for the analytical approach it encompasses. The research questions which reflect the triangulated analytic matrix are: 1. What are the pushes—in terms of current trends—that are affecting Japan’s futures? 2. What are the historical and cultural weights that influence Japan’s futures? 3. What are the emerging transformative Japanese images of the future discourses, as embodied in actual texts, and what potential do they offer for transformative change in Japan? Research questions one and two are discussed in Chapter five and research question three is discussed in Chapter six. The first two research questions should be considered preliminary. The weights outlined in Chapter five indicate that the forces working against change in Japan are formidable, structurally deep-rooted, wide-spread, and under-recognized as change-adverse. Findings and analyses of the push dimension reveal strong forces towards a potentially very different type of Japan. However it is the seven contemporary Japanese images of the future, from which there is hope for transformative potential, which form the analytical heart of the thesis. In analyzing these texts the thesis establishes the richness of Japan’s images of the future and, as such, demonstrates the robustness of Japan’s stance vis-à-vis the problem of a perceived map-less and model-less future for Japan. Frontier is a useful image of the future, whose hybrid textuality, consisting of government, business, academia, and creative minority perspectives, demonstrates the earnestness of Japan’s leaders in favour of the creation of innovative futures for that nation. Slow is powerful in its aim to reconceptualize Japan’s philosophies of temporality, and build a new kind of nation founded on the principles of a human-oriented and expanded vision of economy based around the core metaphor of slowness culture. However its viability in Japan, with its post-Meiji historical pushes to an increasingly speed-obsessed social construction of reality, could render it impotent. MuRatopia is compelling in its creative hybridity indicative of an advanced IT society, set in a modern day utopian space based upon principles of a high communicative social paradigm, and sustainability. IMAGINATION / CREATION is less the plan than the platform for a new discussion on Japan’s transformation from an econo-centric social framework to a new Creative Age. It accords with emerging discourses from the Creative Industries, which would re-conceive of Japan as a leading maker of meaning, rather than as the so-called guzu, a term referred to in the book meaning ‘laggard’. In total, Love Japan is still the most idiosyncratic of all the images of the future discussed. Its communication style, which appeals to Japan’s youth cohort, establishes it as a potentially formidable change agent in a competitive market of futures images. Visionary People is a compelling image for its revolutionary and subversive stance against Japan’s vision-less political leadership, showing that it is the people, not the futures-making elite or aristocracy who must take the lead and create a new vanguard for the nation. Finally, Murakami’s Exodus cannot be ruled out as a compelling image of the future. Sharing the appeal of Tanja’s Love Japan to an increasingly disenfranchised youth, Exodus portrays a near-term future that is achievable in the here and now, by Japan’s teenagers, using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to subvert leadership, and create utopianist communities based on alternative social principles. The principal contribution from this investigation in terms of theory belongs to that of developing the Japanese image of the future. In this respect, the literature reviews represent a significant compilation, specifically about Japanese futures thinking, the Japanese image of the future, and the Japanese utopia. Though not exhaustive, this compilation will hopefully serve as a useful starting point for future research, not only for the Japanese image of the future, but also for all image of the future research. Many of the sources are in Japanese and their English summations are an added reason to respect this achievement. Secondly, the seven images of the future analysed in Chapter six represent the first time that Japanese image of the future texts have been systematically organized and analysed. Their translation from Japanese to English can be claimed as a significant secondary contribution. What is more, they have been analysed according to current futures methodologies that reveal a layeredness, depth, and overall richness existing in Japanese futures images. Revealing this image-richness has been one of the most significant findings of this investigation, suggesting that there is fertile research to be found from this still under-explored field, whose implications go beyond domestic Japanese concerns, and may offer fertile material for futures thinkers and researchers, Japanologists, social planners, and policy makers.

The bondage of an imposed visual discourse : understanding the built environment's influence on the 'oldest-old' aged care residents' sense of peace

This study investigates the influence of the built environment upon residents' sense of familiarity, concept of self and thus, their facilitation of place through the theory of "The Bondage of Imposed Visual Discourse". Simone de Beauvoir's theory "The Bondage of Feminine Elegance" provides the conceptual understanding of the visual discourse between the physicality of clothing and the wearer's personal identity. This fashion theory is transposed to explore the influence of the built environment's physicality upon aged care residents' personal identity. This paper presents findings from a study of professionals' opinions in reference to the built environment of permanent residential aged care for the 'oldest-old' of Australia. The researcher conducted qualitative interviews with four participants: an architect, occupational therapist, nursing home facility manager and an aged care lobbyist in the South-East Queensland. This study is structured towards proposing "place-focused" qualitative design principles to encourage residents' sense of place through the built environment. These proposed principles are addressed with reference to existing Standards and Principles outlined by the Australian Government.

