Singing in La Voce Della Luna Italian women's choir in Melbourne, Australia

Australia is a country of ongoing migration that embraces diversity, creative expression and cultural activity. Membership of community music groups by older people can enhance life quality, and may provide a space through which cultural and linguistic identity may be shared and celebrated. This qualitative phenomenological case study explores engagement by older members of La Voce Della Luna, an Italian women’s community choir based in Melbourne, Victoria. This article presents one case study from a larger ongoing research project, Well-being and ageing: community, diversity and the arts in Victoria. In this study, data were gathered from documentary sources and by individual and focus group semi-structured interviews in 2013. Employing interpretative phenomenological analysis two significant themes emerged: Social connection and combatting isolation; and New horizons: music-making and social justice. This article describes how active music for older women provides opportunities to learn new skills, new ideas, and create for themselves a resilient community.

Exploring and expressing Italian musical heritage in Melbourne (Australia): a women’s community choir

Australia comprises many cultures, ethnicities, and languages. Belonging to community music groups by older people can enhance quality of life, offer a sense fulfilment, and provide a space through which cultural and linguistic identity may be shared and celebrated. This qualitative case study explores engagement by older members of La Voce Della Luna, an Italian women’s community choir based in Melbourne, Victoria. Older Australians, particularly those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds frequently rely on voluntary community arts organisations to enhance quality of life. Singing together can provide ways for individuals and communities to express themselves, build community identity, improve quality of life, and celebrate cultural heritage. The members of the choir know that under their inspiring conductor they would learn new songs, new languages and new ways of performing. Their music director saw that the women’s singing together opened new horizons of social engagement and new ideas such as social justice and women’s rights.
This case is from the larger ongoing joint research project (2008 ongoing), Well-being and ageing: community, diversity and the arts in Victoria. Data were gathered from documentary sources and by individual and focus group semi-structured interviews (2013) and were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Significant themes emerged: social connection and combatting isolation, the maintenance and transmission of cultural heritage, and opening horizons about music making and social justice. This paper demonstrates that active music making makes it possible for older women to learn new skills, new ideas, and create for themselves a resilient community.

Self-care perspectives of Chinese immigrants with type 2 diabetes living in Victoria, Australia

 The main finding of the qualitative study is cultural beliefs significantly influenced diabetes self-care. The findings described how Chinese immigrants with diabetes living in Victoria managed diabetes self-care by rebuilding own liveable balance through implementation of several culture-related beliefs, attitudes and strategies to maintain their life balance after they were diagnosed with diabetes.

Personal, musical and social benefits of singing in a community ensemble: three case studies in Melbourne (Australia)

Australia has a diverse, multilayered society that reflects its rich musical life. There are many community choirs formed by various cultural and linguistically diverse groups. This article is part of an ongoing project, Well-being and ageing: community, diversity and the arts (since 2008), undertaken by Deakin University and Monash University, that explores the cultural diversity within Australian society and how active music engagement fosters well-being. The singing groups selected for this discussion are the Skylarkers, the Bosnian Behar Choir, and the Coro Furlan. The Skylarkers and the Bosnian Behar Choir are mixed groups who respectively perform popular music from their generation and celebrate their culture through music. The Coro Furlan is an Italian male choir who understand themselves as custodians of their heritage. In these interpretative, qualitative case studies semi-structured interviews were undertaken and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. In this approach there is an exploration of participants’ understanding of their lived experiences. The analysis of the combined data identified musical and social benefits that contribute to participants’ sense of individual well-being. Musical benefits occurred through sharing, learning and singing together. Social benefits included opportunities to build friendships, overcome isolation and gain a sense of validation. Many found that singing enhanced their health and happiness. Active music making in community choirs and music ensembles continues to be an effective way to support individuals, build community, and share culture and heritage.

Dynamics and spatio-temporal variability of environmental factors in Eastern Australia using functional principal component analysis

This paper introduces a new technique in ecology to analyze spatial and temporal variability in environmental variables. By using simple statistics, we explore the relations between abiotic and biotic variables that influence animal distributions. However, spatial and temporal variability in rainfall, a key variable in ecological studies, can cause difficulties to any basic model including time evolution. The study was of a landscape scale (three million square kilometers in eastern Australia), mainly over the period of 19982004. We simultaneously considered qualitative spatial (soil and habitat types) and quantitative temporal (rainfall) variables in a Geographical Information System environment. In addition to some techniques commonly used in ecology, we applied a new method, Functional Principal Component Analysis, which proved to be very suitable for this case, as it explained more than 97% of the total variance of the rainfall data, providing us with substitute variables that are easier to manage and are even able to explain rainfall patterns. The main variable came from a habitat classification that showed strong correlations with rainfall values and soil types. © 2010 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Development by design in Western Australia : Overcoming offset obstacles

