Working with Bell Shakespeare and artists from refugee background on The Perfect Refugee - Shakespeare in a Time of Crisis.
Read moreStory Theft - the Get Off My Back manifesto
Thought piece on digital media in CACD, commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts in 2011
If 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 trialing 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 dis-empowerment, 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. Contact us here.
Jennifer Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell, 2011
How to Laugh in English - Aus Refugee Assoc
The Perfect Refugee - 2011 July - SA
Change Media worked with 13 new arrivals and young refugees from Buthan and several African countries as well as Australian Refugee Association staff over 2 days, to continue training in film narratives, interview techniques and digital media skills as part of our 3-year multi-arts project, The Perfect Refugee.
During the 2 days, the participants engaged in comedy concepts and developed ideas for several projects.
Each team pitched their ideas as 5-point story plan. They also started creating their own digital storyboards and continued intermediate camera and interview training. Ideas presented included: How to Laugh in English?, Racist Car and Love Story Music Video.
The participants worked on their main project ‘How To Laugh In English’. They used Image Creation techniques they’d learned at the Forum Theatre workshop in May 2011. They continued to work on their own digital storyboards for their individual films. The team also improved their camera work on HDV Sony Z1 cameras and started post production training on Final Cut 7.
Partners
Australia Council for the Arts
Australian Refugee Association Inc
Bell Shakespeare Company
Buthanese Community Association SA Inc
Victorian College for the Arts Centre for Cultural Partnerships
Ngarrindjeri - Working on Country
Ngarrindjeri Media 2011 June - Murray Bridge - Raukkan - Coorong SA
Advice: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website and videos links contains images and voices of people who have died.
The Change Media Team conducted 4x 1-day workshops with Ngarrindjeri Caring For Country and Heritage Rangers at the Ngarrindjeri Ruwe Contracting Depot.
During the production in Murray Bridge, Raukkan and Meningie members of the Ngarrindjeri Ruwe and the Raukkan Caring for Country organizations learned skills in film narrative, interview and editing techniques.
Find the training videos the Ngarrindjeri team produced here.
The project covered storytelling and camera techniques, shooting on traditional heritage locations, interview and event coverage techniques and editing. The resulting 10min film, Ngarrindjeri Ruwe – Working On Country, is available online and will be used by NRC staff for training, recruiting and PR. This project built on the success of the workshops in the last two years.
The NRC and its Heritage Rangers employed on a long-term contract have agreed to setting up a micro business and utilizing digital media as part of their everyday work. Already their rangers and Caring For Country workers are using GPS-enabled ‘Cyber-Trackers’ to map and track sites, re-vegetation efforts and link it with traditional knowledge. Recording knowledge by interviewing their elders will form part of the essential training over the next year.
Partners
Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities
Australia Council for the Arts
Indigenous Cultural Support, Office for the Arts, Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport
Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee
Ngarrindjeri Land and Progress Association
Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority
Ngarrindjeri Ruwe Contracting
Ngopamuldi Aboriginal Corporation
Australian Refugee Association media training
2011 June - Adelaide SA
Change Media worked with 16 new arrivals and young refugees from Buthan and several African countries as well as Australian Refugee Association staff over 2 days, to continue training in film narratives, interview techniques and digital media skills as part of our 3-year multi-arts project The Perfect Refugee.
During the 2 days, the participants engaged in comedy concepts and developed ideas for several projects.
Each team pitched their ideas as 5-point story plan. They also started creating their own digital storyboards and continued intermediate camera and interview training. Ideas presented included: How to Laugh in English?, Racist Car and Love Story Music Video.
Partners
Australia Council for the Arts
Australian Refugee Association Inc
Buthanese Community Association SA Inc
The Perfect Refugee - Theatre Games
2011 May - Carclew SA
Change Media worked with acclaimed director, actor, filmmaker and social animateur, Shahin Shafaei, and 18 young migrants, to create new work as part of a long term project. The forum theater workshop ran over 4 days, using mixed theater and acting techniques with digital media skills, to prepare for a 3-year multi-arts project , The Perfect Refugee.
Find below the resulting 20 Forum Theatre Game examples:
This Change Media project aims to build the creative foundations for an exciting and innovative collaboration with young migrants and Bell Shakespeare in South Australia. The training covered forum theater, image creation and screen narratives, storytelling, interview and reenactment techniques and documentary shooting. The team also recorded some of the behind-the-scenes documentations.
We were excited to work with Shahin Shafaei [Through the Wires; From Bagdad to the Burbs] to kick start our newest creative challenge for the community arts and cultural development sector – to create high profile work that bring mainstream art and marginalized communities together to explore the ruptures of our society and our mythologies around refugees, racism and integration through a classical lens: Shakespeare In Times Of Crisis – The Perfect Refugee…
Partners
Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities
Australia Council for the Arts
Australian Refugee Association Inc
Victorian College for the Arts Centre for Cultural Partnerships
Change Media Showreel
2011 March - SA
Advice: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website and video links contain images and voices of people who have died.
The 15min video features excerpts from our work with young refugees from the Buthanese and African communities in Adelaide, creating powerful documentaries for cultural transmission with Indigenous communities across South East SA and a variety of fun projects we have conducted nationally.
We tailored the documentation to speak directly to our current proposal to the Community Arts Development at Arts SA and to Australia Council’s Creative Community Partnerships Initiative. And as of May 2011, we have been successful with the CCPI application and received funding for our 3-year program!
Partners
Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities
Australia Council for the Arts
Australian Refugee Association Inc
Indigenous Cultural Support, Office for the Arts, Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport