DIY Supremacy 2019

Choose your side and pick your cards: Follow the 10 Steps to Supremacy, 10 cards and helpful cartoons to interrogate our own, normalised supremacy-thinking. It takes a village to raise a supremacist. Dare to stop us, we are all in this together…

We developed the 10 Supremacy cards as part of a tactical game for the ‘Colony - dare to stop us’ exhibition at the South Coast Regional Arts Centre in Goolwa SA, in 2019. The cards went like hot cakes.

The Colony links 2018

Find below a short overview of key links Ngarrindjeri have identified for people interested in coming to terms and supporting the Treaty and Sovereignity movement.

Uluru Statement 2017

https://www.1voiceuluru.org/

Voice. Treaty. Truth. Constitutional reform for First Nations Peoples.

U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1

Terra Nullius

https://treatyrepublic.net/content/terra-nullius-0

In 1770 Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay, home of the Eora people, and claimed possession of the East Coast of Australia for Britain under the doctrine of 'terra nullius'. According to the international law of Europe in the late 18th century, there were only three ways that Britain could take possession of another country.

Protection Legislation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Protection_Act_1869

The Aboriginal Protection Act, enacted in 1869, gave extensive powers over the lives of Aboriginal people to the government's Board for the Protection of Aborigines, including regulation of residence, employment and marriage.

Letters Patent

https://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/landtitle.htm

Coming to Terms, edited by Shaun Berg.

The Province of South Australia was created on 15 August 1834 and established by Letters Patent on 19 February 1836. The Colonial Office in London insisted that the Colony could proceed if the land was fairly acquired from the Aborigines and transactions supervised by a government appointed protector.

Native Title

https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-social-justice/projects/native-title

Native title is a property right which reflects a relationship to land which is the very foundation of Indigenous religion, culture and well-being. The non-discriminatory protection of native title is a recognised human right.

Reconciliation Australia

https://www.reconciliation.org.au/reconciliation-action-plans/

The Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) program provides a framework for organisations to support the national reconciliation movement.

Cultural Water - cultural flow

http://www.culturalflows.com.au/~culturalflowscom/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=122

Water is intrinsically linked to the cultural and spiritual identity of Aboriginal people. The land and water forms an integral part who Aboriginal people are - and they, in turn, form a part of the land and waters.

Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority

http://www.ngarrindjeri.org.au/

The Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority (NRA) is the peak regional organisation of the Ngarrindjeri. We represent communities and organisations that currently make up the Ngarrindjeri Nation and the individual Native Title claimants of the Ngarrindjeri and Others Native Title Claim.

Ngarrindjeri Culture Hub

https://www.ngarrindjeri-culture.org/

Ngarrindjeri Nguldi Arndu - Ngarrindjeri Welcome You to the Ngarrindjeri Culture Hub: Meet some of our artists and learn about our culture

Why create together? 2017

No planet - no play!

In light of austerity, ‘post truth’ and the rising fear of Other, there is an urgent push from frontline organizations to collectively reframe our cultural values.

To do this futuring work we will need to hone our skills to create together equitably.

Power - privilege - play 2017

Participatory game workshops & artistic responses to power & privilege in CACD

We have developed a new method to explore the complex, overlapping power dynamics and privileged assumptions that arise in CACD, so we can co-design respectful participatory practices.

Our artistic exploration focuses on our shared humanity: How is your liberation bound up with mine, and mine with yours?

Co-led by artists and participants from First Peoples, disability, youth and refugee communities, we will develop new games and artworks and create artistic responses to interrogate power, privilege and solidarity in CACD

Our model is based on our 2013-14 ARC Linkage partnership with Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Access Victoria and the University of Melbourne Centre for Cultural Partnerships, which we further developed through our Artistic Director’s (Jen Lyons-Reid) 2014-2016 Australia Council Community Arts Fellowship.

This work draws on our interrogation of the colonial aspects of CACD practice and our unpacking of ‘archetypes' that form a matrix of value and power. We created 52 cheeky, poetic, illustrated character cards, and a series of innovative games and activities as the basic framework for this collaboration.

Our partners want to tailor this method with community participants and us, so it embodies an authentic, diverse voice and can support frontline organizations to be more effective.

