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Abstract:
The following report provides a review of Big hART’s work on the Ngapartji Ngapartji Project. The project encapsulates Big hART’s work in the Alice Springs town camps, APY Lands in South Australia and other remote communities in Central Australia from 2005 to 2010. This includes the creative workshops, community building, language maintenance, literacy development, crime prevention, training and performance elements of their work. Throughout this work arts-based practice has been used in an attempt to help make a difference to the lives of Indigenous people living in the town camps and remote communities Big hART people visited. As well as the intrinsic value of offering art and performance to people who live in regional and remote Australia the intention of the work was to 1) create and showcase high quality art and performance 2) bring out the stories of Anangu (Indigenous people from PItjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara backgrounds) 3) encourage interaction between Anangu and non-Anangu across the country 4) provide opportunities for other personal and social developmental experiences, 5) encourage PItjantjatjara language speaking and educate Australians about the urgency of lndigenous language protection, 6) build opportunities for literacy development, 7) experiment with novel ways to respond to crime prevention and 8) help support more active relationships between young people and others in their community. In other words, the intention of Big hART was to use arts and cultural practice to help the people in Central Australia to come together to exchange gifts of hope, language, culture and performance so that people’s sense of connection to Anangu life, language, family and country could be transformed.
