Introduction to "Learning Chinese as a Heritage Language : An Australia Perspective"

The book grapples with the complex entanglement of identity construction, language choice, cultural heritage, and social orders. Specifically, the book investigates how Chinese Australians negotiate their Chineseness and capitalise on resources through learning Chinese as a heritage language in Australia and beyond. Though the book is concerned with Chinese Australians, knowledge built and lessons learned can provide insight into other multicultural settings where people of Chinese descent are becoming increasingly prominent in representing the cultural and linguistic diversity of the society, and more recently, in contributing to the economic dynamics of the society. In addition, the focus on the potholes and distractions as well as the benefits and gains of heritage language learning is not restricted to Chinese diaspora, but relevant to ethnic minority individuals and communities elsewhere.

Valuing Indigenous heritage through multimodal literacy

The study on which this presentation is based focuses on the particular ways in which students’ counter-narratives about race were embedded in multimodal and digital design in the development of a digital cultural heritage. The multimodal texts were analysed as a site for students’ views of Indigenous oppression in relation to the colonial powers and ownership of the land in Australian history. In this presentation, Kathy will demonstrate how pedagogies that explore counter-narratives of cultural heritage in the official curriculum can encourage students to reframe their own racial identity, while challenging dominant white, historical narratives of colonial conquest, race, and power. In the second part of this session, Indigenous Principal, John Davis and teachers from HymbaYumba Community Hub will provide a school-based, Indigenous panel to inspire educators with authentic ways to embed Indigenous knowledge in the curriculum.

Overcoming the challenges of building heritage projects: Improvements to time, scope and cost performance

This research was undertaken to encompass and identify challenges and impact factors that affect the successful outcomes of heritage building projects, especially those related to finding major causes of delays and cost overruns across projects in all Australian states. This project determined and analysed the causes of such delays and programme issues emanating from the planning and execution phases, whilst also analysing the requirements for management of multiple stakeholder relationships and the influence of unforeseen technical factors. The research proposes "call for action" guidance and was validated by experienced experts in heritage building projects in Australia. The proposed guidance is designed to ensure that realistic cost targets and delivery timeframes are set in future heritage projects, and necessary interventions made at appropriate project stages to ensure decisions are made that will help to prevent overtime and cost overuns.

Evoking poetics of memory through performing site: Naik Naik, a Malaysian Australian collaboration in the world heritage setting of Melaka

Memory, time and metaphor are central triggers for artists in exploring and shaping their creative work. This paper examines the place of artists as ‘memory-keepers’, and ‘memory-makers’, in particular through engagement with the time-based art of site-specific performance. Naik Naik (Ascent) was a multi-site performance project in the historic setting of Melaka, Malaysia, and is partially recaptured through the presence and voices of its collaborating artists. Distilled from moments recalled, this paper seeks to uncover the poetics of memory to emerge from the project; one steeped in metaphor rather than narrative. It elicits some of the complex and interdependent layers of experience revealed by the artists in Naik Naik; cultural, ancestral, historical, personal, instinctual and embodied memories connected to sound, smell, touch, sensation and light, in a spatiotemporal context for which site is the catalyst. The liminal nature of memory at the heart of Naik Naik, provides a shared experience of past and present and future, performatively interwoven.