We use play to awaken our imagination and explore our assumptions. Sessions are lively, as participants role-play card characters and scenarios. Using games we create a space to critically and playfully reflect on our actions and emotions, to safely explore how we all participate in oppressive behaviors, so we can identify, disrupt and creatively reframe them.

We presented the first Typology of Harm prototype at the international 'Spectres of Evaluation' conference at the Footscray Community Arts Centre Feb 6-7 2014, commissioned by the Centre for Cultural Partnerships, Victorian College for the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Developed by Change Media's Jennifer Lyons-Reid and Carl Kuddell, in collaboration with VCA's Lachlan MacDowall and Marnie Badham and great feedback from the folks at here studio in Melbourne, Michelle Emma James and Ammon Beyerle, the prototype is the first stage of our innovative-disruptive work to create a card game, e-reader and website for self evaluation of harm in art and culture. The prototype presentation was accompanied by a multimedia art installation of our development-in-progress and a hands-on workshop (sculpture, image work, video, mass player lanyard game).

Creating Together 2017

Creating Together exploration with Arts Access and Visionary Images Jan 2017

On January 24 we had an amazing day of exploration at Arts Access Victoria, with participants from Arts Access, Weave Movement Theatre and Visionary Images, to find out how this partnership might look, what we want to achieve and how we can collaborate equitably.

We played the basic game in three sessions, with feedback after every game, looking at what is missing, what is working and what scenarios might be useful for artists living with a disability and for organizations supporting communities.

We want to generate conversations with artists about power and privilege, to create a set of artistic critical literacy tools for the arts and social sectors. We will use a set of 52 cards that expose colonial CACD practice, to kick-start the dialogue:

·       To explore how we can create solidarity in a culture of fear, power and privilege

·       To explore what AAV, VI, young people and artists with disability may bring to the initiative

·       To practice being co-creators and explore creative responses to privilege

Focus of exploration We asked participants to bring three key mindsets, as artists/ creators, as provocateurs/ activists and as strategic thinkers.

·       What could an artistic collaboration on the project look like?

·       What excites you?

·       What is missing?

·       Can this project be used to create better, equitable partnerships?

·       How can we tailor the project together?

Arts Front 2016

Arts Front 2030

November 2016

Our creative responses to the first Arts Front 2030 gathering in Melbourne.

We had ball playing the game with our participants and testing our methodology with a series of provocations and disruptions. We also confirmed a number of partnerships for the 2017 collaboration. Thanks Ferals and everyone there for making this happen!

PLAY

Where is the art in Arts Front? Everywhere: The gathering was an amazing piece of art, a performative event, a struggle for the soul of our practice, our shared values, our unifying dissonance, to continue defining how we stand togetherand where we need separate strategies. Hundreds of people dared to play and co-create a shared vision, and we stumbled and met.

CURIOSITY

They don’t need to burn the books if there are no courageous writers. We ignore at our peril that the elites don’t need or want us any longer. They may invite some of us in to deliver pacifying projects in desperate places, or soothing diversions of inclusivity, and yes, some conservatives want arts and education in their privileged halls... but will they pick me, will I accept, and how will I refuse, disrupt and reframe?

NEGOTIATE

To be stuck, a weird, painful joy, the agony of complex collaborations, so many voices, so little time to walk through conflicting needs. And the inherent violence, the divide and rule of our lived competitive processes we have embodied and champion. The absurdity that we are still learning how to talk to each other to de ne a language in which to address the re that is burning down our home – it’s a journey, are we there yet?

SHARE

What’s at stake is enormous. Our ability as diverse people living on this continent, to collectively imagine, re etc, disrupt and reframe. Our existence is under threat, and that threat divides us. Atomized, our livelihoods are taken, defunded, not defended – and the privileged myth ‘it won’t hit me’ plays on... Across space and time humans have experimented with humane, human exchanges, this unprecedented, amorphous assault of privatized, globalised, neo-colonial extractivist, commodified debt

slavery is a relatively new arrival and it is fallible. Our imagination, our stories are commons... under the pavement, the beach.

BE

As artists we negotiate values, frames and the messaging from the unknown. There is power in our art, but if we forget there is also privilege, we run into the fair- world fallacy, that my sense of identity and good intentions can’t possibly lead to bad process and outcomes. Art is not an inherently progressive value, neo-cons make ‘excel- lent’ art and neo-nazis run well-organised community art campaigns, too.

