While some of us took time off over summer, Batesy carried on trawling through the hours of footage collected last year to begin rough cutting the documentary together. Those of us at the planning meeting were treated to an inspirational glimpse that artfully interwove Trevor’s story, indigenous language issues, and the Ngapartji Ngapartji show into what is looking like the basis for a great film.

Congratulations also to Trevor Jamieson for his Best Actor award at the Sydney Theatre Awards in late January, and to Scott Rankin, who was also nominated for Best Director.

Also in late January, Beth and musician Rachel Hore hosted a song-writing workshop in Kane Hall at Pukatja for young women. Over ten days about ten new songs were bought into creation – covering topics like love and separation, homesickness, absent family and the importance of friendship. During the workshop lots of women and girls had the chance to improve keyboard skills and discover more about the process of bringing ideas together to write a song.

Shirley, Doris, Jennifer & Ursula work with Rachel at Pukatja recording workshops 

Songs produced during this workshop will be able to be recorded properly in a second Ngapartji Ngapartji recording project to be held in Pukatja in April. This will be held in the school holidays and is open to musicians from other communities also who have new songs that they would like to record. Please contact Beth at Ngapartji Ngapartji (08 89535463) if you are interested!

 Rachel Hore & Jennifer Wells working on songwriting at Pukatja in January

Also some of the music produced will be going on to be adapted for use in a new theatre work called Nyuntu Ngali – a love story about a wrong-way married couple on the run in a post-apocalyptic central Australian landscape. This work will be being developed with people from Ernabella and Mimili and will be shown at the Adelaide Festival Centre in September this year.

Beth is currently in Adelaide for some development work on this project with Scott and Trevor so look out for more Nyuntu Ngali activities over the year.

Alex is also in Adelaide taking part in a cross platform lab - Crossover, and to meet with broadcasters at the Australian documentary conference, AIDC.

Meanwhile back at the office, Jane is making preparations to take some of the young adult performers from Ngapartji Ngapartji to participate in a 5 day youth media research workshop with young people from other remote youth media community projects. Participants will have the opportunity to share experiences of their involvement with community arts and media projects, and learn how to conduct and present their own research to present at a Symposium in Darwin in September. The workshop will be run by Inge Kral from ANU who is running a research project (‘Lifespan learning and literacy for young adults in remote communities’) that Ngappartji Ngapartji project participates in. Inge has also been a supportive and encouraging mentor to the learning and literacy part of our project.

That about wraps it up for now. The news will now come out once a month this year, so look out for more details about the years projects in March.

Cheers, Jane, (with contributions from Beth and Alex.)