Incorporating community history into urban redevelopment

A community history project must be relevant to each person within it so that they see themselves as part of the socio-cultural fabric of the area and feel a sense of ownership of their environment. The Mill Albion community history project is a diverse, multi-layered public history/art program that captures the social heritage of The Mill Albion and allows the community to contribute to their ongoing history. The Albion Flour Mill was built in 1930 at a time when Australia was feeling the effects of its worst economic depression and continued operations for more than 72 years. After ceasing operation in 2005 the site was left to deteriorate. The FKP Property Group purchased the land to undertake a new urban redevelopment project, drawing on the design principles of a traditional ‘village’, while valuing the importance of remembering the community that once included the Flour Mill. This paper reflects on the this project and showcases some of the culturally creative ways this community’s history was told, using methods such as digital stories, contemporary and historical photography and oral history.

A Data Picture of Australia's Arts and Entertainment Sector 2010

Australia’s Arts and Entertainment Sector underpins cultural and social innovation, improves the quality of community life, is essential to maintaining our cities as world class attractors of talent and investment, and helps create ‘Brand Australia’ in the global marketplace of ideas (QUT Creative Industries Faculty 2010). The sector makes a significant contribution to the Australian economy. So what is the size and nature of this contribution? The Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology recently conducted an exercise to source and present statistics in order to produce a data picture of Australia’s Arts and Entertainment Sector. The exercise involved gathering the latest statistics on broadcasting, new media, performing arts, and music composition, distribution and publishing as well as Australia’s performance in world markets.

Making it creatively : building sustainable careers in the arts and creative industries

Many people aspire to careers in the arts and creative industries. However, it has long been known that it can be challenging to navigate a creative career: that competition for work can be intense, particularly for entry-level positions, and that success requires advanced skill sets in addition to a high degree of artistic talent and proficiency. In this article, Dr Ruth Bridgstock draws upon her doctoral and post-doctoral research to explore the challenges involved in building a creative career in Australia and suggest ways to support emerging creatives to build satisfying and sustainable careers.

Community participation in the development of digital radio : the Australian experience

The participation of the community broadcasting sector in the development of digital radio provides a potentially valuable opportunity for non-market, end user-driven experimentation in the development of these new services in Australia. However this development path is constrained by various factors, some of which are specific to the community broadcasting sector and others that are generic to the broader media and communications policy, industrial and technological context. This paper filters recent developments in digital radio policy and implementation through the perspectives of community radio stakeholders, obtained through interviews, to describe and analyse these constraints. The early stage of digital community radio presented here is intended as a baseline for tracking the development of the sector as digital radio broadcasting develops. We also draw upon insights from scholarly debates about citizens media and participatory culture to identify and discuss two sets of opportunities for social benefit that are enabled by the inclusion of community radio in digital radio service development. The first arises from community broadcasting’s involvement in the propagation of the multi-literacies that drive new digital economies, not only through formal and informal multi- and trans-media training, but also in the ‘co-creative’ forms of collaborative and participatory media production that are fostered in the sector. The second arises from the fact that community radio is uniquely placed — indeed charged with the responsibility — to facilitate social participation in the design and operation of media institutions themselves, not just their service outputs.

Strengthening the Foundations: Mutuality and the Performing Arts

Following the positive response by governments to the report of Helen Nugent's major performing arts inquiry, urgent attention needs to be given to the seedbed companies where so often audiences are introduced to the performing arts and practitioners are launched on their professional careers. Doing so calls for lateral thinking such as will enable the widest possible range of stakeholders to become involved. One solution may be to develop multi-stakeholder arts mutuals from the simpler arts mutuals such as co-operatives which are already widespread in many spheres of arts activity. Relevant models include the multi-stakeholder mutuals of the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation and the employee mutuals which are being trialled currently in Britain. Possible stakeholders in an arts mutual could include employed, unemployed and trainee practitioners, professional, quasi-professional and amateur theatre bodies, community groups, municipal councils and statutory bodies such as the ABC. Mutualist models may also be helpful to major performing arts companies facing erosion of their subscription incomes or incurring higher support services costs.