AUTONOMY

We have all become experts at neo-liberal practice...yet we use imaginative language to achieve much of anything - so let’s bring our Philosopher-Poets out of retirement, strip the commercial gloss from our paintings, take the defensive architectures out of our sculptures, and review the pseudo-inclusivity in our community engagement. And have the courage to fail gloriously.

COMPLEXITY

Everything is connected. The political and environmental quakes are shaking the very ground we speak on – no planet, no play. The new Magic Helpers, the Trumps and their battalions of enablers are coming at us fast and steady, to hear their war drums droning - be scared, be ready, activate. The arts are at a rupture point, and the gaps are widening. Why have all our creative attempts for change contributed to this? How effective and relevant are our structures and narratives?

SOLIDARITY

We left with a sense of inspired despair, so much to do, so little time. For those of us who are not silenced yet, use that privilege, use that time well. And before we get scared again and bunker into cozy echo chambers of techno-strategies, let’s consider the unknown and the absent, the legal defense funds we will need when artists take real risks, the new justice economics, the open access unions we need to assemble, to arrive at solidarity. We can join other people’s efforts and make our practice part of the overall global struggle. But let’s also use the enormous skills and passion present in the Arts Front space, to make work that links those struggles, that communicates and questions our values and actions, to play in the unknown world we want to co-create, be scared, be exhilarated, activate.

MINDFULNESS

We are not justified by our say so, when we gather, what informs our feet? We need to constantly negotiate, and that is frustrating and time consuming, the less we train it... We need to relearn to negotiate, practice it, welcome failure, play again – then press repeat. Privilege is an obligation, not a blame-and-shame fest, but a responsibility to be humble and roar: to lead is to serve, to represent publicly is to communicate transparently what we have negotiated equitably. Sweet words, and so poisonous if we don’t live them, and question what they really mean to ourselves and others. No magic bullet meditation, justice is lived practice.

LIBERATION

‘How is your liberation bound up with mine?’ is not a one-way street, it is a reciprocal process, a mutual obligation, as a desired and actionable equity. Children negotiate - if you don’t play well with me, I will walk away.  And we need to call out structural and direct violence and say no way.  So much goodwill is lost when we fail to negotiate equitably and transparently.  At Arts Front two hundred skilled, passionate, creative, disparate, frustrated people felt hurt and noticed they need to frame their shared values and discuss power and privilege. Self determined play is risky, we need to agree on our terms of respect and reciprocity, they are not givens, if we want to rebuild the eroded trust between us all.

Fellowship report 2015

November 2015

Jen Lyons-Reid CACD Fellowship aims

Interrogate stories, values and best practice in CACD to identify new narrative and media strategies.

I set out to explore the role of critical literacy in CACD – to analyze how we collectively script powerful stories for social change within a rapidly changing global landscape. I structured my first year under 5 objectives; research and define the terms of the interrogation, learn new narrative and media skills, experiment with these new techniques, interrogate the sector, expand my peer networks and establish a peer-exchange, and create a series of provocations.

In year 2 I plan to develop an exploratory, transmedia CACD model, as an open source Critical Literacy Forum.

Overview

“Informed, egalitarian societies rely on individual critical literacy – our ability to understand and meaningfully engage in the ethical, aesthetic and political stories that shape our collective lives.”

My definition of CACD is art engagement for social change, practices that value the exchange and multiplicity of our collective narratives.

So what is the value of art and what is the future for the arts in times of austerity?

The act of art making is risky; to imagine is dangerously liberating, to create is to deliberately bring the unknown into being, and to share the work is to proclaim the right to contribute and belong to a collective culture.

How are we celebrating or delegitimizing these potent values? And how do we explore the power of internalized and overt censorship/ compliance/ risk management and its impact on art making and receiving?.

We live in a time of ‘austerity’, rights, employment and wage slashing, the privatization of the last public commons, the commodification of everything and a cornucopia of consumer debt-traps - a cream whip of fear and lust. Anthropologist David Graeber writes that both capitalism and the state have broken their core promises; ‘…that if we abandon any right to collectively manage our own affairs, we would at least be provided with basic life security … and that we could live like kings if we were willing to buy stock in our own collective subordination.’ [Revolutions in Reverse, 2009].

