Using digitized representations and spoken word performance, Queensland arts and literacies educators Janice Jones and Lindy Abawi present with Augmented Reality Partners from Whaddup Indigenous Youth Group the stages of an arts and multi-literacies project from inception to public display. The partners, young women of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background, prepare to exhibit their art works in the regional art gallery, using Augmented Reality overlays of story, rap, and dance. This paper as performance uses a verbatim theatre approach, interweaving the young women’s digital stories of self-and community actualization with the voices of two arts facilitators and their sponsoring institution. By critically re-presenting the entanglement of values and expectations of the university as ‘The Big House’ with those of the arts practitioners and the community, the authors as performers unravel the complexities of language as an instrument of neo-colonialism, and articulate some of the ethical and cultural challenges for non-Indigenous facilitators engaging with Indigenous peoples.

1. Entangled, Emergent, Emboldened: an
Indigenous Youth Arts group and non-
Indigenous arts and literacies facilitators
talk back to the ‘Big House' (University)
Senior Lecturer Arts Education
School of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist Education
USQ Applied Linguistics Group, Leadership Research International Group
Dr Janice K Jones
Dr Lindy Abawi
Senior Lecturer Curriculum and Pedagogy
School of Teacher Education and Early Childhood
Leadership Research International Group

2. Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the
traditional custodians of the
lands where USQ teaching and
research is conducted:the
Gaibal, Jarowair, Ugarapul and
Butchulla peoples of
Queensland. We honour the
wisdom of Elders past, present
and future, seeking to walk
together in the spirit of
reconciliation.
Image: Jada DENNISON/Untitled/2015/acrylic
monoprint/60 x 42 cm

3. Positioning the Study – The Big House
 Recent genocidal
history
 Mass imprisonment:
people of Indigenous
backgrounds
 Education and
urbanisation: the new
divides
 University as ‘The Big
House’ (Tuhiwai
Smith, 2012)
 The challenge: to build
bridges
 Individual teachers,
artists and researchers
may build trust
 But…against a
background of mistrust
of institutional power
 2 years of relationship
building

4. Positioning ourselves: artists and
researchers
Education
through Arts for
Social Justice
Equity
Transformation
Arts for
Transformation
Lindy: White
Middle-class
Australian
Informal and
Non-traditional
Education
Janice: White
Migrant
Celtic Diaspora
Space, Power,
Culture and
Identity
Language and
Arts Pedagogy
Diversity and
Inclusivity
School
Improvement
Technologies
and Networks

5. The Plan – Successful Funding Bid
Kulila Indigenous
Kindergarten
 Parent and Child Created
Story books
 Parent and child as co-
learner using iPads to build
capacities in language,
literacies, digital
technologies
 Building Childcare staff skills
 Relationship building
Whaddup Indigenous
Youth Centre
 Teenagers: creating art
works for exhibition with
Augmented Reality
 Celebrating the voices of
young people of
Indigenous heritage
 Music, drama, dance for
storytelling: iPad capture
 Relationship building

6. About Whaddup Indigenous Youth Group
 Community facilitated asset-based
philosophy.
 Friday nights 7 – 9pm
Focus:
 Pride in culture
 Child, family and community strengths
 Leadership/mentoring - sport, arts,
healthy cooking, organised trips.
 Transport to and from centre
 Volunteer workers from PCYC, schools,
parents and Elders


7. About Kulila Kindergarten

8. Institutional Habitus: Corporatisation
Increasing university focus on control, image
management and protection, branding and compliance.
Two discourses: ‘How we do things here’ (Cornbleth,
2010).
‘The expansion of marketisation has not always been
antithetical to egalitarianism. Yet its effects have been
increasingly inegalitarian, as it establishes a political
dynamic that leaves those marginalised from the labour
market vulnerable to paternalism, while consolidating the
interests of the more affluent’ (Spies-Butcher, 2014)

11. A Collision of Discourses

12. Intellectual Property - Ownership
‘If academics want to prevent the further colonization of
higher education by a phalange of anti-democratic forces
extending from corporate power brokers and mega-
millionaires to right-wing ideologues and the vested
interest of the military-industrial-academic complex, they
cannot afford to be either silent or distant observers. The
stakes are too high and the struggle too important.’
(Giroux, 2011)

13. Deficit discourse = research funding
 University web sites portray ‘successful research
projects’ in terms of:
 Providing solutions – intellect, technology and
innovation overcoming ‘Wicked Problems’
 A strong university partnering with a needy community
 Benefits accruing to the community
 The university and researcher as scientist, hero, leader,
initiator, hand-holder of the weak
 A need for more funding – more research – more
innovation to solve further needs

14. Driving change – Asset Based Partnerships
 What other approaches are possible for universities and
communities to engage in partnerships for development
and research?
 How can ‘The Big House’ transform its image and
practices to build lasting and respectful community
partnerships?
 Asset Based Community Development approaches build
community capacity through strengths based
approaches developed by John McKnight and Jody
Kretzmann. http://www.abcdinstitute.org/about/

15. Children speaking clear and strong

16. Further complexity – layers of discourses
 Discourses of power operate at many levels
 In preparing finished works for presentation we became
aware of ‘re-presenting’ the voices of young Indigenous
people: colonising thought, interpretation, and
presentation
 This occurred in the selection, presentation and
positioning, juxtaposition and labelling of works.
 It also occurred in decisions around who was to curate,
present and speak for the children at the launch.
 Sensitivity - stepping back from power was critical to
the process: community owned that space.

17. Concious decolonisation of images
 Inequities and divergences of purpose and value
present challenges for increasingly corporatised
universities and for the funding and conduct of
community-university initiatives and partnerships.
 Educators and researchers engaging with communities,
are challenged to be aware of and to de-colonise
relationships, discourses and practices.
 A response: removing colourful card mounts:
unadjusted originals were placed at child height in the
gallery. The variety and range of works challenged
concepts of ‘aesthetic’ display running counter to the
‘prettification’ of children’s work in public displays.

18. Challenging the ‘Glamour of Need’
 Focusing upon strengths and assets rather than a
community’s need for research/intervention. Re-
positioning the role of university not leader but partner.
 Start point: community’s agency in change
 Re-writing ‘Evidence-of impact’ not as university
success but as partnership, trust and longevity.
 Countervoice the ‘glamour of need’ and discourses
of loss
 Academics ‘talk back’ to agendas for short lived
research ‘projects’, funding and strategic focus –
challenging institutional habitus and the discourse of
deficit.

19. References
Cornbleth, C. (2010). Institutional Habitus as the de facto Diversity
Curriculum of Teacher Education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly,
41(3) 17.
Giroux, H. A. (2011). Beyond the Swindle of the Corporate University:
Higher Education in the Service of Democracy. Op Ed. Truthout.
Jones, J. K. (2014). Neither of the air, nor of the earth but a creature
somewhere between:The researcher as traveller between worlds. In K.
Trimmer, A. Black, & S. Riddle (Eds.), Mainstreams, Margins and the
Spaces In-between: New possibilities for education research. Abingdon,
Oxford: Taylor & Francis (Routledge).
Spies-Butcher, B. (2014). Marketisation and the dual welfare state:
Neoliberalism and inequality in Australia. The Economic and Labour
Relations Review, 25(2)185-201.
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and
Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books.