Creating Queensland, creative communities partnership - major Brisbane festival & Australia Council for the Arts

In March 2010, Brisbane Festival commissioned a Research Team, led by Dr Bree Hadley and Dr Sandra Gattenhof, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, to conduct an evaluation of the Creating Queensland program, a new Creative Communities partnership between Brisbane Festival and the Australia Council for the Arts. This Final Report reviews and reports on the effectiveness of the program gathered during three phases throughout 2010: Phase 1, in which the research team analysed Brisbane Festival’s pre-existing data on the Creating Queensland events in 2009; Phase 2, in which the research team designed a new suite of instruments to gather data from producers, producing partners, artists and attendees involved in the Creating Queensland events in 2010; and Phase 3, in which the research team used content analysis of the narratives emerging in the data to establish how Brisbane Festival has adopted processes, activities or engagement protocols to operate as catalysts that produce experiences with specific impacts on individuals and communities. The Final Report finds that the Creating Queensland events concentrate on developing specific experiences for those involved – usually associated with storytelling, showcasing, and the valorisation or re-valorisation of neglected or forgotten cultural forms – in order to give communities a voice. It finds that the events prioritise accessibility – usually associated with allowing specific local communities or local artists to present material that is meaningful to them – and inclusivity – usually associated with using connections with producing partners (such as the Multicultural Development Association) to bring more and more people into the program. It finds that the events have a capacity-building effect, which allows local communities to increase their capacity to launch their own ideas, initiatives or events, allows individuals to increase their employability, or allows communities and individuals to increase their visibility within mainstream cultural practices and infrastructure. The Final Report further finds that Brisbane Festival has, throughout its years of commitment to community programming, developed specific techniques to enable events in the Creating Queensland program to have these effects, that these can be tracked, and, as a result, deployed or redeployed both by Brisbane Festival and other community arts organisations in the development of effective community arts programs. The data demonstrates that Creating Queensland is, by and large, having the desired effect on communities – people are actually participating, presenting work, and increasing their personal, professional and social skills in various ways, and this is valued by all stakeholders. The data also demonstrates that, as would be expected with any community arts program – particularly programs of this size and complexity – there are areas in which Creating Queensland is functioning exceptionally well and areas in which continuous improvement processes should be continued. Areas of excellence relate to Brisbane Festival’s longstanding commitment to community arts, and active community participation in the arts, as well as its ability to create well-known and loved programs that use effective techniques to have a positive impact on communities. Areas for improvement relate to Brisbane Festival’s potential to benefit from the following: clarifying relationships between community participants and professionals; increasing mentoring relationships between these groups; consolidating the discourses it uses to describe event aims across strategic, production, and publicity documents across the years; and re-considering the number of small events inside the larger Creating Queensland program.

Using the index for inclusion to develop inclusive school communities

This chapter provides an overview of how school communities can work together in processes or review and development to strive towards a more inclusive approach to education. The writers of this chapter have been using a resource called the Index for Inclusion (Booth & Ainscow, 2005, 2011) for a number of years in Australia and in a pilot trail in New Zealand to support education staff in processes of review, with the aim to increase the participation and learning of all students. The resource supports the development of collaborative community processes and defines inclusion as ‘putting values into action’ (Booth & Ainscow, 2011, p.18). The process of review and development for more inclusive and socially just schools supports the development of a school culture, policy and practice where people are valued and treated with respect for their varied knowledge and experiences. In our experience, this resource has been useful to challenge our thinking about education in school communities and in region/districts about inclusive school development. We suggest the Index framework is broad enough to be used in a range of settings and countries. The resource is also useful for pre-service and in-service teacher development to provoke reflection and discussion about inclusion. This chapter provides an overview of the dimensions and framework that inform the Index of Inclusion. We discuss how the Index can be used in school contexts and draw on our own experience to give real examples of how teachers, paraprofessionals, students, principals and parents have experienced the Index when used in their local school communities in Australia and New Zealand. The chapter concludes with some points for discussion to challenge the status quo in schools and to inspire teachers to work towards a more socially just society through making changes at a school level.

Seeking inclusion : views from ‘vulnerable’ communities about reporting by the Australian news media

This conference paper reports on the findings of the 'Vulnerability and the News Media’ project about news reporting on communities that are commonly regarded as ‘vulnerable’ by virtue of their issues or circumstances. The project focuses on news reporting of Indigenous and ethnically diverse communities, as well as people affected by mental health issues, people with disabilities, and survivors of crime and traumatic events. Numerous educational initiatives have tried to improve the quality of media reports about these communities and their issues. Despite this, the project’s research with stakeholders from those communities has found that they continue to raise the same concerns that have been expressed about the news media since the 1970s. In focus group research, stakeholders from these communities expressed concern about their continuing under-representation or omission from the news media. They felt that voices, experiences, perspectives and issues from their communities rarely appeared, or if they did appear, it was in limited contexts – often in circumstances that portrayed them as vulnerable or disruptive. They also pointed to ongoing media misrepresentation, such as stereotyping, inappropriate framing, and over-reliance on ‘usual suspects’ to talk about their communities. A common theme that they voiced was their need for greater inclusiveness in the media. Participants wished that journalists would better represent the diversity of life experiences and perspectives within their communities. Stakeholders also wanted an increased in representation of their political frameworks, such as stories about the difficulties they encountered in dealing with social and bureaucratic systems, and their understandings of causes and potential solutions for issues affecting their communities.

