Indigenous Traditional Dance Project (Artback NT)

In 2015, I was invited to undertake the evaluation of a project that also connected older people with dance, but in this case a festival that supported Indigenous Elders to keep their culture strong in a remote community of the Northern Territory. With aims for community wellbeing, intercultural learning and cultural maintenance through performing arts for remote communities in the Northern Territory, Artback NT’s Indigenous Traditional Dance Program (ITDP) culminated in the annual DanceSite Festival in Borroloola. This was a unique event embedded in a three-year community arts and cultural development (CACD) process. Hosted by the community of Borroloola, the project engaged the community across social, economic and cultural interests while providing high level production outcomes for the festival.

Not only had I never visited the outback of Australia, I had very little understanding of traditional or contemporary cultural practices in Indigenous communities. After consultation with Lia Pa’apa’a, CACD worker, and Louise Partos, Director of Artback NT, we agreed that a participatory evaluation would need to be developed to ensure local knowledge was valued.^[1]  I worked in community with Marlene Timothy, local coordinator and Traditional Owner, in the lead up to the festival to develop the framework and deliver interview questions. As part of the opening ceremony of the festival, the voices of Elders, community members, and children introduced themselves and their reflections of the value of the festival in an edited audio piece. Later, I followed up with some key leaders in the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community to complement Marlene’s interviews.

Ongoing consultations with community and staff ensured the evaluation would be both reflective and useful. By paying careful attention to the expression of local knowledge by Elders and the tacit experience of CACD practitioners alongside community members, this evaluation primarily focused on ‘process evaluation’. This meant we focused on ‘how it worked’ as well as ‘the impact’ it created. While procedural lessons and limited expression on short term ‘outputs’ can assist with reporting mechanisms, this process-focused approach aimed to empower communities to critically reflect on the significance of the project to focus on local ownership, self-determination, and to imagine future delivery in Borroloola and elsewhere.

The evaluation largely explored the benefits of the project, the process provided a useful framework also for the discussion of potential for harm. CACD practice is in fact an intervention with the good will of outsiders attempting to support local development. Interviewees were forthcoming about their criticisms including: The interest in more local leadership development, concern for relying heavily on one individual, and the need for continued support. The evaluative discussions reflected a critical awareness and alignment of the goals and interests of Artback NT. The two-tiered approach of including interviews from both Marlene and myself offered multiple entry points and opportunities for the community to provide feedback in the way most comfortable to them.

Through the research-evaluation, a new theoretical framework emerged articulating the ‘value’ and ‘values’ of the project from the participants, local community, Artback NT, and more broadly CACD practices and Indigenous festivals in Australia. Critical feedback was offered for consideration while primarily arguing the success of the model relies on its investment in capacity building with a key focus on human resources and adaptability to the local social context. These were insights more than economics or attendance numbers. In addition, a series of recommendations were made regarding the program model, the need for cultural support roles for Elders, the potential for an increase in men’s engagement in the festival, strengthened effort for partnership maintenance, supported human resources, devolved leadership, and finally some procedural feedback for the festival.

Like the Coming Back Out Ball, rich theoretical material emerged including recommendations to be directed far beyond the scope of the art project (such as the potential role of Elders in local planning). These types of cultural development and arts projects have at their very core a social change agenda that focuses on core artistic and community collaborators, the audience for the artistic outcome, the broader public, and possibly due to the inter-sectoral nature of co-creation – policy frames. Through dialogic methods focusing on the embodied knowledge of Elders and artists, the evaluation theorised the project as an integrated ecology of cultural practice. It functioned as an interrelated cycle of cultural maintenance, cultural transmission of knowledge, site of cultural exchange between Indigenous language groups, and space for cultural understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members.