Early childhood education : the natural starting point for environmental education

Young children are most vulnerable to, and most at risk from, environmental and sustainability challenges. Early education investments aimed at addressing such issues, until recently however, have been neglected or under-rated. Fortunately, this is changing. A groundswell of practitioner interest in early childhood environmental education/ education for sustainability is emerging, in contrast to the ‘patches of green’ that have characterised previous decades. Indeed, an international coalition for early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) is beginning to develop, evidenced by The Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development (2008) that identifies early childhood, within a framework of lifelong learning, as a ‘natural starting point’ for all ongoing education for sustainability. This document is important as it is the first international statement to explicitly identify ECEfS as contributing to education for sustainability. The next challenge for ECEfS is for practitioner mobilisation to be matched by research activity aimed at broadening and deepening practice-based responses. This is the next exciting frontier in the legitimisation of ECEfS.

Enhancing workplace learning through collaborative HRD

Human resource development (HRD) has evolved a great deal over the past 20 years. Indeed, developments in HRD theory, research and practice have helped transform HRD from a reactive function focusing on administrative and bureaucratic issues to a proactive function focusing on creating learning and development opportunities for employees that not only allow them to achieve their potential but also make a substantial contribution to the longterm survival and sustainability of the organisation. HRD is now seen as an investment in the future of an organisation. This investment perspective is based on the recognition that HRD is linked to business strategy and the achievement of competitive advantage (Caravan et al. 2002). One reason for the shift in emphasis is that many of the traditional sources of competitive advantage (technology, economies of scale) have diminished in value. Nowadays it is the workforce that has come to be seen as an important source of competitive advantage for the organisation. However, not too long ago employees were viewed by management as a disposable resource rather than an asset to an organisation.

A human capital framework : designed for convergence

The 21" century business environment is dominated by unprecedented change across a broad spectrum of social, economic, technological and cultural factors (Nowotny, Scott & Gibbons 2001). Among these, two broad trends -economic globalisation and rising knowledge intensity (Hart 2006)have come to distinguish organisational life. Under the weight of these transformational influences, the developed world, it seems, has arrived at a transformational moment. The far-reaching effects of the global financial crisis and its shadowy twin: the threat of a double dip recession, continue to exert an unsteadying influence on global and corporate finances. Growth in developed economies has slumped, share prices have declined, the market value of corporations has slipped and unemployment rates, in the vast majority of developed economies, have risen. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth has retreated from the strong growth experienced in the late 1990s to negative growth in 2009 and a sluggish and unsteady recovery in 2010. In response, the reach of Government in terms of its participation in markets has been extended, bringing with it the need to transition to new governance and regulatory arrangements. Ongoing concerns regarding the pace and sustainability of the recovery remains a front-of-mind concern with bailouts, buybacks, borrowings and BP dominating news services: 'We are witnessing the reweaving of the social, political and economic fabric that binds our planet, with long-term consequences that are as or more profound than those of the industrial era' (Tapscott & Williams 2006, p. 59).

An architecture for enhanced assurance in e-health systems

Notwithstanding the obvious potential advantages of information and communications technology (ICT) in the enhanced provision of healthcare services, there are some concerns associated with integration of and access to electronic health records. A security violation in health records, such as an unauthorised disclosure or unauthorised alteration of an individual's health information, can significantly undermine both healthcare providers' and consumers' confidence and trust in e-health systems. A crisis in confidence in any national level e-health system could seriously degrade the realisation of the system's potential benefits. In response to the privacy and security requirements for the protection of health information, this research project investigated national and international e-health development activities to identify the necessary requirements for the creation of a trusted health information system architecture consistent with legislative and regulatory requirements and relevant health informatics standards. The research examined the appropriateness and sustainability of the current approaches for the protection of health information. It then proposed an architecture to facilitate the viable and sustainable enforcement of privacy and security in health information systems under the project title "Open and Trusted Health Information Systems (OTHIS)". OTHIS addresses necessary security controls to protect sensitive health information when such data is at rest, during processing and in transit with three separate and achievable security function-based concepts and modules: a) Health Informatics Application Security (HIAS); b) Health Informatics Access Control (HIAC); and c) Health Informatics Network Security (HINS). The outcome of this research is a roadmap for a viable and sustainable architecture for providing robust protection and security of health information including elucidations of three achievable security control subsystem requirements within the proposed architecture. The successful completion of two proof-of-concept prototypes demonstrated the comprehensibility, feasibility and practicality of the HIAC and HIAS models for the development and assessment of trusted health systems. Meanwhile, the OTHIS architecture has provided guidance for technical and security design appropriate to the development and implementation of trusted health information systems whilst simultaneously offering guidance for ongoing research projects. The socio-economic implications of this research can be summarised in the fact that this research embraces the need for low cost security strategies against economic realities by using open-source technologies for overall test implementation. This allows the proposed architecture to be publicly accessible, providing a platform for interoperability to meet real-world application security demands. On the whole, the OTHIS architecture sets a high level of security standard for the establishment and maintenance of both current and future health information systems. This thereby increases healthcare providers‘ and consumers‘ trust in the adoption of electronic health records to realise the associated benefits.