Biodiversity offsets can be an important tool for maintaining or enhancingenvironmental values in situations where development is sought despite negativeenvironmental impacts. There are now approximately 45 compensatory mitigationprograms for biodiversity impacts worldwide, with another 27 programs in development. While offsets have great potential as a conservation tool, their establishment requires overcoming a number of conceptual and methodological hurdles. In Australia, new policy changes at the national and state (i.e., Western Australia) level require that offsets follow a set of general principles: (1) Environmental offsets may not be appropriate for all projects and will only be considered after avoidance and mitigation options have been pursued;(2) Environmental offsets will be based on sound environmental information andknowledge; (3) Establishing goals for offsets requires an estimate of expected direct and indirect impacts; (4) Environmental offsets will be focused on longer term strategic outcomes; (5) Environmental offsets will be cost-effective, as well as relevant and proportionate to the significance of the environmental value being impacted. Here we focus on the challenges of determining and implementing offsets using a real world example from a voluntary offset process undertaken for Barrick Gold’s Kanowna Belle mine site in Western Australia to highlight those challenges and potential solutions.

Protocol for the implementation and evaluation of a community-based intervention seeking to reduce dietary salt intake in Lithgow, Australia

Excess dietary salt is a leading risk for health. Multiple health, government, industry and community organisations have identified the need to reduce consumption of dietary salt. This project seeks to implement and evaluate a community-based salt reduction intervention.

The politics of boganism and public relations in contemporary Australia

What is meant by the term ‘bogan’ and how does its popular usage distinguish a new public occupying a particular class position and social presence in Australian society. Examining a number of media texts, this paper explores the bogan phenomenon and asks if it normatively repositions Marxist ideas of class within the contemporary construct of lifestyle politics and classless capitalism (Beck). Challenging the idea the term is politically benign, the paper argues that the rise ‘boganism’ and its stigmatic associations has implications for public relations. In particular, it argues successful framing techniques designate a group of people occupying social risk positions and that are dis-empowered by eco-discourses and targeted for social control. These marginalised publics lack the sociocultural resources required for participation in the public sphere and as such are malleable and highly receptive to intrinsic and extrinsic forms of public relations.

A population-based observational study of diabetes during pregnancy in Victoria, Australia, 1999-2008

Objectives: This paper reports secular trends in diabetes in pregnancy in Victoria, Australia and examines the effect of including or excluding women with pre-existing diabetes on gestational diabetes (GDM) prevalence estimates.

Affective energies : Sensory bodies on the beach in Darwin, Australia

Emerging debates on anti-racism within white majority cultures centre emotion and affect to explore the visceral nature of racialised encounters that unfold in public spaces of the city. This paper builds on such understandings by conceptualising whiteness as a force that exerts affective pressures on bodies of colour who are hypervisible in public spaces. I show that these pressures have the potential to wound, numb and immobilise bodies affecting what they can do or what they can become. This paper argues, however, that affective energies from human and non-human sources are productive forces that are also sensed in public spaces such as the suburban beach. These energies entangle sensuous bodies with the richness of a more-than-human world and have the potential to offer new insights into exploring how racially differentiated bodies live with difference. The paper draws on ethnographic research conducted in Darwin, a tropical north Australian city at the centre of politicised public debates on asylum seeker policy, migrant integration and Indigenous wellbeing. My attention to affective pressures and affective energies contributes to understanding how bodies with complex histories and geographies of racialisation can inhabit a world of becoming. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Everyday multiculturalism: Catching the bus in Darwin, Australia

Following acts of violence in major cities, the future of multiculturalism as a philosophy and a state-sponsored policy to promote peace and interdependence in white majority societies seem uncertain. Ethnographic research that explores the lived experience of multiculturalism in shared public spaces, however, offers the possibility to explore emotional stress as well as possibilities for change in culturally diverse cities. Within this literature, however, there is little grounded research that explores Indigenous-ethnic minority relationships. This paper foregrounds and describes a seemingly mundane event such as catching a bus that entangles my body with an Aboriginal woman and a migrant woman from Fiji in Darwin, Australia. The paper demonstrates how injury, anger, shame and discomfort unfolds when bodies of colour are sites of stress. I explore the emergence of this bodily stress that has outcomes for the capacity of racially differentiated bodies of colour to respond ethically in encounters with strangers. I argue that thick descriptions of events, conceptualisations of agency as distributed and broader understandings of the social have the potential to contribute to anti-racist agendas in Euro-colonial societies with separate Indigenous and multicultural policy frameworks in ways that do not require bodies to 'accumulate' or 'inhabit' whiteness. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.