Acting Out – legitimising young peoples use of public space

We’d had a tough time with this applied theatre project. In our first three weeks we went to the actual space once and even then we’d had to relocate due to rain. It’s a downfall of trying to use public space for a project, because you’re at the mercy of the weather, and in Brisbane that means taking it one day at a time due to the unpredictable nature of our weather.

Last Friday it was a sunny day, we’d had a good workshop the week before (despite low numbers of participants) and I had met up with the two other theatre facilitators and planned out the whole workshop comprehensively. We’d even taken into account what people may or may not want to do. Our hopes were up and we were happy to be working.

An accident on our way to the park changed that momentarily. We had to stop, check that everyone was OK and make sure insurance information was exchanged. Back in the car one of the youth workers made a passing comment about how perhaps the drama stuff would not be engaging the first few times. I was even more motivated to make it work.

There were cyclists at the park. In our space, which we’d booked and got confirmation about more than a week before. People started to half-joke that the project was cursed. Now, I must admit I do hold a few superstitions when it comes to theatre, like not saying “good luck” or using the eponymous M-word from a Shakespeare play while in a theatre. However, I was not having any of these “cursed” jokes and argued we were being challenged and had to step up to the task.

There were about fourteen young people who came along. Most, it seems, live in shelters and sometimes sleep outside. The majority of them were male, which actually balanced out quite well because most of the youth workers and facilitators are women.

Another set-back, the wonderful police officers doing drumming as part of the project couldn’t make it. But we had our drama plan and once the cyclists had moved on we jumped straight in with high energy games. Almost every thing we did got a good response from them, and the dull, proper park was suddenly transformed into an atmosphere of fun and activity. People walking past sometimes stopped to see what was going on and the interest seemed to be mostly positive.

Young people, particularly those at risk of homelessness, have few options in a city like Brisbane. The constant city shift towards commodities means that public space itself is becoming a bit like a commodity in the central business districts. Business people who see young people hanging around often seem to feel uncomfortable, or look down on the situation even if nothing is going on. To be able to counter these negative assumptions is a great challenge. To be able to engage these young people is an even better reward.

Cities need to wake up to their communities. Marginalising people is not, and never will be, a solution. Engaging them and working towards solving the problems they face is a step in the right direction. I believe it’s a step we need to take.

The Child in Time

The Child in Time is yet another Ian McEwan novel that has stunned me with it’s exploration of the human condition. The protagonist, Stephen Lewis, is a successful childrens author and a loving husband and father. When his three-year-old daughter disappears on an excursion to the supermarket he has to grapple with not only telling his wife but also dealing with the loss. After his marriage falls apart, his writing stops and his closest friends move out of London into the countryside, Stephen stays in the city and tries to live with his grief and loss.

Grief is a strange thing. It doesn’t follow the rules, particularly when it comes to time. Much like the subject matter  time is not linear in this narrative. The story moves between Stephen thinking about his daughter in the past, speculating about the future, contemplating the dullness of the present or exploring the strangeness of his dreams. In between his own thoughts and actions are the stories of those around him – his friend Thelma talking of physics and her husband’s fragile mental state, his mother recounting the story of his conception and the often amusing politics of the child literacy committee he partakes in once a week.

In many ways it seems Stephen himself is outside of time, a liminal entity stuck between the past, stories and dreams. While Stephen was grieving he was outside of time, but once he began to address it head on, things started to fall into place again. I think it was this manipulation of time that made the book so moving.

Another interesting element was the nature of children. While Stephen’s daughter is already missing in the main timeframe of the book, there are many other characters who express childish behaviour. Most prominent is Stephen’s close friend and former publisher, Charles Darke, who goes from a promising political career to an isolated life outside the city with his wife. When Stephen last sees him, Charles has reverted to a youthful boy in manner – climbing trees, collecting marbles, making lemonade and refusing to talk of the life he once led.