Understanding Indigenous Australian women's social and emotional wellbeing and wellness through yarning : the Indigenous Women's Wellness Program

This paper explores Indigenous Australian women’s understanding of wellness, through the lens of social and emotional wellbeing. The authors use a “yarning” approach to explore how wellness is important to Indigenous women who live in North Brisbane (Australia). They discuss the benefits of yarning and its strength as a methodology for conducting research and building activism within Indigenous Australian communities. They argue that, for Indigenous Australian women, wellness is linked to a sense of wholeness and strongly related to the feeling of connection that women get from meeting together and having time for women’s business. They describe the way that their research project developed into a community summit focused on Indigenous women’s wellness.

Popular media as public 'Sphericules' for diasporic communities

The dynamics of 'diasporic' video, television, cinema, music and Internet use - where peoples displaced from homelands by migration, refugee status or business and economic imperative use media to negotiate new cultural identities - offer challenges for how media and culture are understood in our times. Drawing on research published in Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas, on dynamics that are industrial (the pathways by which these media travel to their multifarious destinations), textual and audience-related (types of diasporic style and practice where popular culture debates and moral panics are played out in culturally divergent circumstances among communities marked by internal difference and external 'othering'), the article will interrogate further the nature of the public 'sphericules' formed around diasporic media.

Challenging Mining Workforce Practices : Implications for Frontline Rural Communities

Global demand for minerals and energy products has fuelled Australia’s recent ‘resources boom’ and led to the rapid expansion of mining projects not solely in remote regions but increasingly in long-settled traditionally agriculture-dependent rural areas. Not only has this activity radically changed the economic geography of the nation but a fundamental shift has also occurred to accommodate the acceleration in industry labour demands. In particular, the rush to mine has seen the entrenchment of workforce arrangements largely dependent on fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) and drive–in, drive–out (DIDO) workers. This form of employment has been highly contentious in rural communities at the frontline of resource sector activities. In the context of structural sweeping changes, the selection of study locations informed by a range of indices of violence. Serendipitously we carried out fieldwork in communities undergoing rapid change as a result of expanding resource sector activities. The presence of large numbers of non-resident FIFO and DIDO workers was transforming these frontline communities. This chapter highlights some implications of these changes, drawing upon one particular location, which historically depended on agriculture but has undergone redefinition through mining.

Cost-effectiveness analysis of a kidney and cardiovascular disease treatment program in an Australian Aboriginal population

The objective of the study was to assess, from a health service perspective, whether a systematic program to modify kidney and cardiovascular disease reduced the costs of treating end-stage kidney failure. The participants in the study were 1,800 aboriginal adults with hypertension, diabetes with microalbuminuria or overt albuminuria, and overt albuminuria, living on two islands in the Northern Territory of Australia during 1995 to 2000. Perindopril was the primary treatment agent, and other medications were also used to control blood pressure. Control of glucose and lipid levels were attempted, and health education was offered. Evaluation of program resource use and costs for follow-up periods was done at 3 and 4.7 years. On an intention-to-treat basis, the number of dialysis starts and dialysis-years avoided were estimated by comparing the fate of the treatment group with that of historical control subjects, matched for disease severity, who were followed in the before the treatment program began. For the first three years, an estimated 11.6 person-years of dialysis were avoided, and over 4.7 years, 27.7 person-years of dialysis were avoided. The net cost of the program was 1,210 dollars more per person per year than status quo care, and dialyses avoided gave net savings of 1.0 million dollars at 3 years and 3.4 million dollars at 4.6 years. The treatment program provided significant health benefit and impressive cost savings in dialysis avoided.

Making space for knowledge generation and place for knowledge communities : an analysis of the Australian practice

In the era of global knowledge economy, urban regions—seeking to increase their competitive edge, become destinations for talent and investment, and provide prosperity and quality of life to their inhabitants—have little chance achieving their development goals without forming effective knowledge-based urban development strategies. This paper aims to shed light on the planning and development processes of the knowledge-based urban development phenomenon with respect to the construction of knowledge community precincts aimed at making space for knowledge generation and place for knowledge communities. Following to a thorough review of the literature on knowledge-based urban development and strategic asset-based planning, the paper undertakes policy and best practice analyses to learn from the planning and development processes of internationally renowned knowledge community precincts—from Copenhagen, Eindhoven and Singapore. In the light of the analyses findings, this paper scrutinises major Australian knowledge community precinct initiatives—from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane—to better understand the dynamics of national practices, and benchmark them against the international best practice cases. The paper concludes with a discussion on the study findings and recommendations for successfully establishing space and place for both knowledge economy and society in Australian cities.

