The annual Newman Film Festival is coming up on Sunday, September 19! Starting at 5pm at the Newman Recreation Centre, the afternoon will feature live music, bbq, dancing and premiere a number of short films made by young people in Newman and the Martu Desert Stories crew. See the Pilbara from a different perspective!

For those who can’t make it, stay tuned to the CuriousWorks site for film highlights!

Click on the flier below for a bigger version.

In 2009, we spent 3 months in Newman, remote Western Australia. Here is a summary video showing the highlights, our process, and lots of heart and soul from the young people of Newman. Enjoy!

UPDATE

As a result of our 2009 project in Newman:

• The Shire of East Pilbara has committed to re-opening and redeveloping a youth centre in town
• BHP, local schools and the Shire are coming together to discuss a position for an ongoing youth worker in town
• The young people of Newman have made another film in their series, completely independently (they are 11-13 years old)
• CuriousWorks will be returning to Newman in 2010, with the support of BHP Billiton Iron Ore

We couldn’t be more chuffed. In 2010 we’ll continue to focus on building capacity in the community, until CuriousWorks becomes completely redundant in Newman. Our goal in each community is for the young people, local partners, local business and government to all be working in mutual benefit, empowering the most marginalised people in their town to sustainably tell the stories of their place.

CuriousWorks Newman 2009 Summary Video from CuriousWorks on Vimeo.

Our time in Newman was made possible through the BHP Billiton Iron Ore – Legacy Project presented by Country Arts WA in association with Curious Works and the Newman Community.

You’ve checked out the Newman video summary, so now its time to see the best video works created by the young people of Newman in 2009! All of the videos below were conceived, shot & edited by young people in Newman, and many of the films had a big screen premiere at Newman’s first Film Festival in October 2009!

Our time in Newman was made possible through the BHP Billiton Iron Ore – Legacy Project presented by Country Arts WA in association with Curious Works and the Newman Community.

Cave Crew: Episode 1

Jamurrara

High School Confessions

The Last Caveman

Newman News

Mr Speedy

A painter sees a vision in the desert. A tourist learns a lesson. A subtle, beautiful film from the Martu Media mob and CuriousWorks in remote North-Western Australia.

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Pictures from the shoot:

Our time in Newman was made possible through the BHP Billiton Iron Ore – Legacy Project presented by Country Arts WA in association with Curious Works and the Newman Community.

I’ve always been afraid of two things – bodies of water (in which I cannot see the bottom) and heights.  At 7, I was stung by a jellyfish while swimming. That same year, I fell off a rock face and into a crevice of fresh lava rock, gouging and slicing my flesh as I tumbled to the bottom – it felt like I fell for miles.  I came to dread swimming and climbing things.

Over 20 years later, I found myself miles in the air flying across the world’s largest body of water.  All to work for a small organization called CuriousWorks.  I’d not heard of them until just a few weeks earlier and in a few days, I was going to be helping them make media with kids in the middle of the Pilbara – a place few Australians (let alone Americans like me) ever get the chance to see.

With just a single Tweet as the trigger, I was going to be over 10,000 miles away from home, in the middle of a vast desert, in a country I’d never been to…

I dove in.

Some mornings, I had magnificent dreams and awoke to watch the sun rise over the desert landscape.

Other mornings gave me a taste of the complex realities of kids in rural and remote communities.

And this was only the first 5 days of my trip…

My second week in Australia found me in the small mining town of Newman, Western Australia.  Newman consists of about 5,000 people with an extra 2,000 as ‘fly in fly out‘).  It sits about 1200 km north of Perth in the heart of the Pilbara Desert.  Because of it’s remote location, food and water need to be shipped in to Newman’s only grocery store weekly.   Pilbara literally, means ‘dry‘.

There’s a cultural thirst here too – particularly for the young people of Newman.  Pop cultural artifacts like StarWars, Twilight and Subway sandwiches are lapped up.  The kids constantly talk about wanting to see ‘bands in Perth’.  In deed, many young people – Newman’s potential future leaders -  end up leaving.

Because of this, BHP Billiton recognized the need for a more sustainable and permanent infrastructure – something for the long term.  That’s where CuriousWorks came in.

As part of the BHP Iron Ore Legacy Project and in partnership with Country Arts WA, CuriousWorks helped Newman’s kids develop a wide range of skills they could put back in to their community.  Some of these skills were gained interviewing locals outside of school.  Other skills were nurtured by developing a class website.  Our final part of the project was putting on Newman’s first film festival.

In starting the project, Senior Advisor of Sustainability and Community Relations for BHP Billiton, Scott Bird said:

“We really want to contribute something significant to the town that demonstrates BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s commitment to creating liveable communities that people want to participate in for the long term. We expect this project will create a lasting impact on both the community members and the landscape of the Newman Township.”