I got the impression that Charles’ regression into a child-like state had to do with having a lot of responsibility from a young age. His wife, Thelma, talks about this towards the end of the book, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Charles’ condition is a warning about growing up too fast. He was trying to capture the magic of an age that he missed, and in doing so worrying the people around him. While Stephen lost his child, Charles lost his childhood, and the different coping mechanisms of each character beautifully illustrated how each had lost something dear to them.

Loss again came in the form of the homeless people. Stephen seemed to have a fascination with them, often observing them on his travels to and from meetings or when he’s visiting Charles and Thelma. Interestingly Stephen is made uncomfortable by these street figures, although they are victims of loss too.

Once again I’ve found McEwan’s narrative style to be sharp, explorative but also very self-contained. Everything that happens in the book has some thematic relevance and significance to Stephen’s own journey, out of time. The extracts from a fictional handbook on children, introducing each chapter often foreshadowed events and directed reflection, as well as adding humour and lightness at times. The resolution was happy, but also inconclusive enough that it left me thinking about grief and the imprint it leaves no matter how much time passes.

Aspiring Australian journalists – “do something new”

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Walkley Foundation held Brisbane’s Future of Journalism conference today, the second of the series which will be held in capital cities around Australia this year. I was on the second panel with two other final-year journalism students from Griffith University, Denis Semchenko and Tran Nguyen. Stateline’s John Taylor moderated our discussion about how we, as young people, consume news and how we see the future of journalism.

It’s an interesting topic and one that I looked at in my last post, but also something I could talk about for an indefinite amount of time. One of the things I brought up today was that I think it’s important for aspiring journalists to learn from journalists working today and those who have worked in the past. I was thinking about it because during my last internship I found all the journalists I worked with were really accommodating and understanding of the fact that I was a student trying to do my best and get a practical knowledge of the industry. I’m fairly conscious of taking up peoples time and it was encouraging to have journalists acknowledge that I was part of the future of journalism.

I felt it was important to tell journalists that I think their contribution to our learning is valued, so I brought it up today. I said “it’s important for us to learn from journalists working today so that we can develop the skills they value and use them as we move forward.” I’m quoting this particular sentiment because in a later panel about blogging, QUT Creative Industries lecturer and extensive blogger Axel Bruns seemed to misrepresent what I meant.

He said he disagreed because he thought it could limit innovation within journalism if we just kept learning the same skills set over and over without any change (I’m paraphrasing, so please correct me if I’ve got it wrong). While I believe innovation is important in all creative industries, I also think it’s hard to move forward without any foundations. There is quality journalism in this country, you need look no further than the Walkley Awards or the various state media awards for it, and I think that aspiring journalists need to acknowledge the legacy of these journalists by learning from them.

Of course we won’t be doing the exact same things, or at least not those of us that want to survive. In any creative industry you can’t really thrive unless you bring something new, something unique and appealing to the table. However, learning from those already in the industry is essential for true innovation to be achieved. How can you innovate if you don’t fully understand what innovation would be in your industry? How could that innovation be effective if you don’t have the basic skills accepted for that industry? Change is often a gradual process – it’s taken fifteen or so years for journalists to be fatalistically concerned about the internet – and while innovation is important, I don’t think you can have it without a sound understanding of what you’re innovating.

I also found it a bit interesting, coming from someone working in an academic industry. I know enough about academia to see that a lot of it is referring to people who have come before you so that you can support your own views. I think that’s important, and it seems most academics do too, so why then was the logic missed today?

Furthermore, I would like to point out that the fact I mentioned learning so that we can move into the future was left out. I’m assuming it was a simple mistake (easily made by all of us) but it was frustrating to have someone refer to something I’d said out of it’s original context especially when I couldn’t respond. So out with the old soapbox to ensure I have my say, defend my thoughts and elaborate in case anyone who misinterpreted it comes by.

Journalism in Australia – young people and the future

In this day and age it’s hard not to engage with journalism on some level. It’s in news agencies, on TV, radio and the internet, and with the development of globalisation it’s becoming even more important to engage with journalism on some level. So what is journalism like at the moment, and how could it change in the near future in Australia?

