There has been so much happening in the last month in so many different areas we'll share more details under different headings…

The Ngapartji Ngapartji Documentary

Welcome to Vanessa Milton, AFI award winning editor, who arrived in Alice two weeks ago to work on the doco in the temporary editing suite she and Batesy have set up in the ICTV offices. Vanessa has been familiarising herself with the massive amount of footage taken from the Ernabella tour, and reorganising it ready for 'serious' editing. They have already finished making an impressive trailer for the film and Batesy is also busy pulling together a reel of footage to show JTV and  ABCTV. Last week Simon and Pantjiti McKenzie visited to check on progress with the doco. They contributed some interesting ideas and seemed happy with where it was at. A little bit more shooting is being planned so stay tuned.

Editor Vanesssa Milton showing edited material to Beth, Alex, Simon and Pantjiti McKenzie, and Jane.

Youth Media and Learning

Early in March, young Ngapartji Ngapartji performers from Abbott’s Camp, Belinda Abbott and Sadie Richards, headed off to Thakeperte Outstation on the Tamami Road with Jane to take part in a 4 day youth media learning and research workshop with young people from other remote youth media community projects. Belinda's mum Abigail also attended for a day. The workshop was run by Inge Kral from ANU as part of a research project titled ‘Lifespan learning and literacy for young adults in remote communities’.

Belinda Abbott and Sadie Richards looking at work by other young people from remote indigenous youth media projects.

Participants from all over remote Australia - including Warbuton, Lajamanu, Yuendemu, Beswick, Pukatja, Tea Tree, and Wingellina shared their experiences of non-formal learning and involvement with community arts and media projects. They talked about how and what they had learnt, and discussed the learning process. It was a great opportunity for young people to recognize that while formal education is one positive pathway to take, much has been gained from the non-formal learning they have experienced in their lives.

 Notes from the group discussion about learning 

Supported by Inge, Jane fom Ngapartji Ngaprtji, Margaret Carew from Batchelor’s Own Language course, and each other, young people also shared and learnt skills on how to conduct and present their own research by using PowerPoint, digital story and filmmaking.

Sadie and Belinda showed their own digital stories about their work performing and touring with Ngapartji Ngapartji, as well as the project promotional film, and footage from the theatre show, at an evening presentation session that gave participants a chance to show off their work.

 All participants have been invited to carry out further research about youth learning in their own lives and to present at a Symposium in Darwin in September.

Belinda and Sadie, with Jane, choosing and preparing material for their evening presentation about Ngapartji Ngapartji 

Hot on the heels of this workshop, Belinda Abbott hopped on a plane and went north to attend a residential Certificate 3 in Media studies workshop at The Batchelor Institute top end campus.

To see more photos and read a report about this workshop on the Central Land Council website go to: 

http://www.clc.org.au/Media/features/youth_media.html 

Meanwhile more music recording at Pukatja...

Beth Sometimes is in the midst of organising the Big Music recording project that will take place at Pukatja in April. Both Steve Fraser and Beth will be recording music with local musicians, though musicians from other communities are also welcome. Recording space will be booked on a day, or half day, basis. Special time will be allocated to female songwriters and musicians who participated in the January workshops, and in Ngapartji Ngapartji special recordings. The recording project will have a youth focus but does not exclude older musicians. Some time will be allocated to work with younger children.

In addition Steve Langton will be hosting workshops constructing musical instruments out of various car parts and found objects and incorporating new sounds into recordings. The instruments created in workshops will also go to form part of the live sound track for a new theatre work in development - Nyuntu Ngali - to be performed in Adelaide in September.

And over to Brainstorming in the office…

Alex facilitated a great brainstorming session this month regarding the 'legacy package' or 'memory box' about the project. This was attended by all key project workers, along with Elliat Rich, who will be coming on board as designer. It was a fun, inspiring and creative session, the first of many steps to formulating, planning, developing and producing what is hoped will be a meaningful and innovative archival record of the project.

Alex has also been busy working on a number of funding applications for various stages of the documentary and the legacy package, as well as getting on top of a pile of admin, fixing broken printers and getting vehicles in good running order. She is off to Tassie this week to check out two other Big hART shows which are taking place in ‘10 Days on the Island’ Festival: ‘This is Living’ and ‘Junk Theory’.

That's it for now. Wishing everyone a Happy Easter. More news in mid April.
Cheers from Jane (with contributions from Beth, Batesy and Alex.)