dLAB
In partnership with the Australian Government Initiative Unlocking Australia’s Potential, dLux MediaArts will be taking dLab to hard to reach youth in regional Australia.
What? The dLab program uses informal learning contexts to provide pathways into science-based learning for hard to reach young people in remote and regional areas. This program is activated through unique training and creative community engagement programs to increase leadership opportunities in the sciences through information and communications technology (ICT).
dLux MediaArts is working collaboratively with partner organisations and regional communities to develop site specific program content drawing on the knowledge of experts across a variety of disciplines including the arts, science, education, museology and social work as well as tapping into the wisdom of local community elders. The dLab program uses an array of digital technologies to capture attention and develop projects using the web, open source software and ICT to cost effective use.
Who? The dLab program was developed to provide an avenue for young people from isolated backgrounds to access alternative education models and pathways to higher learning and training. More specifically, dLux MediaArts concentrates on creating a balance of opportunities and has identified a lack of engagement programs for young women. As a long term goal and guiding principle the program facilitates increased opportunities for young women from indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD). The dLab program enables young women to be more actively involved by realising their potential to be change-makers amongst their peers and leaders in the community.
Where? dLux MediaArts identified the need to help bridge the skills gap in regional and remote Australia through encouraging exchanges between metropolitan and international arts practitioners and regional communities. Currently, the dLab program focuses in four primary areas - Wagga Wagga, Wilcannia, Darwin and Broken Hill - and is continually building avenues (hubs) for communication, knowledge sharing, collaboration and presentation.
Although, Sydney based, dLux travels frequently to regional Australia with our touring program and supports education in digital media, experimental video art and interactive technologies with workshops and artist residencies through its network of museums and gallery partners. For more information on these opprtunities contact our program coordinator.
How? The dLab program through the Inspiring Australia - Unlocking Australia’s Potential initiative will conduct a series of on-site residencies and provide online support and resources that concentrate on identifying areas of interest, up-skilling local community members and building collaborative projects to produce public outcomes. dLux MediaArts harnesses the expertise of artists as facilitators for the program and use their ability to adapt and think laterally with dLux’ mobile multimedia lab. These artists not only have technical and conceptual skills, but also work within the realms of socially engaged art practice and community development.
Over the course of the next two years dLux MediaArts will work with our partners in Wagga Wagga, Wilcannia, Darwin and Broken Hill to create local hubs by contributing to the building and activation of the communities’ own mobile multimedia facilities. These hubs will act as nodes to develop content and resources that can be shared across locations as well as build capacity for national and international collaborations.
Why? dLux MediaArts recognises the complimentary critical thinking process between art and science. Together, these disciplines visibly increase their individual capacity for developing new audiences through the growing trend for collaboration and yield interesting results through their joint enquiry. The dLab program fosters stimulating activities bringing together culturally relevant, community driven science engagements to create a holistic hands-on learning model. The program reasserts the value of local knowledge and through community skills development acknowledges the powerful national and global role these factors play in socially engaged art practice as well as scientific endeavour.
“If culture describes how we make sense and the results of that sense, then art describes that aspect of cultural action in which creativity and imagination are the key drivers where we discover meaning and community... With the arts, we can imagine the future, unpack the past and confront the present. We can predict change, focus our visions and face our fears”.
(John Hawkes, ‘Creative Engagement’, Artwork Magazine Issue 54, Dec. 2002)
The dLab program works within communities to move individual roles from participants to collaborators. Just as art and science further knowledge and progress culture, the dLab program allows young people to re-imagine their future.
History The dLab program is based on UNESCO award winning cultural leader and innovator, mervin Jarman’s iStreet Lab. In 2011, mervin Jarman worked with dLux MediaArts to build the first iteration of the dLux’ mobile multimedia lab and trained dLux artist facilitators in the iStreet methodology. The iStreet methodology is socially engineered technology for young people and community development focusing on skills training, literacy, counseling and well-being. dLab is founded on the principles and ethics of the iStreet lab to deliver creative engagement programs and has developed to encompass art and science directed activities. The model provides training for community workers and young people to replicate the dLab approach. It seeks to embed technologies and develop expertise in remote communities. By empowering the community and creating networks to support points of leadership, the program generates a greater sustained interest through access to the sciences, technology and the arts long after the delivery of the initial program has been completed.
For more information about this project please contact Alexia Estrellado dLAB Program Coordinator on T/ +61 2 9569 1458 M/ 0405 715 043
For more information about the national progam go online to www.scienceinpublic.com.au/inspiringaus.
“This Inspiring Australia initiative is supported by the Australian Government through the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education in partnership with dLux MediaArts”