Jane is off on holidays today after another great morning down at Abbott’s camp where a gentle forum for storytelling has emerged. Jane and Beth have been down there each Wednesday morning for the past few weeks, as the community develops ideas towards putting together an Abbott's Camp magazine. Nora and Louise Abbott have been working on their personal histories, while Julie's grandmother Anyupa, Louise and Doris and many other participants have been drawing out two family trees which cover most of the core Abbott's residents. The community has really enjoyed this process as we’ve found it amazing for us to unravel who is related to whom. We hope it could be a foundation for others working with Abbott’s families in the future. Some of the younger kids have impressed the adults, creating word puzzles with Jane, which include their own names, while they're on holiday from school.

Louise Abbott explaining the family tree.

In other news Alex and Beth met with Deb from Ernabella Arts on the weekend and a number of senior women from Ernabella who were in town for the Beanie Festival to discuss plans for the September season. And Art at the Heart Regional Arts Australia launched its program last week which includes Ngapartji Ngapartji as one of the highlights of the artistic program to be staged at Araluen Arts Centre over 3 nights, from 2nd-4th October.

On Sunday Dave and myself are off to Ernabella to run a two-week school holiday program around storymaking through film through NPY Women’s Council. Alex and Mel are preparing for the Indigenous Languages Institute in Sydney next week after which Alex will drive down to Ernabella with Trevor to have some meetings about the production with the community, then Trevor will join us to run perfrming workshops in the last week of the school holiday program. 

Finally our key filmmaker Suzy Bates will be returning from her time overseas to take up the role of director on the forthcoming documentary we will be producing during the upcoming tour.

Dani Powell
Community Producer