thank you for sharing your thoughts, the best thing these posts can do is start a discussion and get us all out of our comfort zones.

like rebecca, i never thought of ‘the road to hell’ as referring to any particular geographical place or actual community. i took it to be a reference to rebecca’s quote about the evil that can be wrought by do-gooders: the hell that can be created by well-meaning people asserting change in places they have little knowledge about, in disruptive ways.

curiousworks doesn’t work with a community in an effort to change it into something we think is better. we work with a community to set up structures, and provide methods, for open networking and open, diverse communication. these structures and methods - technical, creative, communal - can be utilised by the people in that community to change their own environment, by representing themselves in their own way - if they so wish.

to me, rebecca’s post outlines quite well the full power of having that structure and those methods available in your community. coming from her background as a psychologist, she draws on the perspective of narrative therapy - where the stories people make up about themselves, in a very broad sense, have a great effect on how they think about themselves and therefore what they do or don’t do.

in terms of continuing media or arts work after the facilitators have left the town. i do think it is possible. we’re proud of how we’ve been able to collaborate with ngarluma aboriginal corporation and they have created several videos, taken photos and preserved cultural knowledge since we have left. they are doing it in an integrated, strategic way. and they’re doing it on their own. we just planted the seeds of thought and provided knowledge on simple, affordable ways to create and share multimedia about their community.

with kids it’s much harder to keep these things going, but i do believe it is possible there too. it is just that planting the seeds is not enough: you need to actively present heaps of fun ideas for them to come together and create art or multimedia over a long-term period. once this has taken off - you have lots of returning kids- you can train those who are most interested in the work, the older ones, to keep facilitating it without you.

the resources you need for this task however, are large and we certainly didn’t have the budget for it in 2008. i hope we can gather more resources and that we can return to roebourne and help you with this, however, if you are still there in 2009!

I think the other place I’ve failed to make myself clear is in the definition of “stories”. It’s kind of a term us narrative therapists bandy about….I mean it to encompass more than telling a story in media sense. To me it includes a person’s beliefs about who they are and where they’ve come from. They might tell me in words, pictures, music but they also can communicate it in the decisions they make, the dreams they dare to have, what they get angry about or the way they get up in the morning. It’s in that wider sense of story that I meant it can influence the future. I don’t believe that to be restricted to those who are interested in media. I think the beliefs all people have about themselves and their past are fundamental in their future choices and therefore the path for themselves and their community.

Your idea about “change” itself being demanded only from the outside is a very interesting one. You’re right. I only assume there is a need for change because of the “story” I have about this community, based really on statistics about literacy, child protection, health etc. But as we all know, statistics can be a subjective as any media story and so your point is well taken. Are the good people of Roeburn happy with things the way they are? That is probably an excellent question to begin with. One I probably would have asked earlier, had I been taking my own post to heart…..

Thanks for giving me so much to think about!

RS