BIGhART BIGsTORY REDUX

Change the Story / Change the World

When I describe BIGhART to folks in the US they accuse me of making it up. In this episode re-broadcast Scott Rankin, BIGhART’s founder, describes how this expansive, constantly morphing, multi-disciplinary, thirty-year long enterprise became one of the world's leading arts and social change organizations.

This is first of two episodes featuring Scott. You can listen to Chapter 2 HERE

BIO

Scott co-founded Big hART with friend John Bakes in 1992. As CEO and Creative Director, Scott leads the overarching vision for all Big hART projects – from pilot through to legacy. A leader and teacher in the field of social and cultural innovation, Scott provides daily mentorship and knowledge transfer to all Big hART staff so that they can in turn lead our projects with confidence.

An award winning writer and director in his own right, Scott’s works have been included many times in major arts festivals. His reputation is built on a quarter of a century of work, creating, funding and directing large-scale projects in diverse communities with high needs, in isolated settings.

Big hART is Scott’s passionate contribution to the arts and society.

Notable Mentions

BIGhART: Authentic, high-quality art made with communities.

Big hART brings virtuosic artists into communities to collaborate and create authentic stories which illuminate local injustice. We present these stories to mainstream audiences to help raise awareness. This builds public support for change and helps to protect vulnerable people.

Everyone, everywhere has the right to thrive.

Big hART works with communities experiencing high levels of need. Rather than focusing on the problem, our unique non-welfare projects build on community assets, strengthening vulnerable individuals, and creating long term attitudinal shifts. Our hope is for all communities to flourish.

Positive, generational change begins as a cultural shift.

Big hART designs and delivers transformative projects to address complex social issues. Our cultural approaches are evaluated and acknowledged as best practice. Decision makers seeking better solutions can use our award winning projects to help develop new and better policy. We aim to drive generational change.

Ngapartji Ngapartji: Big hART designed the Ngapartji Ngapartji project to raise awareness of Indigenous language loss, and the lack of an national Indigenous languages policy. In order to create visibility around these issues, we launched a language and culture teaching portal, offered audiences the chance to learn Pitjantjatjara through a small teaching show, created short teaching films, as well as music and CDs with a Pitjantjatjara choir. We made a high profile documentary, and finally, a large award winning touring show for national festivals. By creating this range of art products, we attracted exceptional media and gained high level political interest in the issue. This assisted in driving a new Indigenous language policy and increased funding to help prevent language loss.

Trevor Jamieson is a veteran of stage and screen with over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry, and a long time creative partner with BIGhART. He is known as an Actor, Dancer, Musician and Storyteller and his portrait, taken by Brett Canet-Gibson, took out the People’s Choice award for the 2017 National Portrait gallery exhibition in Canberra.

Trevor is not only an accomplished actor but is also known for his ability on the guitar and didgeridoo. Trevor has also received acclaim for his dance performances across the globe.Trevor was announced as a Permanent Ambassador for the Revelation Perth International Film Festival in 2017.Some of Trevor’s screen work includes Storm Boy; Thalu: Dreamtime is Now; Boys in the Trees. His stage credits include the Australian tour of The Season; the Sydney Theatre Company’s The Secret River; and the performance of Namatjira at Southbank, London in front of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World's Frontlines - Citizen artists successfully rebuild the social infrastructure in six communities devastated by war, repression and dislocation. Author William Cleveland tells remarkable stories from Northern Ireland, Cambodia, South Africa, United States (Watts, Los Angeles), aboriginal Australia, and Serbia, about artists who resolve conflict, heal unspeakable trauma, give voice to the forgotten and disappeared, and restitch the cultural fabric of their communities.

Pitjantjatjara: The Pitjantjatjara (/ˌpɪtʃəntʃəˈtʃɑːrə/;[1] Pitjantjatjara: [ˈpɪɟanɟaɟaɾa] or [ˈpɪɟanɟaɾa]) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are varieties of the Western Desert language).

They refer to themselves as aṉangu (people). The Pitjantjatjara live mostly in the northwest of South Australia, extending across the border into the Northern Territory to just south of Lake Amadeus, and west a short distance into Western Australia. The land is an inseparable and important part of their identity, and every part of it is rich with stories and meaning to aṉangu.[2]

They have, for the most part, given up their nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle but have retained their language and much of their culture in synergy with increasing influences from the broader Australian community.

Today there are still about 4,000 aṉangu living scattered in small communities and outstations across their traditional lands, forming one of the most successful joint land arrangements in Australia with Aboriginal traditional owners.

Melbourne International Arts Festival: Melbourne International Arts Festival, formerly Spoleto Festival Melbourne – Festival of the Three Worlds, then Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, becoming commonly known as Melbourne Festival, was a major international arts festival held in Melbourne, Australia, from 1986 to 2019. It was to be superseded by a new festival called Rising from 2020 (which was subsequently derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia).

Spinifex Country: The Pila Nguru, often referred to in English as the Spinifex people, are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Australia, whose lands extend to the border with South Australia and to the north of the Nullarbor Plain.[1][2] The centre of their homeland is in the Great Victoria Desert, at Tjuntjunjarra, some 700 kilometres (430 mi) east of Kalgoorlie,[3] perhaps the remotest community in Australia.[4] Their country is sometimes referred to as Spinifex country.[5] The Pila Nguru were the last Australian people to have dropped the complete trappings of their traditional lifestyle.[6]

Alex Kelly: Alex Kelly is an Australian freelance artist, filmmaker and producer based in regional Australia. Kelly was born in regional NSW and grew up in a farming community near Wodonga in regional Victoria,[1]

Kelly has worked with diverse communities in Australia and around the world including Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, Amsterdam, Barcelona and the UK organising and lobbying for social change. She has been involved in community development, the arts, media (communication), environmental protection and social justice projects.

Palawa people of Tasmania: The Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa kani: Palawa or Pakana[4]) are[5] the Aboriginal people of the Australian island of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. For much of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were widely, and erroneously, thought of as being an extinct cultural and ethnic group that had been intentionally exterminated by white settlers.[6] Contemporary figures (2016) for the number of people of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent vary according to the criteria used to determine this identity, ranging from 6,000 to over 23,000.[1][2]

Edward Said: (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian American academic, literary critic and political activist.[1] A professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of postcolonial studies.[2] Born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.

David Mamet is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway 1970s plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo.[2] His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.

Tasmania is an island