Reconciling community and commerce? Collaboration between produsage communities and commercial operators

Collaborative user-led content creation by online communities, or produsage (Bruns 2008), has generated a variety of useful and important resources and other valuable outcomes, from open source software through the Wikipedia to a variety of smaller-scale, specialist projects. These are often seen as standing in an inherent opposition to commercial interests, and attempts to develop collaborations between community content creators and commercial partners have had mixed success rates to date. However, such tension between community and commerce is not inevitable, and there is substantial potential for more fruitful exchanges and collaboration. This article contributes to the development of this understanding by outlining the key underlying principles of such participatory community processes and exploring the potential tensions which could arise between these communities and their potential external partners. It also sketches out potential approaches to resolving them.

Training the public to collect oral histories of our community : the OHAA Queensland Chapter’s model

In a digital age, the skills required to undertake an oral history project have changed dramatically. For community groups, this shift can be new and exciting, but can also invoke feelings of anxiety when there is a gap in the skill set. Addressing this gap is one of Oral History Association of Australia, Queensland (OHAA Qld) main activities. This paper reports on the OHAA Qld chapter’s oral history workshop program, which was radically altered in 2011.

Shattered dreams : a community project

The research field was community empowerment through education and skill-building. The context was the high rates of domestic violence in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, and the dearth of culturally-appropriate resource materials to stimulate and encourage community engagement with the issue. The research question concerned the use of a specific media project – the creation of a 7-minute 48-second DVD on the causes and impacts of domestic violence – as a focus for community empowerment, education and skills development. The research represented an innovative partnership between the university research team, a non-government organisation, and various expert content-providers. The project generated new knowledge regarding best practice, in such areas as the culturally appropriate use of the voices of elders, focusing on the responsibilities of both men and women in relation to family and domestic violence, and the protection of Aboriginal and Islander children. The project has created an excellent tool for workshops on related issues including familiarity with the legal system. The film has been distributed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander domestic violence services throughout the State, and has generated interstate interest, indicating a significant gap in available culturally-appropriate domestic violence resources. A support package for educational workers within Indigenous community groups wishing to use the resource has also been produced. In 2010, the DVD was nominated for a Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Award. Other non-government organisations have expressed interest in using the model created through this community-based project.

Looking Yonder : Longitudinal Research and Evaluation of the Yonder Participative Arts-based Learning Model Report 2010-2012

Since 2007, KITE Arts Education Program @ QPAC has been engaged in a series of arts and drama-based experiences for students in selected primary schools on the edges of Brisbane and in regional Queensland. The in-school workshop experiences of the program have culminated in a performance by the children for their school community, parents and carers at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre or a regional cultural venue. In conducting an analysis of the Yonder project, the researcher aimed to provide evidence of outcomes brought about through participation by schools, school staff, students and their communities in the Yonder project. To develop longitudinal data project initiators, participants were interviewed at six-monthly intervals to establish patterns of engagement and participation. The report analyses arts-based workshops conducted by the teacher artist in edge-city Brisbane and a regional centre; interviews with teachers and school administrators from the participating schools; interviews with teacher artist and professional artists; interviews with community partners; teacher professional development workshops; community-based workshops; performance outcomes that were the culminating events of the workshop program; student work samples and student reflections on the program. This document covers data and project outputs from February 2010 to July 2012. There have been five iterations of the Yonder project since its commencement in mid-2009 — three in regional Queensland (February–April 2010; February–May 2011; February–May 2012) and two in edge-city1 Brisbane (July–September 2010; August–October 2011). This report is a result of a research partnership between Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Creative Industries Faculty(Drama).

Narratives of the 'everyday' in Rio de Janeiro's favelas : community photographers' attempts at generating alternative news values [Narrativas do cotidiano nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro: tentativas de construção de valores-notícia alternativos pelos fotógrafos populares]

Abstract This paper presents the partial results of an ongoing research project which investigates ethnographically community (photo)journalism media initiatives, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Viva Rio and Observatorio de Favelas (NGOs) run projects that provide favela residents with skills to take, edit and print their own (photo) journalism contents that enables community-based framing and documentation of favela live, personalities and issues. Three months of fieldwork related to these projects in Rio's favelas generated remarkable theoretical issues that represent the community photographers' attempt to establish counter news values by shifting the focus from poverty, shortages, violence and criminality to images of the ordinary life which included the myriad events that occurs in the day of the favelas. Resumo Este artigo apresenta os resultados parciais de uma pesquisa em andamento que, a partir do método etnográfico, investiga os projetos de comunicação comunitária, jornalismo e fotojornalismo, no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. As organizações não-governamentais (ONGs) Viva Rio e Observatório de Favela apoiam projetos que objetivam tornar moradores de favelas capazes de produzir, editar e publicar as suas próprias narrativas sobre personagens e questões do cotidiano de suas comunidades. O trabalho de campo sobre estes projetos, realizado durante três meses nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro, forneceu questões teóricas relevantes que representam o esforço dos fotógrafos populares para estabelecer contra valores-notícia transferindo o foco da pobreza, escassez, violência e criminalidade para imagens do cotidiano que inclui uma miríade de eventos que acontecem no dia-a-dia das favelas.