Values are not givens, they are created through ongoing human negotiations – but currently we are caught in a singular paradigm, that the market economy determines all values, so how do we stimulate a conversation that reminds us we can constantly recreate our values and change the way we live and the world we live in?

The market driven monopoly over human exchange in art and culture encloses the commons, reduces our access and experiences and foments a culture of lack – and this inequitable ‘free’ marketplace is driven by a massive bureaucratic machinery that controls, restricts and colonizes experiences in and outside it’s borders. It appears 40 years of neo-liberal tactics are marching us to cultural fascism – so what can we do about it?

Creating and participating in art is a Common that can remind us of our potent, insubordinate revolutionary human potential. Ai WeiWei smashed a Han dynasty urn.

Everything is Art. Everything is Politics. [Ai WeiWei, 1995 Dropping a Han dynasty urn].

Year 1

I used Change Media’s ‘Typology of Harm Cards’ as a scaffold, as they examined the inherent challenges of CACD practice, and shifted the focus to an exploration of best practice – to show ‘you can do it too’ ‘provocation keys’.

I have conducted interviews with leading practitioners and thinkers and networked across arts and culture sectors.

I have acquired a range of new skills, gaining insights into socially engaged art, philosophy and practice, to create an emerging strategy, which combines 360 storytelling, critical anthropology, economic theory, creative interventions and art history.

In the following progress report I will list my process to date. I am not attempting to present my findings, as this would be premature at this stage.

Fellowship objectives

1. Research and define the terms of the interrogation:

Identify critical thinkers and new practices emerging globally, some key text below:

David Graeber - '5000 years of Debt'.

Naomi Klein - ‘This Changes Everything’ [2014]

Beautiful Solutions/ Beautiful Trouble online tool kit and books [linking socially engaged art with non-violent creative protests].

Diane Bell - 'Ngarrindjeri Wurrawarrin'

Yanis Varoufakis - ‘The Global Minotaur’ [2012]

Franco Bifo Berardi - ‘On Finance and Poetry’ [2014]

2. Learn new narrative, facilitation and media skills

workflow for digital drawing and development of graphic and interactive art. Ideation - 15 meters of moveable whiteboards Development/production/distribution - interactive graphic drawing tablet and ipads

narrative therapy:

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

I have also explored different narrative and artistic styles, to analyze current platforms, interfaces, participation techniques, integrating video, photography, drawing, inking, animation and data visualization techniques.

interesting cartoon styles First Dog On the Moon, Shaun Tan, Bechdel, Gaiman, Spiegelman, Bilal, Leunig, Herman, Moebius

surrealist and absurd art [Escher, Modigliani, Picasso, Gaudi, Hundertwasser]

 Gaming workshop: with game writer and transmedia expert Christy Dena,

3. New practice/ experimentation:

Exhibition: ‘Escape from Cloud 9’

Experimental art ‘Defund This!’

Socially engaged art: Ngarrindjeri Culture Hub

4. Interrogate critical literacy strategies in the sector and expand my peer networks

Lots of interviews and discussions

5. Create upbeat, engaging provocations, forge the questions

see point 3

6. Establish a collaborative and creative peer-exchange

Interview, excite and inspire others to join me in creating fresh social narratives and CACD insights, to share.

Review of TOH cards 2014

Review of the Typology of Harm cards by Jennifer Penton, Griffith University, 2014

The Cards – initial impressions (excerpts)

For me, these cards present an excellent opportunity for practitioners to examine the risks in their own practice and project delivery in community settings, and to build a culture of ethical practice. [...]

I believe there is also enormous potential to develop more advanced and dynamic role play scenarios so that the archetypes can be fully experienced and the effect of the behaviours can be felt by the users. This type of activity can link the intellectual understanding of the archetypes, with the embodied and sensory experience. [...]

Click here to read the full review.

