Ngapartji Ngapartji emerges from eight years of research and development between Scott Rankin and Trevor Jamieson and the Jamieson family. From this foundation, it continues to evolve as a cross-cultural social change project.
Community Development – Arts based strategies
Ngapartji Ngapartji applies the Big hART model of art based community development in a new context. It brings together Pitjantjatjara and non-Pitjantjatjara people, honouring everyone’s contribution, to create a process of Ngapartji Ngapartji: exchange and cross-cultural collaboration.
Big hART arts mentors and producers work alongside members of the Pitjantjatjara community in Alice Springs and Docker River (NT) and the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjara Lands (SA), and young people and their families from Abbott’s, Karnte, Little Sisters and Larapinta Valley town camps in Alice Springs. Local youth and social services, media, arts and business organisations also support this community process.
Weekly workshops with young people create material for the online world of Ngapartji Ngapartji as well as feeding ideas into the theatre production. Material varies in form and content in response to participation, which is in turn influenced by matters such as cultural and family obligations, sickness, sorry business (grieving after the passing of family or friends), and high levels of transience between town and bush communities.
Language Maintenance – An online world first
Young people and elders, along with arts mentors and language workers, are producing diverse linguistic and cultural material for Ngapartji Ngapartji''s online language and culture site, Ninti (ninti.ngapartji.org). With storytelling at the heart of this ever growing website, the audience is invited to engage with Pitjantjatjara language and culture beyond the experience of the staged performances.
Content production is driven by ideas that emerge from the young people and elders through community process, as well as the script of the stage production. A language and culture reference group, Ninti Mulapa, comprising senior Pitjantjatjara elders and language workers, oversees and reviews the cultural and linguistic appropriateness of site content.
Producing a website which teaches a language is a huge responsibility, and we are constantly balancing the aspiration to maintain absolute integrity in our process on the ground, with the deadlines of producing content for an enthusiastic audience.
Ultimately it is hoped that the profile of the Ngapartji Ngapartji project and its model generate a broader understanding of and interest in the value and preservation of all Indigenous languages, not just Pitjantjatjara.
Theatre-making
The touring theatre piece, Ngapartji Ngapartji, has largely been the creative work of Trevor Jamieson and Scott Rankin, based on research that they have undertaken together from 1999, and the workshop process since. In addition to Trevor Jamieson’s central family story, the material has also been influenced by the ideas and stories emerging in workshops with other cast members, young people, elders, arts mentors and language workers – for example the expansion of the stage show to include members of the Pitjantjatjara choir.
There's been a little discussion about shifting focus from creating discreet workshops in town to finding points of community engagement in the myriad events and work that we have before us. This week we mapped out the next 18 months of the project and were excited and overwhelmed at how much we have on our communal plate, including the production of a documentary, upcoming filmmaking workshops in Ernabella in July and the SA/NT tour in September/October. We received funding through the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) to develop a mobile gallery to house and share the images and text produced by project participants throughout the project and started the first of a series of workshops in the newly renovated community building in Abbott's camp. And long-term project participant and established watercolour artist Elton Wirri flew to Melbourne last week to co-present with Company Director Scott Rankin at the Deakin Lectures.
In a faded blue T-shirt and jeans, Trevor Jamieson flashes on to the
computer screen, swatting flies from his face as he welcomes
participants to Ngapartji Ngapartji's online community.
He is framed in a desert scene, the sun beating on his back as he
acknowledges the native landowners upon whose land he stands, flitting
between his indigenous tongue, Pitjantjatjara, and English.
2008 Ngapartji Ngapartji