Narratives of the 'everyday' in Rio de Janeiro's favelas : the construction of alternative news values by community photographers [Narrativas do cotidiano nas favelas cariocas: a problematizacao dos valores-noticia pelos fotografos populares]

Resumo: Esse artigo apresenta os resultados parciais de uma pesquisa em andamento que, a partir do método etnográfico, investiga os projetos de comunicação comunitária, jornalismo e fotojornalismo desenvolvidos por duas organizações não-governamentais na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. O trabalho de campo, realizado durante três meses nas favelas cariocas, forneceu questões teóricas relevantes para os estudos do jornalismo, destacando-se as problematizações sobre a noção de valores-notícia. Voltados para a produção de narrativas centradas no cotidiano das comunidades, os fotojornalistas populares consideram fundamental discutir os valores-notícia formulados pela grande imprensa e propor “contra-valores”.

The ethnographer as community manager : language translation and user negotiation

This article investigates the ethnographic methodological question of how the researcher observes objectively while being part of the problem they are observing. It uses a case study of ABC Pool to argue a cooperative approach that combines the roles of the ethnographer with that of a community manager who assists in constructing a true representation of the researched environment. By using reflexivity as a research tool, the ethnographer engages in a process to self-check their personal presumptions and prejudices, and to strengthen the constructed representation of the researched environment. This article also suggests combining management and expertise research from the social sciences with ethnography, to understand and engage with the research field participants more intimately - which, ultimately, assists in gathering and analysing richer qualitative data.

Making sense of mental illness as a full human experience : Perspective of illness and recovery held by people with a mental illness living in the community.

Recovery is a highly contextualized concept amid divergent interpretations and unique experiences. There is substantial current interest in building evidence about recovery from mental illness in order to inform best practice founded in the ways people find to live productive and meaningful lives. This paper presents some accounts related to recovery and illness expressed by eight people through a Participatory Action Research project. The research facilitated entry to the subjective experiences of living in the community as an artist with a mental illness. The people in the research shared an integrated understanding of illness, recovery and identity. Their understanding provided insight into mental illness as an inseparable aspect of who they were. Further, specific issue was raised of recovery as a clinical term with a requirement to meet distinct conventions of recovery. This paper emphasizes that being ill and being well, for the person with a mental illness, is a dynamic and complex development not easily explained or transformed into uniform process or outcomes. Attempts to establish an integral or consensual approach to recovery has, to date, disregarded mental illness as a full human experience. This paper argues that broader frameworks for thinking and responding to the dynamic processes of mental illness and recovery are needed and require acknowledgment of competing and contradictory ideas.

'These are my photos of when I was little' : Locating Media Arts in the Primary School Curriculum

‘Media Arts’ has been included as a fifth area of the Arts for the Australian Curriculum which will become mandatory learning for all Australian children from pre-school to Year Six (Y6) from 2014. The current curriculum design is underpinned by an approach familiar to media educators who combine creative practice and critical response to develop students’ media literacies. Media Arts within the Australian Curriculum will place Australia at the forefront of international efforts to promote media education as an entitlement for all children. Even with this mandated endorsement, however, there remains ongoing debate about where to locate media education in school curricula. Historically, media education in Australia has been approached through diverse curriculum activities at the secondary school level. These include subject English’s critical literacy objectives; vocationally oriented media and technology education or ICTs education; and Arts courses using new media technologies for creativity. In this chapter we consider the possibilities and challenges for Media Arts, specifically for primary school student learning. We draw on empirical evidence from a research project that has trialled a Media Arts curriculum with students attending a primary school in a low socio-economic status and culturally diverse community on the outskirts of Brisbane, Queensland.