اعلان الى السودانيين و منظماتهم فى استراليا , امريكيا ,بريطانيا و كينيا

HOME LANDS.

Welcome to Home Land’s first bi-monthly newsletter….February 2010


Every two months this newsletter will let you know about activities, events and opportunities to contribute to the Home Lands project. Please feel free to forward this newsletter on to anyone who you think might be interested. If you would like
to stop receiving this newsletter please let us know.


About Home Lands
Home Lands is a three year (2009 – 2012) multimedia project which uses communication technologies to connect young Karen and Sudanese people in Melbourne who have experienced refugee status with young people in their homelands and other diaspora communities. The participants in Australia and overseas create digital productions with entry-level digital tools and communicate regularly via a collaboratively produced website.

As a research project Home Lands is underpinned by the premise that refugee youth resettlement is more successful if communication and engagement is maintained with home communities.

The project is funded by the Australian Research Centre and the City of Melbourne. Project partners include La Trobe University’s Refugee Research Centre School of Social Sciences, the City of Melbourne’s Community Cultural Development Program in the Arts and Culture Branch, the Cultural Development Network, online media advisory organisation apc.org.au, and the Centre for Multicultural Youth.

Home Lands Activities
Karen Home Lands Training
By Media Trainer Suzi Taylor

The Home Lands Karen Training group in Melbourne has completed its sixth workshop and Peer Facilitator Sherina Shwe, Community Cultural Worker Dave Ngyuen and I are delighted with the attendance and enthusiasm of the participants, along with the progress we have made to date. We have a maximum of 22 participants (all Karen except for one Karenni) from all corners of greater Melbourne. They have all attended regularly and made the effort to come to training on Saturday mornings at the Phoenix Youth Centre in Middle Footscray.

Our first two training days were held late January at CMY in Carlton. Our focus was on meeting each other and building trust and rapport, as well as on introducing participants to the project timeline and its key outcomes. We ran hands-on media activities early on, to build technical skills, communication, creativity and team work. As an introduction to visual storytelling, narrative structure and photography, the participants worked in small groups to develop a very funny series of photographs that told a story.

A field trip to ACMI introduced participants to their newly created Mediatheque and its terrific bank of digital stories. We watched a series of mainly documentary films that were made using photographs, some video and voice over, as an introduction to (and source of inspiration for) our own planned media projects. An excursion to the Immigration Museum was also included to showcase the various ways digital media can be used to tell stories of coming to Australia and re-settlement.

Through a range of activities, including digital voice recording, drawing, oral story-telling and photography, the students have already started telling some stories about their personal histories, their re-settlement and experiences of life in Australia. La Trobe researchers, Phd students Anthony Rodriguez-Jimenez and Zoe Robertson, have attended the training sessions and have been hands-on in participating and providing assistance where needed. Working in small groups, the participants travelled to a place in Melbourne that they connected to, or a place they thought would interest Karen people in Thailand, and they edited the photographs they took, together with voice over, into a short film using ‘Movie Maker’. For two weeks, participants have also had the opportunity to borrow cameras throughout the week, and take
photographs of their daily lives. Recent workshops have incorporated these photographs and used them as the stimulus for more story-telling, with the additional goal being to incorporate
them, and accompanying stories, into a photo montage and a collaborative film.

Guest trainer Jane Curtis will train next Saturday on image editing software ‘Gimp’, along with training on uploading media content to websites and social networking sites. Much of the media produced will be posted on the Karen website that was set up during the pilot project but is as yet unused (http://karentv.wordpress.com) to communicate and collaborate with other Karen people living overseas. The communication between the two groups will also inform the media content that is developed, to ensure that it is relevant, interesting and meaningful for both parties .

Formal workshops are currently scheduled to cease in April but we are looking to continue training and production activities for the Melbourne Karen group by seeking extra funding and exploring further media training opportunities for the participants with ACMI, the Immigration Museum’s Talking Difference project and New Australia Media.

Karen Home Lands Research
By Zoë Robertson and Anthony Rodriguez-Jimenez, PhD research students, La Trobe University


As the Karen workshops enter its seventh week, it is encouraging to observe the enthusiasm of all involved in acquiring media skills and the public sharing of personal experiences. Our aim for the research part of Home Lands is to observe and document the flow of cultural forms and practices arising from the use of new media technologies.
As social researchers we are always indebted to our participants. In this instance, it is the Karen young people’s willingness to articulate their resettlement experiences and to allow us some insight into their experiences of change that result from their many geographical dislocations. Many issues informing our research have arisen from the workshops so far. These include themes surrounding identity, displacement and cultural memory. It is exciting to be at the beginning of this long-term research and, to document the ways in which these young people will continue to connect to others across space and time.


Karen Home Lands…Advisory Group

The Advisory Group met for the first time on Wednesday, 18 February. The group was formed to perform two key tasks:

1. To provide the training team and the Project Coordinator feedback on issues of cultural and political sensitivities prior publishing/release of Home Land materials via the website or screenings.
2. To advise on the artistic and community development components of the training.

The Advisory Group members are: Chit Lu Wyn (Foundation House), Shahin Shafaei (VCA’s Centre for Cultural Partnerships), Erminia Colucci (Research Fellow/Research Program Coordinator at Melbourne University’s Centre for International Mental Health) and Willow Kellock who coordinated the pilot project of Home Lands in Mae Sot.

Joining the Advisory Group for the first meeting were Dave and Sherina from the Training Team and Anthony and Zoe, researchers on the project. Bree, Project Coordinator, was also in attendance. Although training in Melbourne commenced mid January we waited until now to convene the group as two members 0have been overseas.

There was much to discuss at the meeting with lively conversation covering the ethics of research, the current lack of training in Thailand, the content and aim of the training and the need to incorporate some workshops in the schedule which do not address technical training in order to create more space for storytelling. We also discussed the challenge of doing an international project when most funding bodies seek to spend their money locally.

The next step is for the Advisory Group members who can consult on artistic practices (Shahin and Erminia) to meet up with all three of the Training Team early March so they can be a sounding board for the trainers on workshop content and practices.



On the Thai/Burma Border
The challenges of setting up multimedia projects at an overseas location are not to be underestimated! The initial proposal for collaboration to commence formal training in Thailand (Mae Sot) by early March has been postponed due to timing and scheduling difficulties in Thailand.

CMY’s Sector Development Project Officer Nick Butera recently visited the border however on a 2 week study trip on the border and made contact with former Home Lands pilot project participants. We are in discussion with some of these past participants at the Karen Students Network Group.

The aim now is for training to commence in the refugee camp of Mae La in late March/early April. Mae La was chosen as many of the Melbourne Karen and Karenni participants have friends and family in Mae la.

Sudanese Home Lands
Home Lands international development student intern Shirley Ogwayo from Deakin University will work at CMY February to April to further the pilot project’s work in scoping out partnerships in Kenya in consultation with Home Lands project partners and community contacts.

The timeframe for commencing the Sudanese activities will be now be postponed for 2011 as this year, 2010, will be dedicated to working with the Karen community.

Contacting Home Lands
If you have any queries or suggestions contact:


Bree McKilligan
Home Lands Project Coordinator,
Centre for Multicultural Youth
9340 3726/0401 593 300
[email protected]