Exploring African Youth Cultural Memory and the Australian Cultural Experience

Advance book previews
contributor quotes....

“This chapter describes a research project conducted amongst Black youth of African migrant descent in Western Australia. The project had various components with one being a festival where African Australian young people used the arts to both inquire into their own lives, and share them with others….”

“The African cultural memory youth arts festival (ACMYAF) functioned as both a research inquiry and cultural event in the way that it provided young people with an empowering space for exploring issues relating to their cultural identities both performatively and educatively. The outcomes were informative to both Arts Based Educational Research (ABER) approaches and bicultural socialisation of the African Australian youth. ABER along with an African centered pedagogical approach provided important frameworks for exploring African cultural memory and the Australian cultural experience of the African Australian youth in an educative and informative way.”

Peter Mbago Wakholi, Peter Wright

look for the complete article in the upcoming book, "Creative Arts in Research for Community and Cultural Change"

Peter Mbago Wakholi, M.Ed. BSc., BEd. is originally from Uganda, Peter migrated to Australia with his family in 1991. Before coming to Australia, he worked as a high school teacher in Uganda, Kenya and Zambia following his graduation from Makerere University in Uganda (1984). Peter currently works with the Education Department in Western Australia as a high school teacher and is pursuing a PhD through the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Murdoch University on “Negotiating Cultural Identity through the Arts”. Peter holds an M.Ed Research from Murdoch University. His master’s research project centred on ‘African Cultural Education: A dialogue with the African Migrant Youth in Western Australia’. He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Professional Learning and a B.Ed from Edith Cowan University; and a BSc from Makerere University in Uganda. Peter is the author of “African Cultural Education and the African Youth in Western Australia: Experimenting with the Ujamaa Circle” (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag, 2008), as well as several refereed and magazine articles in the area of African cultural education. His research interests include migration and cultural identity – in particular the role of African cultural knowledge – and the use of arts-based approaches in strengthening the cultural identities of African youth. In addition, he is also a practising artist and a cultural education facilitator.

Peter Wright Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in Arts Education and Research Methods, and Academic Chair of Research and Postgraduate Studies, School of Education at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. He is an active researcher and works across the arts with a commitment to personal, social and cultural inquiry, development, education and expression. Peter’s research interests include teaching, learning and healing in, through, and with the Arts; Arts-informed approaches to research; Participatory Arts, Drama Education; Applied Theatre; Transformational learning; Teacher development in the Arts, and Playback Theatre. Recently Peter acted as an editor for a special themed issue of Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research on Performative Social Science, a reviewer for Qualitative Inquiry in Education, and the E-journal of UNESCO Observatory: Multi-Disciplinary Research in the Arts. Peter is a member of the International Arts Education Research Network (Australia Council for the Arts/UNESCO), and the UNESCO LEA (Links to Education and Art) International Network of Experts in Arts Education.

"Travelling"... A Photo Based Performative Study of Perceptions and Possibilities, Conversations on Performance, Disability and Health

Advance book previews Contributor Quotes

Pam Patterson

"While not denying that there is some pleasure in what I do, pleasure per se is not my motivation. I am a woman with painful disabilities living with cancer challenges. Grappling with the means to survive, to thrive, to engage, to act is what drives me. "

"I wanted to reinvestigate my own photo-based performative work in order to consider the problematic of maker/viewer perception and the possibilities for social and cultural change. I focused first on Travelling, a web flash exhibition which depicted, through moving stills, my journey across different terrain and through changing seasons from London, UK, to Prince Edward County and Toronto, Ontario, and finally to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Travelling Body Worlds the title of the “performance” from which this exhibition was drawn, was actually a series of conversations on performance, disability, and health that I had with colleagues in Ontario, academics and access theatre professionals in London, and community health advocates in St. John’s."

"I “performed” these conversations while walking barefoot out through snow to the Toronto International Airport, standing on wet North London streets, wading in the Bloomfield Mill Pond, and hiking at the edge of a cliff in Newfoundland. As I was the photographer and the subject was me, the only part of me that I could consistently see to photograph was my feet. So the images used in the web flash exhibit are of my feet in these various settings. What is not visible though is the pain in my limbs and the exhaustion on my face. The conversations, the frustrations, and the elations are also not recorded. But, could Travelling allow for another way of reading performances of pain, suffering, and disability? Not everyone can see performances. Many are site specific and budget limitations can make touring difficult. Videos can be easily distributed and on-line images and sites provide greater access. Can these images recall the performance and/or enrich our understanding? "

Pam Patterson (PhD) is currently Director for the interdisciplinary arts program, WIAprojects and teaches at York University, the Ontario College of Art & Design and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She has, for 25 years, been active in the art and women’s communities. Her research, performance and teaching have focused on embodiment in art practice, the body in art, disability studies, women & gender studies, and feminist art education with publications in journals such as: Studies in Art Education, Resources for Feminist Research, Matriart: A Canadian Feminist Art Journal, FUSE, Fibrearts, Parachute and presentations in conferences such as: the Feminism and Art Conference (Toronto), History of Art Education Symposium (Penn State), and Moving Bodies, Embodying Movement: Exploring the Rhetoric of the Body (State University of New York, Brockport). She has taught for various institutions such as: Sheridan College, George Brown College, Ryerson Polytechnical University and the University of Toronto. As a performance and visual artist she was a founding member of FADO Performance and ARTIFACTS and has exhibited and performed internationally. For 2008/10, she presented a new exhibition/performance work, A Cellu(h)er Resistance: A Body with/out Organs? in a residency for FADO at XPACE Cultural Centre, Toronto, exhibited Travelling a digital exhibition for the Centre for Canadian Contemporary Art (CCCA), Fleishman Gallery and Art Seen (Educational Insights), and performed and exhibited Lighthousekeeping for ACEART INC. & Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg).