Contemporary planning education and Indigenous cultural competency agendas : erasing terra nullius, respect and responsibility

As noted in Universities Australia’s (2011a, 2011b) investigations into Indigenous Cultural Competency, most universities have struggled with successfully devising and achieving a translation of Indigenous protocols into their curricula. Walliss & Grant (2000: 65) have also concluded that, given the nature of the built environment disciplines, including planning, and their professional practice activities, there is a “need for specific cultural awareness education” to service these disciplines and not just attempts to insert Indigenous perspectives into their curricula. Bradley’s policy initiative at the University of South Australia (1997-2007), “has not achieved its goal of incorporation of Indigenous perspectives into all its undergraduate programs by 2010, it has achieved an incorporation rate of 61%” (Universities Australia 2011a: 9; http://www.unisa.edu.au/ducier/icup/default.asp).

Contextually, Bradley’s strategic educational aim at University of South Australia led a social reformist agenda, which has been continued in Universities Australia’s release of Indigenous Cultural Competency (2011a; 2011b) reports that has attracted mixed media criticism (Trounson 2012a: 5, 2012b: 5) and concerns that it represents “social engineering” rather than enhancing “criticism as a pedagogical tool ... as a means of advancing knowledge” (Melleuish 2012: 10). While the Planning Institute of Australia’s (PIA) Indigenous Planning Policy Working Party has observed that fundamental changes are needed to the way Australian planning education addresses Indigenous perspectives and interests, it has concluded that planners “! perceptual limitations of their own discipline and the particular discourse of our own craft” were hindering enhanced learning outcomes (Wensing 2007: 2). Gurran (PIA 2007) has noted that the core curriculum in planning includes an expectation of “knowledge of ! Indigenous Australian cultures, including relationships between their physical environment and associated social and economic systems” but that it has not been addressed. This paper critiques these discourses and offers an Indigenous perspective of the debate.

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) detection by traffic pattern analysis

In this paper, we propose a behavior-based detection that can discriminate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack traffic from legitimated traffic regardless to various types of the attack packets and methods. Current DDoS attacks are carried out by attack tools, worms and botnets using different packet-transmission rates and packet forms to beat defense systems. These various attack strategies lead to defense systems requiring various detection methods in order to identify the attacks. Moreover, DDoS attacks can craft the traffics like flash crowd events and fly under the radar through the victim. We notice that DDoS attacks have features of repeatable patterns which are different from legitimate flash crowd traffics. In this paper, we propose a comparable detection methods based on the Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Our methods can extract the repeatable features from the packet arrivals in the DDoS traffics but not in flash crowd traffics. The extensive simulations were tested for the optimization of the detection methods. We then performed experiments with several datasets and our results affirm that the proposed methods can differentiate DDoS attacks from legitimate traffics.

The more things change, the more they stay the same : the 2012 alternative film/video festival

The Alternative Film/Video Festival in Belgrade has historically been one of a triumvirate of critical festivals, with Pula’s MAFAF (1965-1990) and Zagreb’s initiating GEFF (1963-70), servicing experimental, exploratory, avant-garde, personal film in the former Yugoslavia, at Belgrade’s Academic Film Center (AFC) within the Student City Cultural Centre (DKSG). Initiated in 1982 it was resurrected in 2003 with a dual regional and international focus after a hiatus due to the collapse of the socialist states of the former Yugoslavia. As well as a series of curated and retrospective programs each competition program is now split into international and regional halves, selected by Greg de Cuir and Zoran Saveski with production support by Milan Milosavljević. Two film workshops were also available. One on scratch film by Ivan Ladislav Galeta, the other on filming and processing led by Vassily Bourakis. Initiated by de Cuir the first Alternative Film/Video Research Forum was part of the festival this year bringing together research on alternative/ experimental/ avant-garde/ underground film and video. Although I participated in this side-bar I will concentrate here more on discussions from the festival roundtable and contextualise a small number of films, a couple from competition but mainly regional work that I would find difficult to encounter without attendance here.

Migrant stones : stonewalling with ghost muscle

A series of events: workshop in the collective memory and response to the stones of SW Vic, followed by a stone walling workshop led by professional stone wallers, and the construction of a permanent section of stone wall on the foreshore of Lake Bolac.

Is the carnival over?

The pivotal role played by arts festivals in Australia's cultural life.

