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Thursday, 20 March 2008 |
We’ve been an industrious place these past two weeks with young people and their families coming in most days keen to catch up, flick through the Sydney photographs and participate in the new Learning thread of the Ngapartji Ngapartji project. Some of the young people who went to Sydney, and others interested and visiting from Docker River and Mutitjulu, have begun some projects using the enormous amount of photo images we have of that tour, and others (Check out the gallery for more photos of Sydney.) The walls are starting to fill up with drawings and laminated comic pages created from photos and writing about Ngapartji Ngapartji people and activities.
And in the ‘ngapartji ngapartji’ way, we’re acknowledging that the learning here is two-way, be it Pitjantjatjara or English, so that ‘learning notes’ are appearing all over the Alice office. Whenever any one learns something, whether it’s a new word or expression in Pitjantjatjara, how to spell an English one, or a grammar or maths rule, we jot it down on a sticky note and put it on the wall to share. Along with the comics, these look fantastic, and its inspirational to see the young people so keen to learn in this way.
The acquisition of a new computer has meant more people can work on
their individual projects at the same time and with our new literacy
worker Jane on board we can offer young participants a more
individualized learning program.
After a visit from Ben and Helen from CAAMA, who showed us some digital
stories online, Sadie and Julie have started the process of putting
together images to make digital stories about their own experiences. We
hope we can finish some of these for the Ngapartji Ngapartji kungkas to
present at the NPY Kungka Careers conference in May – an annual
conference of young women from the APY Lands coming together to hear
about jobs, activities and projects other Indigenous women have done
which might help them think about how to realise their dreams for the
future.
And while the young people are working with their stories Mariaa and
Alex are working through the backlog of administration which has
accumulated these past 6 months. Alex is trying to draw up a 24-month
plan for the future of Ngapartji Ngapartji in recognition that the
project is finite and that how it ends and the legacy we hope it leaves
actually influences the choices we make now about where we are going. The task is to consider what is valuable to the project and participants, as well as
viable, in terms of the many offers that came out of the Sydney
Festival and the Australian Performing Arts Market, such as touring the
theatre production both in Australia and overseas, making a film and
pursuing the work on the ground. No small task.
Happy Easter.
Dani
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2010 Ngapartji Ngapartji