Technology, Arts and Social Connection (TASC) projects
Blaktraks Koorie Youth Program
Watch the Blaktraks video
Koorie Heritage Trust
Blaktraks will bring together and engage Indigenous youth from a number of locations across urban Victoria with their community Elders in order to share and create stories based on urban space and place. Koorie Heritage Trust’s collaboration with Storyscape, a collective of artists from across Victoria, will focus on place-based stories that represent the changing face and history of Indigenous urban identities in Victoria. Stories will be created by drawing on a range of mediums and be disseminated via mobile phones using QR (quick response) codes at sites across Melbourne and regional centres.
Wayfarer v3: Global Agents
Victorian Arts Centre
A social media event in which Wayfarer places students into teams of 'urban agents', armed with pocket video cameras and encouraged to create, enact and document socially responsible experiences – large or small, planned or improvised – any way they choose to engage positively with their surrounds. Under the coordination of a teacher from their school, students complete as many tasks as they can across the two-week gaming period and upload videos of their experiences to the website for further comment from the Wayfarer community. This locative and participatory event engages social agency, physicality and ethics.
Identity: yours, mine, ours
Museum Victoria
This is a major new initiative of the Immigration Museum that will focus on how ethnicity, language, spirituality, ancestry and citizenship have, and continue to, inform our individual and collective identities. As part of the project the Museum will work with young people from Braybrook, Sunshine and the City of Hume to create new media content as part of this long-term exhibition. By developing a visually engaging platform the Museum hopes to display a multiplicity of stories and foster a collective voice that can be added to over the life of the exhibition.
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PING: a remote music education project
The Song Room
Through the development of PING, the Song Room will use Web 2.0 applications and online video conferencing in conjunction with person-to-person and peer-to-peer workshops and performances to enhance music and arts access and participation for Victorian rural communities. PING will enable teachers, students and the community to share a dynamic learning environment which allows for multiple and reciprocal transfers of learning. In each project site, PING will culminate in real-time online performance outcomes. The range of blended and e-learning techniques utilised will lay a foundation for demonstrating the most effective new ways of learning and skills transfer.
My Wonderful Everyday
Roger Alsop & Mark Themann
Listen to the My Wonderful Everyday stories
Roger Alsop and Mark Themann will collaborate with the diverse communities of Dandenong to create a web-based spoken-word work focusing on social knowledge, habits and attitudes to food and water. The artists will record historical, generational and current opinions on the complexities and fundamental importance of these life essentials, as well as hopes and fears for the future. My Wonderful Everyday will be a snapshot of a vibrant community at a time of change. The project addresses, celebrates and gives voice to a vast demographic – the ordinary citizen.
Flip-athon Project
The Torch
Torch Bearers (ambassadors) in 14 partner communities will collect local stories of identity, self and community using Flip video cameras: portable, low-cost and easy-to-use digital devices. Each story (maximum 3 mins duration) will focus on a particular theme. The films will be uploaded to social networking sites, The Torch website and blog to allow discussions on the themes of the collected stories. It is envisaged this will become a sustainable annual event with a new theme chosen each year by Torch Bearers.
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Little Houses
ArtPlay, City of Melbourne
Little Houses is an exploration of narrative and human–computer interaction which utilises mediums ranging from ceramics to interactive surfaces and real-time sound scapes in creating a public art installation. Across its various stages, this project will create a space for children and families to speak about their experiences of home. The playfulness of the work will encourage people to touch and re-organise landscape elements to create new environments and, by including a broad range of participants, develop a rich tapestry of urban stories. Little Houses is a communal, networked installation which will stimulate discussion and an awareness of stories about the ways people live.
RAW: ReActivate Wyndham
Wyndham City Council
RAW will focus on developing a portal for the collection of local culture in digital format: images, text and audio. The collection will be open to the community to participate/view/interact with and in doing this will explore concepts of public art and social connections. The goal is to promote arts participation to a broad cross-section of the community using devices and technology that are used by people every day: mobile phones and the internet. Training courses will be run in digital collection and digital 'mash-up' with outputs displayed at the Council’s 2011 August Arts event.
Images of Home
Monash University
Images of Home is designed to engage young people (8-10 years) living in growth corridor areas of the City of Cardinia to explore the meaning of ‘home’ in their rapidly changing environment. Using state-of-the-art sound technology in conjunction with photography and storytelling, participants will be encouraged to capture and then play with the sounds of their environment to explore their aural connection to place and belonging. Project participants will be able to map their soundlines but also, by manipulating the collected material and controlling their own experience, move through less familiar landscapes.
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ConnectYOU Project
Peninsula Health
Building on the premise that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, Peninsula Health will provide an opportunity for young people in the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula areas to comment and reflect on aspects of life on the Peninsula, including social connection and wellbeing. Participants will use photo-voice methodologies – a combination of photography and grassroots social action – as a medium for social research.
Stories of Survival
Humanitarian Crisis Hub
Through a combination of storytelling, digital technologies, print media and community development methodologies, this project will encourage refugees and immigrants in Victoria to share their stories of survival of armed conflict. Project participants will tell of the measures they have taken to protect themselves, their families and the communities in times of war and conflict. Stories of Survival will highlight their initiative and resourcefulness, challenging the common portrayal of refugees as passive victims. By promoting positive images of new Australians, the project aims to empower refugee community members and create stronger links between refugees and the wider Victorian public.
Bringing Singing to the Community
Brunswick Women’s Choir
In collaboration with RMIT, the Brunswick Women’s Choir will develop and disseminate a series of online singing workshops, including songs developed in collaboration with Yorta Yorta songwriter Lou Bennett. The workshops will include digital videos, sheet music and audio files which will be accessible through the choir’s website in addition to other internet channels. By sharing their repertoire and making freely available these quality resources, this project will increase access to the well-documented benefits of group singing and enhance capacity across the community music sector.
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The Travelling Chair
Grit Media
The Travelling Chair is a website/mobile phone application which will allow people with accessibility needs to log in, create personal profiles, then profile and review locations and venues. Travelling Chair will create an interactive social network of people with disabilities, who will be able to find information on the accessibility of buildings and venues across Victoria. The project will bring people with access needs into social environments that the majority of the population take for granted. Travelling Chair will facilitate social participation and inclusion for a distinctly isolated group, both online and offline.
Burnt Out: Stories from the Ashes
Borderlands Cooperative Ltd
Using social media and digital communications strategies, Burnt Out will assist personal and community development in communities affected by bushfire. Burnt Out will empower these communities by allowing them to share experiences of disaster and recovery. The process of generating and disseminating these stories will play a significant role in personal and social learning and healing. The project hope to leave a rich, diverse and respectful legacy that catalogues the experiences and aspirations of a disaster-affected community.