This creative presentation will express our process and creativity in developing a story-sharing exhibition that will take place in 2021. The exhibition is being developed with, for and about a community of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the northern suburbs of Melbourne that has connected with Aboriginal cultural and political strengths to survive in the face of numerous episodes of structural violence. It is centred on a State school, Northland Secondary College, which was selected for closure by the Victorian Government as part of widespread funding cutbacks in the early 1990s.
The presentation and exhibition are part of a strong, culturally-relevant, critically-informed process that Lyn and Clare are conducting in a project instigated by historian and community member Professor Gary Foley to revisit the experiences of the Northlands Campaign Community and to surface meanings and connections that run through the community’s past, present and future.
We are weaving the ICCP conference into our process, using the conference presentation as the initial focus for a collective artwork that we are starting to develop. The work will be shared into the 2021 exhibition, and the exhibition iterated into further creative works including a documentary film and performance (music, theatre and dance).
We express this a story-sharing process, in reference to the 8-ways pedagogy. This is a framework that validates the cultural standpoint from which Lyn has developed and conducted her work as an educator, artist and community cultural development worker in Melbourne and Shepparton over the last several decades. The creative methods we are using embed Aboriginal Arts-orientated practices through culturally creative processes that were a key part of the successful pedagogy in place at Northlands before it was closed.