Over the next 12 weeks, we worked with teachers, students and parents to build the media capacity of Newman’s young residents.    We moved between 5 different locations to conduct our after school media-making workshops while teaching new media classes in the primary and senior high schools.  It was hectic, but a lot of fun and the kids we worked with were very productive.

The project accomplished some great things with and for the young people of Newman:

• our kids got on national television and a national newspaper
• our kids launched a student website with an accompanying lobbying website and youth blog
• we also learned 33 other things…

And yes, we felt happy to call them ‘our kids’.  They are awesome.

While we accomplished a lot while there, we were not without our challenges.  For one, we were outsiders, not just geographically, but culturally too; a Sri Lankan, a Lebanesian, a snow white Australian with a slight British accent and an Asian-American made for some curious workers in a predominantly white town.  There were even a few incidents where I wondered if I’d been discriminated against because of my ‘outsider’ ness.  In a conversation I had with a local school teacher, she offhandedly referred to the film production, internet literacy development, and photography we were doing with the kids as not ‘real’ teaching.

Coming into Newman, we also expected to have a stable teaching space to meet with the youth.  We had anything but.  Not only did the local youth center close down a week before we arrived, but the places we’d hoped to conduct our media workshops were unreliable, in spite of the dedicated efforts of our staff and our Newman partners.  The recently closed youth center hadn’t even been open a year.  Where were after school programs for youth going to be held?  Where were the creative spaces kids could go to continue their learning, playing and making when the schools closed?  Who would lead this?

Clearly, there was and is a lot of work to do.  I wouldn’t say the kids we worked with were disadvantaged in the sense that Americans (like my self) normally think – poverty, homelessness, language barriers.  I’d say their greatest disadvantage is the lack of a stable, supportive center that fosters the creative skills they already have.

As of this writing, there is still no youth space for the kids of Newman to meet and make media.  This is the task ahead for the teachers, residents and businesses of Newman – to grow and build on the things we developed with Newman’s youth.  To stay true to our intentions as CuriousWorkers, we need to ensure the communities we work with can serve themselves.

Newman certainly deserves to.

The youth of Newman, remote Western Australia, were on ABC recently. So was Shakthi. Which is cool.

UPDATE: The Newman Media Crew were also on Behind the News!

The ABC don’t let you embed content, so you have to click on this image to go to the video on their site. Our public broadcaster is not so open in this regard.

The Newman Youth crew were also in the West Australian – check it out:

But if you want to see their own site, it’s right here.

Our time in Newman was made possible through the BHP Billiton Iron Ore – Legacy Project presented by Country Arts WA in association with Curious Works and the Newman Community.

Sometimes the best media is that which you don’t understand. At first. Step into another world – unless you’re a teenager from Newman, in which case, check out your world on film!

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Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

I once had a mentor tell me that when working to empower people, all you can really do is ‘hold the crown out in front of them’ – it’s up to them to step up into that crown and claim it.

We’ve been in Newman for nearly 12 weeks now working to help local kids make media, videos and websites, as well as fundraise, run a film night and even get mentions in both print and on television!

On our last ‘workday’ with them we did a nice review of everything they’d learned. At this point, without any youth center or community technology space to call their own – it’s up to Newman’s youth to determine their future as the town’s central media makers. Our hope is that they’ll be able build on the skills and creativity they’ve developed these past 12 weeks.

That said, here’s a blog ‘toast’ to the 33 things the youth of Newman can do…so far.

1. 

   Act

2. 

   Be Resourceful

3. 

   Blog

4. 

   Build Ad Hoc Computer Labs

5. 

   Build Websites

6. 

   Collaborate

7. 

   Conceptualize and Design Palmtop Computers

8. 

   Create Live Electronic Music

9. 

   Develop Ideas for Films

10. 

    Direct

11. 

    Edit Video

12. 

    Generate Ideas for Youth Spaces

13. 

    Get Furniture Donations for Youth Spaces

14. 

    Hold and Record Youth Forums

15. 

    Learn About DJing

16. 

    Learn From Each Other

17. 

    Lobby Online

18. 

    Market Events

19. 

    Model

20. 

    Petition for the Youth of Newman

21. 

    Produce

22. 

    Set Up Facebook Pages

23. 

    Set Up Video for Events

24. 

    Share Media Together

25. 

    Shoot Video

26. 

    Storyboard Movies

27. 

    Take Notes

28. 

    Teach Each Other About DJing

29. 

    Teach Each Other

30. 

    Teach Teachers

31. 

    Twitter

32. 

    Upload Pictures To Share with the World

33. 

    Work Alone

Hi. I’m the new kid, Alex.

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Confessions from Newman High School students. Edited by Sage Orion.

Watch other videos by the Newman media crew on All Around You.