Examining the Suojia Ecomuseum and the Nandan Ecomuseum in China

China hosts some 55 ethnic minority groups, which together account for 8.41% of the Chinese population. These populations reside in predominantly Ethnic Minority Villages presenting great value and culture of their heritage, with living landscape, festivals, architecture and costumes, but the actual living conditions are very poor. Since the 1990s, China has adopted French concept 'ecomuseum', for the conservation of some ethnic villages to relieve the conflict between poverty and heritage conservation. ln short, this concept involves the creation of open-air museums keeping buildings and people in their original sites, with local communities serving as curators managing their own sites, which necessitates democracy in the conservation and interpretation processes. The concept seems ideal for the Chinese government, with its bilateral objectives of heritage conservation and poverty alleviation, without necessitating the relocation of any or buildings. However, does this concept really work? It remains unanswered and the subject of little academic research. In order to examine how successfully these ecomuseums are being managed, two projects has been selected for case studies - the Suojia Ecomuseum and the Nandan Ecomuseum. In-depth field studies have been conducted at the two ecomuseums, involving the methodologies of site observation, documentation and semi-structured interviews. This paper reviews the ecomuseum development in China, and then provides detailed critiques and overviews of the Suojia Ecomuseum and the Nandan Ecomuseum in terms of their backgrounds, management structures, programs and activities as well as pertinent issues. Based upon these descriptions, it is·identified that the two cases have different management structures and focuses: 1) the Suojia Ecomuseum has been under the management of government authorities whilst the Nandan Ecomuseum has been operated by local villagers, and 2) the focus of the Suojia Ecomuseum has been improving living conditions for the residents, while in Nandan Ecomuseum cultural inheritance has been operated as a core program. However, there is a lack of financial support in both cases. All these issues lead to a discussion that the Nandan Ecomuseum has made greater achievement in terms of being community-based. The conclusions are hence drawn as to the suggestions to Chinese ecomuseums--the sustainability and success requires local villagers as curators as well as external financial assistance. In addition, another and more urgent need is to pass the ethnic cultures and their values to the next generation.

Crafting communities: promoting inclusion, empowerment, and learning between older women

While social policy and planning documents are replete with ominous warnings about the cost of an ageing population, this article tells a different story about the productive and self-sustaining networks that exist among older women in the community who do craftwork. From our research conducted in Victoria, Australia during 2007–2008 we discovered a resilient and committed group of older women quietly and steadily contributing to community fundraising, building social networks, and providing learning opportunities to each other in diverse ways. Through our conversations with nine craftswomen we have been able to articulate clear links between the theory and models commonly espoused in the community development literature and the life-enriching practices used in organising informal community craft group activities. From our interviews with the older women we provide evidence of sustained participation, the generation of social capital, and the fostering of life-long learning. While none of the women we spoke to were trained in community development and did not use language commonly associated with feminist ideology, the relationship between the informal group work with principles of empowerment and self-efficacy were unmistakeable. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for critical social work practice.

Crafts and successful aging: the Découpage Guild Australia

Reading, writing, crafting – Innovations in first year tertiary writing pedagogy

This paper will outline some of the rationale behind, and strategies contributing to, curriculum revision in first-year creative writing at Deakin University in 2012 – delivered in that year and currently running in 2013. The process aimed to produce two consecutive offerings, with distinct but strategically scaffolded preoccupations. This paper deals with the first of these. The design process for this offering, named ‘Writing Craft’, involved addressing two central concerns: (a) the need to unhook the initial encounter with tertiary creative writing pedagogy from a preoccupation with ‘genres’ or the ‘forms’ of creative writing (such as prose fiction, creative nonfiction, script, poetry, and so on) and instead to reorient efforts towards establishing an engagement with craft per se; (b) to address a perceived impoverishment in the range of texts to which students had been exposed prior to commencing study – in other words, to emphasise the practice of reading to facilitate the practice of writing. The curriculum design also involved reimagining assessment, noting the ‘messages about making’ sent to students via the framing of tasks and rubrics. Aiming instead to deemphasise the role of inspiration and ‘work arriving fully formed’, it sought to offer assessment that provided clear – and bounded – prompts for incidents of making and the practice of craft, as well as to provoke conversation with a broad range of texts as a way of courting intertextual inspiration and aesthetic formation.

Representation of multiculturalism in urban green spaces : a review of immigrants' experiences in Australia

Rapid population influx due to migration in Australia has produced diverse cultural landscapes, which become visible in cities as physical forms, settings and symbols produced by different ethnic communities. Scholars have argued that people moving away from the country of their birth, whether this be a necessary migration, labour mobility or voluntary migration, results in a difficult process of resettlement for families and individuals. To provide a cohesive multicultural society for all citizens, it is essential to understand how immigrants perceive their new environments and how they make connections in a new land in the process of cultural renewal. While the policy of ‘multiculturalism’ has had a rocky road since the optimistic 1970s, a drive through many suburbs in Australian cities shows buildings, festivals and communal gatherings of people that express and refer to diverse cultural backgrounds. Urban green spaces, ranging from private home gardens to public parks and botanical gardens, play an important role in the life of immigrants. Besides psychological and the restorative effects of urban green spaces, these spaces are public places that provide opportunities for recreation, social gatherings, and the celebration of collective cultural values and events such as festivals for many communities. This study aims to raise awareness of ethnicity as an important issue in park settings and spaces. It investigates the interrelationship between these cultural practices in the urban park environment, in relation to ethnic and cultural identity and physical settings. The concept of transculturalism – reinventing a new common culture as a result of migration to a new place – can help the analysis of the affects and the perception of urban green spaces. The paper will review different experiences of immigrants in relation to the use and perception of urban green spaces, developing alternative perspectives about the Australian landscapes.