The answer’s not simple, and in an (arguably) postmodern world, everyone’s perception of the media is different. But there are certain views emerging which I feel the need to comment on. As someone who has both learnt about and practised journalism, it’s important to engage in the current perspectives on this industry, and to develop theories relevant to the individual’s experiences. Some of the views being thrown around at the moment seem to me particularly cynical.

One view which springs to mind is that young people are engaging with journalism more and more through new media, and ignoring the traditional formats. As a young person, I regularly go to networking sites like Myspace, online news providers like Google News (Australia), ABC Online, BBC Online and LiveNews.com.au. However, I also listen to ABC News Radio and ABC Radio National, watch ABC and Seven News regularly, as well as the occasional current affairs show, and read The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, local community-based newspapers and, sometimes, The Courier Mail. I admit it’s a lot of news, and not every young person may engage with the media as much, but the idea of young people accessing news from predominantly online sources seems ridiculous to me.

The internet is some fifteen years older, younger than the “young people” I am guessing these assumptions are aimed at, and as such it is still a relatively new platform for journalism. When something is new there tends to be more room for errors, exploration and trial-and-error processes. Some news websites have enabled user-generated content (UGC) by encouraging their audience to submit story ideas and media like photographs, audio or video and allowing comments on the content of the site. Some do so more than others, but in general UGC makes online journalism more involving for the public. Young people seem to enjoy being involved in the experience, so I assume that’s where this view stems from.

Having said that, a lot of the sites I visit have comments clearly left by people older than these “young people” talked about. The internet is a non-discriminatory format anyone can engage with, and to make the generalisation that young people get most of their news and information online is limiting how young people are perceived.

Most of the young people I know believe credible journalism is predominant in traditional forms of news like newspapers, radio and television. Online journalism has the potential to combine elements from all three of these forms, but it doesn’t seem to be quite there yet (at least not in a broad sense). It’s fast developing, but that doesn’t mean the other forms will die out just yet.

I was watching the ABC show Q&A (episode 15) last week, and heard the federal Minister for Small Business Craig Emerson voice an opinion of current media forms and new media forms which is similar to what I believe.

“Don’t write off the traditional media,” he says, “People were writing off newspapers a decade ago and newspapers are still, notwithstanding these current problems, are still going pretty strongly. I think it’s just a changing world.” (Craig Emerson, Q&A, Episode 15, 28/08/08, ABC1)

It is a changing world, but I think there’s a place in it for all forms of media. I find, in particular, the idea that newspapers are a dying breed, to be cynical and narrow-minded in substance. It may seem that way at first glance, with most major newspapers in Australia getting lower circulation numbers than in the past, but to say newspapers will die out is not seeing the rest of the picture. People still buy newspapers. Why, if the internet has the same articles for free? Or if the TV and radio news get stories before papers go to print?

I think it’s because of the experience. Reading a newspaper is different to reading news online, or seeing or hearing it. I don’t buy papers every day, but I make a point of buying at least one on the weekend, and usually two or three during the week. I like reading newspapers because they seem to have a depth to them that other forms of journalism don’t.

On the other hand, I like listening to radio news because of the immediacy of it, because it’s current and relevant and engaging in a way reading isn’t. Television is different again, with sound and images as well as a script, and I like to watch the news to see how things have happened. Online can be all three, and that makes it amazingly versatile. But there are aspects of each form which can’t are mutually exclusive to other forms, which means all sources of journalism will probably be around so long as the experience is enjoyed.

There’s also other benefits I can see from having different sources of journalism. In Australia, the media ownership is concentrated between a few organisations, which many believe has led to a lack of diversity of opinion in the media. I would argue that the diversity of formats for journalism means there is diversity in the opinions presented. News providers may be owned by one overarching organisation, but the people involved in online will be different to the people involved in television or print or radio, which means the news will differ between formats regardless of ownership. It may not be ideal, but it is at least providing some diversity.

While the future of journalism may be indeterminate, intangible or indefinable, I think we can all too easily assume one outcome without looking at other possibilities. Our own judgements define what we see as the future, but it’s important to look at other opinions and keep an open mind. Without that, what else is there?