Typology of Harm 2014

2014 Spectres Of Evaluation conference

We presented the first Typology of Harm prototype at the international 'Spectres of Evaluation' conference at the Footscray Community Arts Centre Feb 6-7 2014, commissioned by the Centre for Cultural Partnerships, Victorian College for the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Developed by Change Media's Jennifer Lyons-Reid and Carl Kuddell, after discussions about harm and evaluation, with VCA's Lachlan MacDowall and Marnie Badham and great feedback from the folks at here studio in Melbourne, Michelle Emma James and Ammon Beyerle, the prototype is the first stage of our innovative-disruptive work to include a card game for self evaluation of harm in art and culture, e-reader and online version. The prototype presentation was accompanied by a multimedia art installation of our development-in-progress and a hands-on workshop (sculpture, image work, video, mass player lanyard game).

During the 2-day event, the Department for Critical Illiteracy launched the prototype ‘Typology of Harm in CACD’. After an introduction of the methodology, participants played out different negative value scenarios and developed their own typology of harm, to map out their own experience of harm, by using a unique set of N.I.C.E. cards [Negative Indicators Commonly Experienced]. Our team handed out playing cards to conference delegates to attached tp their lanyards and a brisk trade and collection of cards ensued. We saw a few eager punters trying to collect them all...

Our development of the typology will introduce a range of tools and ‘archetypes’ based on identified negative values and behavior patterns we identified in collaboration with colleagues and community participants over years of 'successful' practise, to open up a dialogue on the issues of harm, risk, power and value. Our method aims to strengthen critical literacy across the sector to support stakeholders to engage on a deep level with problems of power, interdependency, morality, privilege and commodification across the sector.

During a 20-minute panel presentation at the conference to over 100 participants, we raised questions about negative value, harm, complicity of artists and arts managers with in a fear-driven framework and the urgency to reframe our moral belief systems that inform our work.

The 90min hands-on session at 'Spectres' concluded the first research in action phase of the work, framed as a ‘swap-meet’  creative and interactive workshop. 15 participating artists, arts managers and researchers tested the prototype. We also received great feedback throughout the conference pointing to the need for a typology of harm to support a rigorous debate on value in CACD. Many people started collecting and trading the cards, which were attached to the delegates lanyards. We were joined by Michelle Emma James and Ammon Beyerle from herestudio, who supported us to deliver the workshop.

We see Critical Literacy as an essential tool for CACD practice in a colonial context. How can we name key values of our sector, without jeopardising our standing in the sector? What really informs our narratives, beyond spin and funding speak? This Typology of Harm is Change Media's artistic response to a set of questions we posed after 20 years of highly ‘successful’ glorious failures.

Get Off My Back 2011

Thought piece on digital media in CACD, commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts in 2011

f you are working in the creative community arts and cultural development sector, [CACD], there is a fair chance that you are engaging in story theft.

In a world where our social model survives on wealth generated from resources, stories represent a vast territory open to plunder.  And digital content, created by communities for ‘free’ has become a thriving trade for artists, support organizations, broadcasters and governments.

This theft may arise from the best of intentions, but too often the owners of the stories feel misrepresented, hoodwinked and de-powered by the experience.

So how do we build equitable, sustainable community empowerment– with shrinking funds, vague guidelines, new demands for digital media across all CACD practice, and hordes of experts from other arts sectors flocking to CACD coffers?

Working in the CACD sphere is – and has to be – risky business, as we negotiate the power-relationships that arise from the economic disparity our work is addressing. Community Arts practitioners derive an income because communities are disengaged/ marginalized. So, in a cross-colonial context, we need to constantly review our role in perpetuating exploitation of these groups.  

Our company, Tallstoreez Productionz, has received great accolade for our digital media empowerment program, Change Media [formerly known as the Hero Project]. We have run hundreds of workshops with thousands of participants since 2004 and set up digital media hubs with many communities – but we still feel at a loss as to what exactly makes good projects work.

Instead of raving about our award-winning projects and glorious failures [check them out at: www.changemedia.net.au], we would like to explore what we, the practitioners, can do next, what we can improve, what risks we take and who really benefits from our processes and the products created.

For better or for worse, digital media helps create a lasting, mobile story about each community and is literally a lens that reveals the cracks in CACD practice. Now most practitioners use digital media as an integral part of their projects. Yet it is still perceived as scary, too complex, too time intensive and needing extravagant budgets for incomprehensible tools. And so it is often used as an after thought, as poor quality documentation, inappropriate video/ websites or fobbed off to external providers who parachute in to ‘capture’ the community.