Physical activity in three regional communities in Queensland

Objective. To describe physical activity participation in three Queensland regional communities. Design. Cross-sectional mail survey of randomly selected residents, stratified by age and sex. Setting. Esk, Mareeba and Mount Isa. Participants. 1219 (58% female) adults, with a mean age 46.7 (SD 14.7) years. Main outcome measures. Proportion of people inactive, meeting Australian activity guidelines (a minimum of 150 minutes/week and 5 sessions/week), and walking a dog daily; time spent walking and cycling for transport; location and type of recreational physical activities. Results. Overall, 18% of respondents were inactive, with the highest proportions among women (22.3%) and older adults in Mount Isa (24.3%). The proportion meeting activity guidelines was 47% with the lowest proportions among women in Mount Isa (40.4%). Although 63% reported owning a dog, only 22% reported walking a dog daily. Few people reported walking or cycling for transport. The most common types of activities were walking, home-based exercise, running/jogging, and swimming, and the most common location was at or near home. Conclusions. Physical activity levels were lower in these regional communities than the state average. The findings indicate a need for physical activity policy and intervention strategies targeting regional and rural areas. This could focus on women and older adults, dog walking, and physical activity opportunities in or near the home.

Importance of a resilient air services network to Australian remote, rural, and regional communities

Rural, regional, and remote settlements in Australia require resilient infrastructure to remain sustainable in a context characterized by frequent large-scale natural disasters, long distances between urban centers, and the pressures of economic change. A critical aspect of this infrastructure is the air services network, a system of airports, aircraft operators, and related industries that enables the high-speed movement of people, goods, and services to remote locations. A process of deregulation during the 1970s and 1980s resulted in many of these airports passing into local government and private ownership, and the rationalization of the industry saw the closure of a number of airlines and airports. This paper examines the impacts of deregulation on the resilience of air services and the contribution that they make to regional and rural communities. In particular, the robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity of the system are examined. The conclusion is that while the air services network has remained resilient in a situation of considerable change, the pressures of commercialization and the tendency to manage aspects of the system in isolation have contributed to a potential decrease in overall resilience.

The roles of procedural justice and social learning in improving self organizing capabilities of local communities for sustainable development in decentralized Indonesia

The development planning process under Law No. 25/2004 is said to be a new approach to increase public participation in decentralised Indonesia. This Law has introduced planning mechanisms, called Musyawarah Perencanaan Pembangunan (Musrenbang), to provide a forum for development planning. In spite of the expressed intention of these mechanisms to improve public participation, some empirical observations have cast doubt on the outcomes. As a result, some local governments have tried to provide alternative mechanisms to promote for participation in local development planning. Since planning is often said to be one of the most effective ways to improve community empowerment, it is of particular concern, to examine the extent to which the current local development planning processes in Indonesia provide sufficient opportunities to improve the self organising capabilities of communities to sustain development programs to meet local needs. With this objective in mind, this paper examines problems encountered by the new local planning mechanism (Musrenbang) in increasing local community empowerment particularly regarding their self organising capabilities. The concept of community empowerment as a pathway to social justice is explored to identify its key elements and approaches and to show how they can be incorporated within planning processes. Having discussed this, it is then argued that to change current unfavorable outcomes, procedural justice and social learning approaches need to be adopted as pathways to community empowerment. Lastly it is also suggested that an alternative local planning process, called Sistem Dukungan (SISDUK), introduced in South Suluwezi in collaboration with JAICA in 2006 (?) offers scope to incorporate such procedural justice and social learning approaches to improve the self organizing capabilities of local communities.

Learning about being effective mentors : professional learning communities and mentoring

This study aimed to explore experienced mentors’ understandings about professional learning communities (PLCs), mentoring and leadership. This research analyses audio-taped transcripts and written responses from 27 experienced mentors who operate in varied roles (e.g., university academics, school executives, teachers, learning support personnel). Findings indicated that PLCs can provide professional renewal for existing teachers and that mentoring within PLCs can further advance knowledge about effective practices. PLCs can include other staff members and key stakeholders (e.g., preservice teachers, teacher aides) who can contribute to the learning within the group. Mentoring and PLCs can be cost-effective strategic levers for advancing professional knowledge.

Developing capabilities for social inclusion : engaging diversity through inclusive school communities

The effort to make schools more inclusive, together with the pressure to retain students until the end of secondary school, has greatly increased both the number and educational requirements of students enrolling in their local school. Of critical concern, despite years of research and improvements in policy, pedagogy and educational knowledge, is the enduring categorisation and marginalization of students with diverse abilities. Research has shown that it can be difficult for schools to negotiate away from the pressure to categorise or diagnose such students, particularly those with challenging behaviour. In this paper, we highlight instances where some schools have responded to increasing diversity by developing new cultural practices to engage both staff and students; in some cases, decreasing suspension while improving retention, behaviour and performance.