Mapping resilience : A framework for changing cities

Urban centres base their resilience on the ability to evolve and adapt as needed throughout their life. Although constantly developing, changing and subsuming nature for its needs, the current age of environmental awareness requires that cities progress in a more conscious and considered way. While they have become the dominant form of human habitation, there now exists a need to integrate 'green' solutions into urban centres to address social, physical and environmental wellbeing. The means of implementing the vast array of possible solutions without negative impacts is not clear; cities are complex systems, layering meaning, history and cultural memory ‐ they are a manifestation of shared cultural values, and as such, they do not allow a tabula rasa approach of 'blanket' solutions. All around us, cities are continuing to develop and change, and although their form is varied ‐ sprawling cities with density and sustainability problems; or collapsing cities with 'dead' centres and dilapidated districts – a common issue is the resilience of the local identity. The strength or resilience of cities lies in the elements which have become fixed points in the urban structure, giving character and identity to a shared urban experience. These elements need to be identified and either maintained or revitalised. Similarly, the identification of urban elements which can most viably be modified without compromising character and identity of place, will assist in making concrete contributions to increasing both the sustainability and experience of cities, making them more resilient. Through an examination of case studies, this paper suggests a framework to inform urban renewal assessing the widespread elements which generate an urban identity, beyond the traditional approach of heritage conservation for cultural or tourist purposes. The rapid contemporary alteration of urban structures requires an innovative methodology which satisfies on one side the need of new sustainable performances and, on the other, the resilience of the local character.

The subjective experience of negative symptoms : characteristics of emotional withdrawal

According to the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), negative symptoms are those personal characteristics that are thought to be reduced from normal functioning, while positive symptoms are aspects of functioning that exist as an excess or distortion of normal functioning. Negative symptoms are generally considered to be a core feature of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, negative symptoms are not always present in those diagnosed, and a diagnosis can be made with only negative or only positive symptoms, or with a combination of both. Negative symptoms include an observed loss of emotional expression (affective flattening), loss of motivation or self directedness (avolition), loss of speech (alogia), and also a loss of interests and pleasures (anhedonia). Positive symptoms include the perception of things that others do not perceive (hallucinations), and extraordinary explanations for ordinary events (delusions) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Both negative and positive symptoms are derived from watching the patient and thus do not consider the patient’s subjective experience. However, aspects of negative symptoms, such as observed affective flattening are highly contended. Within conventional psychiatry, the absence of emotional expression is assumed to coincide with an absence of emotional experience. Contrasting research findings suggests that patients who were observed to score low on displayed emotional expression, scored high on self ratings of emotional experience. Patients were also observed to be significantly lower on emotional expression when compared with others (Aghevli, Blanchard, & Horan, 2003; Selton, van der Bosch, & Sijben, 1998). It appears that there is little correlation between emotional experience and emotional expression in patients, and that observer ratings cannot help us to understand the subjective experience of the negative symptoms. This chapter will focus on research into the subjective experiences of negative symptoms. A framework for these experiences will be used from the qualitative research findings of the primary author (Le Lievre, 2010). In this study, the primary author found that subjective experiences of the negative symptoms belonged to one of the two phases of the illness experience; “transitioning into emotional shutdown” or “recovering from emotional shutdown”. This chapter will use the six themes from the phase of “transitioning into emotional shutdown”. This phase described the experience of turning the focus of attention away from the world and onto the self and the past, thus losing contact with the world and others (emotional shutdown). Transitioning into emotional shutdown involved; “not being acknowledged”, “relational confusion”, “not being expressive”, “reliving the past”, “detachment”, and “no sense of direction” (Le Lievre, 2010). Detail will be added to this framework of experience from other qualitative research in this area. We will now review the six themes that constitute a “transition into emotional shutdown” and corresponding previous research findings.

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.