We believe this often well intended, but non-the-less ignorant practice further widens the [digital] gap, fails to change the imbalance in power, reinforces misrepresentation, lowers the quality of work [and therefore overall reputation of the sector] and doesn’t lead to equitable partnerships.  

So here’s our thought piece. Get Off My Back - a strategy for equitable digital media across the creative community arts and cultural development sector, in a damaged world - to improve quality, accountability and independence.

"I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible....except by getting off his back." [Leo Tolstoy]

We developed Get Off My Back during the national CACD leadership lab run by the Victorian College of the Arts Cultural Partnerships in 2010 at Mount Eliza, in discussion with our colleagues from CuriousWorks and Darwin Community Arts, followed by an amazing 2-day workshop with iLabs’ mervin Jarman at our studio.  

The ideas below are discussion starters; we are trialling them throughout our projects. The sub-chapters are interdependent and the order of appearance doesn’t matter [imagine a chart of connected circles of influence]. The guidelines are to support CACD practitioners - to question why you are involved in CACD. Your answers must be actionable, built-in to daily practice as a tangible and visible process reflected in the outcomes. It is about raising expectations, to push for excellence and to let go at the same time. This process is always evolving and inherently challenging...

Representation
Did we mention your practice is dangerous… marginalized people don’t see themselves as marginalized, their life is their centre of influence and experience. They - like all of us - deserve the best. Be the best, and then improve some more.

CACD work must aim to constantly devolve power and support communities to maintain control of their stories. Decisions need to be made with your participants, not for them. Yes, you are more skilled in a few areas, but so are they. What do you really know about their lives and challenges?

Even during one-off projects, think about long-term sustainability: offer different levels of social business models and employment educational pathways, according to expressed needs.

Support your participants to locate and voice their unique needs and utilise what they already have. This is where your area of expertise sits. Use it.

Voice / Story
What is your creative input? How do you appear in the work? Why? Why not? How is your liberation bound up with that of your participants, community and project partners? Build co-creative explorations as mutually engaging relationships.

Most CACD projects are cross-cultural collaborations: Be aware of context and the power struggles that fuel injustices: place of origin, ethnicity, gender, social background, age, ability.

Ensure the skills you bring are clearly acknowledged. We have found that when our mentor input is not credited in the final outcome it results in the community being heralded as ‘the unusually talented few, the special ones, others, not me’. This contradicts the reality that other communities can tell their own stories if they have access and appropriate support.

Distribution
Your final products will be digital at least in part [photos taken, website inclusion, blogs, twitter, video, DVD, slideshow presentation, funding reports, radio feature etc…]. So from the start of your project: Think digital and viral, learn the basics, share pipelines and access mainstream, fringe and open source networks.

From Day 1 identify your target audience / end user and the final product - it supports participants to clarify why they are involved, what they want and what they will do.

Excellence
Raise the bar across your art forms. Don’t subscribe to the view that Community Art is the poor cousin of Art. It ain’t.
Digital media is not just video and web, but more immersive experiences, authentic and deeper community engagement, performative evaluation, better sound, enhanced vision… Digital media is about changing how you work, not just new technology.

Train the Trainer
Train yourself out of a job - you should be obsolete after the project is over. Build local skills to a level so the community can do it themselves. This is what you promised in your funding submission… And yes, this needs more time, but even on short programs, you can start the process and plant a seed for future initiatives.

Offer mentoring in art/craft and producing [management, structure, legals etc]. These are potentially the boring bits, the invisible stuff – but this is where the ability to ‘do it again’ hides. Bring it forward; explain how it works. Let your participants take over and have them teach each other as soon as possible.

And while you are training and creating, record the process, make tailored peer-produced resources to leave behind. These tools are invaluable when you are gone. And no, they don’t necessary travel well, so keep it regional and peer-produced. There is no market for cookie-cutter empowerment tools, sorry.

Performative evaluation
Build evaluation into your project from Day 1, record your process, record feedback from your partners, participants during all stages, it will change the work.

Think of your project as a cyclic model: From Development, to Hands-on project practice to Post-production, to Distribution …to the Next pitch/ funding submission to Development. Then think backwards from delivery – what do we need to pull this off? Why are we doing this?

