The CSR Project supports the commercial and cultural aspirations of Aboriginal people and their enterprises through artists’ workshops, professional development and employment programs. Central to these platforms are two pilot training programs for Aboriginal arts workers and creatives:
Emerging Aboriginal Curators Program
Emerging Aboriginal Multimedia Practitioners Program
These two programs are leadership incubators, offering atypical, artistically innovative career experiences for six young Aboriginal people in remote and regional communities. Veering from the more conventional trades and services training options frequently offered to young Aboriginal people, these programs offer both specific and transferable skills that can return impressive economic, cultural and social benefits for both the individual participants, the out-bush enterprises they currently work for - and the community at large.
The purpose of these programs is to harness inspiration in building the CSR Project, whilst developing confidence, knowledge and creative industry experience that outlasts the Project. The Programs combine employment intervals as part of CSR Project activities both out-bush and in Perth (July 2007 – ongoing until 2010).
The three emerging filmmakers will also collaborate on a ‘Behind the Scenes’ DVD production which will follow the progress of the Emerging Aboriginal Curators Program from 2007 towards the staging of the 2010 exhibition. This film will capture the conversations, contributions and array of collaborating perspectives from the talented team building the CSR Project.
Emerging Aborignal Curators Program
Three Emerging Aboriginal Curators from traditional backgrounds – Murungkurr Terry Murray (ex-Mangkaja Arts) from Fitzroy Crossing, Hayley Atkins from Newman-based Martumili Artists, and Louise Mengil from Waringarri Artists based at Kununurra – are gaining hands-on curatorial skills under the mentorship of senior curator Wally Caruana and the FORM team.
Via the experience of developing the CSR Project - as well as being exposed to intensive sessions with an array of (public and private) arts industry professionals - the Emerging Curators are learning to collaborate and understand the mechanisms of staging a large-scale project that is also applicable to working within the Aboriginal arts industry.
Skills learned include curatorial planning and exhibition design, researching and sharing cultural information, processes and administration work with the FORM team, producing public program material and communicating ideas in multiple formats to diverse audiences.
Emering Aboriginal Multimedia Practitioners Program
The three Emerging Multimedia Practitioners - Morika Biljabu from Punmu, KJ Kenneth Martin from Halls Creek and Clint Dixon from Broome - are developing a range of skills specific to the film and multimedia industry including camera, audio and interviewing techniques, project planning, writing treatments and preparing shot lists and logs for editing.
Film industry professionals including Goolarri Media Enterprises, filmmakers Nicole Ma and Alison James, and audio technicians, cinematographers and editors are also Program mentors.
Three short films have already been produced:
Nana by Morika Biljabu is a film with a distinctly Aboriginal sense of humour that paints a poetic and commanding portrait of one of the Project’s senior cultural figures and grandmother of the filmmaker.
Not Just Painting by Kenneth KJ Martin offers a surprising insight into a young person’s perception of painting, beautifully demonstrating its significance to Aboriginal people and the importance of elders in the eyes of the young.
End of the Road by Clint Dixon depicts the final days of the journey along the Canning Stock Route, which culminated at Lake Stretch near Billiluna, in a celebration of traditional dancing and vibrant painting workshops.
These films are the result of young Aboriginal filmmakers travelling the course of the Canning Stock Route in the Project’s back to country trip in 2007.
Cultural Heritage Preservation Program
As part of the CSR Project, hundreds of hours of film footage, audio and stories were recorded - and still are being recorded as the Project develops in 2008 - documenting the history and cultural heritage of Aboriginal participants. Many of these interviews with senior people contain knowledge that might otherwise be lost, representing an invaluable resource for communities.
A great deal of extremely valuable Aboriginal cultural and historical information, recorded with people who have since passed away, is inaccessible to Aboriginal communities for their own reference, and is instead ‘locked away’ in universities, institutions and academic collections where they are unable to find it. The CSR material will form an ‘archive’ for use as source material in the exhibition, publication and emerging curators program. At the end of the project it will also be repatriated to the nine community enterprises as an archive and resource.
Education and Public Programs
The CSR exhibition will involve education and public programs including talks, films, guided tours and information kits. The programs will interpret a rich and complex body of material for school curricula, providing an awareness of:
The wealth and diversity of Australia’s cultural heritage
Aboriginal accounts of history, culture and relationship to land
Dreaming stories and song-lines featured in paintings and cultural materials
Aboriginal languages of the CSR region and the nature of relationships between groups
Land management practises, traditional knowledge and education systems
Non-Indigenous accounts of CSR history, key figures and events derived from historical records
Contemporary Aboriginal cultural and social realities
Short Films
In addition to the films produced via the Emerging Multimedia Program, award-winning filmmaker Nicole Ma from Nicole Ma Productions will produce a series of short films as part of the CSR Project and exhibition. Compiled from 200 hours of footage recorded whilst travelling the Stock Route in July/August 2007, these films revolve around the themes of country, Jukurrpa (Dreaming), family, movement, history, work and painting.