And film and review how you pitch /present your next project. Push yourself to raise the bar of your sector and the expectations of your partners. We all deserve it.
 

Accountability
Thiso ne is tricky: expose yourself, self-embarrass. When you build in evaluation of the project from Day 1, you might see different results in your community’s engagement, as you will need to share your thoughts, processes and finding in a way that is truly useful for your partners and participants.
Make your process visible in the final product. Rise to the challenge. What is stopping you [us, me]? Often we feel afraid to lay open the structures of our success and failures - why? Perhaps we’re afraid we’ll lose funding or be found out as spin doctors for embellishing our stories and outcomes, so what? Nobody can really steal our means of engagement; if you are that good people will copy you anyway – and it is incredibly hard work to actually empower communities. So why worry about competition? There should be more of us, and better. Let’s develop better evaluation tools that are actually relevant to our work now AND to our funders later. And remember, yes, it is a risky business – you are potentially benefiting from other people’s misery.

Ownership
Offer and push for transparency from Day 1 on copyright and legal processes. Outline your chosen legal set up in the rights & responsibilities of your Community Partnership agreement. Don’t start work without it, as it always leads to misunderstandings or worse.

And while you are at it: All of this is negotiable. Always. Why not??? A broadcaster may think differently, but hey, so can you. Make sure the ownership reflects the nature of the project and its partner’s investment, be that money, in kind, ideas, traditions, power of influence. And keep this process open.

A crucial part of an equitable agreement is that all partners and participants benefit. So think creative commons, moral rights, new ways to manage and share IP and copyright. This space is evolving, but most people are scared of legalese and so the old structures of control and ownership survive unchallenged. Keep it simple and build real trust. We see too many ‘15 minutes of fame’ promises being made that don’t change a thing.  Broken promises just reinforce feelings of disempowerment, however low the budget. Deliver what you agreed on, based on an open process and transparent negotiations. Over-delivery is even better.

Access
Provide access to gear and skills, ideally in a non-threatening/ non-restrictive environment. They must be dreaming? So use what you have, open source if it works, high-end if you can. Broker pathways to access new funds, bring agencies together, create knowledge archives, new alliances, think out of the box where to get the extra $5000 so the community can continue working with their own gear.

We are all using the catch phrase ‘capacity building’ [hmmm sounds just like ‘sustainability’…] – What does it mean to you? How long does it take to reach ‘capacity’ to do…what? This can only be determined by/with each partner community. But there’s urgency if we are to see social change in our lifetime. We only have now, here, with the means available to us. Source them.

Budget
This is always a conversation killer amongst colleagues in a competitive - exploitative environment. People are often outraged at the idea that budgets, expenditures and incomes should be transparent. Why not? Are you being overpaid?

Chances are that you receive public funds to do your work – these budgets are open to public scrutiny anyway. And yes, this is where it hurts. How do we transfer control and include our communities in budgetary decisions? Mostly we think we don’t need to - ‘They’ don’t want to know. But guess what, ‘there is a budget in my art…’ iiieeeeeehhhhh. So let’s talk about money. More often, and with the people you are delivering to. Budgets are blueprints for creative work, spreadsheets are our friends and need to be invited to the party.

‘Or Not?!’
All these points are dependent on each other and this one is crucial for all future disruptions and innovations.

It sits at the heart of our work, just at the edge of our consciousness, as the missing link in our storytelling. What if your community doesn’t want to tell their stories? What if you stopped making sense? What if you turn this idea upside down? Or these guidelines inside out?

Unknowable things constantly rock our world. The ‘Or Not’ factor is our pressure valve, the delete button, the time for self-reflection without navel gazing. What if we imagine this from a different angle? What if creative communities are at the heart of social well-being? What if we are the gatekeepers, the wardens of possibilities? What if you suddenly had the power to change something? What if suddenly you become obsolete?

Build it into your practice: What have I missed? Am I engaging in critical practice or repeating the same old? Are my failures and successes measurable and how, for whom? What is needed now, what is not there yet? Show me the way to the next paradigm shift.

We are keen to build this with anyone interested. Email us at info@changemedia.net.au
 

Jennifer Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell, 2011