Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemLocating Care in curating queer performance in Belfast and Manchester:Gemma Hutton and Greg Thorpe, interviewed by Alyson Campbell, Meta Cohen and Stephen Farrier(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023)An interview with Gemma Hutton and Greg Thorpe, queer performance makers and activists in Belfast and Manchester, respectively. Published in Interventions, the online Open Access site connected with Contemporary Theatre Review. The interview is part of the work undertaken by Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier as co-editors of a special edition of Contemporary Theatre Review (33.1-2), called What’s Queer about Queer Performance now? In the interview we ask Gemma and Greg what is queer work in the particular context in which they make it. We talk about who’s making queer performance, who’s watching it, and how’s that happening, and about what they think the future of queer performance might be, what it might look like and what it might do. For both, questions of care in the context of queer performance communities was foremost in their work.
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ItemCultural precedents for the repatriation of legacy song records to communities of origin(Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 2016-01-01)Repatriation of song recordings from archives and private collections to communities of origin is both a common research method and the subject of critical discourse. In Australia it is a priority of many individual researchers and collecting institutions to enable families and cultural heritage communities to access recorded collections. Anecdotal and documented accounts describe benefits of this access. However, digital heritage items and the metadata that guide their discovery and use circulate in complex milieus of use and guardianship that evolve over time in relation to social, personal, economic and technological contexts. Ethnomusicologists, digital humanists and anthropologists have asked, what is the potential for digital items, and the content management systems through which they are often disseminated, to complicate the benefits of repatriation? How do the 'returns' from archives address or further complicate colonial assumptions about the value of research? This paper lays the groundwork for consideration of these questions in terms of cultural precedents for repatriation of song records in the Kimberley. Drawing primarily on dialogues between ethnomusicologist Sally Treloyn and senior Ngarinyin and Wunambal elder and singer Matthew Dembal Martin, the interplay of archival discovery, repatriation and dissemination, on the one hand, and song conception, song transmission, and the Law and ethos of Wurnan sharing, on the other, is examined. The paper provides a case for support for repatriation initiatives and for consideration of the critical perspectives of cultural heritage stakeholders on research transactions of the past and in the present.
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ItemNo Preview AvailablePretty polyglot: parrotisation as the difference in repetition, again(Unlikely, 2023)This paper was written on Kulin Country — moving between the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri, Boon Wurrung, and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples. On Kulin Country, birds are powerfully symbolic: Bunjil, the creator spirit, travels as a wedgetail eagle, and Waa, the protector, travels as a crow. Even the humble parrots, as Wurundjerri knowledge holder Mandy Nicholson reminds us, are Bunjil's children, and they carry Bunjil's messages, for those who know how to listen.
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ItemRapture: A Study in Pathos and Scenography(International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC), 2022)This article presents Aby Warburg’s art historical approach as a potential guide for scenographic creation and analysis, forwarding Rapture as an example: a song cycle presented by Sydney Festival 2021 to a live and livestreamed audience. The author designed the set and costumes for Rapture and here reflects upon the following questions: can Warburg’s appreciation for “emotive formulas” and “engrams” assist in the making of compelling scenography when conditions for live performance are so altered from the standard? How does a design methodology championing synoptics, analytics and empathy, as Warburg did, integrate within a broader collaboration? Reconstructing Rapture’s design evolution, this study looks to the Laocoön Group, Il Medico and geometries associated with hypnosis as three persuasive pathos carriers. It finds that scenographic focus, potency and expediency arise from the proposed methodology.
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ItemHidden diversity in the conservatoire: A qualitative enquiry into the experiences of higher education music students with disability(SAGE Publications, 2024)Students undertaking higher education music degrees represent a rich tapestry of experiences, cultures and needs. However, equity and inclusion issues related to music students with disability in higher education are frequently addressed in generic ways, and without consultation or consideration of their unique requirements. With limited research available, this qualitative study within an Australian Conservatorium of Music analysed the experiential and situated reflections of 18 music students with disability. Based on our reflexive thematic analysis, we propose that issues related to equity and inclusion for music students in higher education are multi-faceted and interrelated. By foregrounding the participants’ voice, the qualitative themes suggest that enhancements related to disclosure processes, quality of communication and reliability of resources, would fortify equity and inclusion. The findings span the need for reforms at the institutional level, as well as specific professional development for educators and awareness raising amongst the student cohort. Informed by the participants’ lived experience, the findings call for music educators, professional staff and institutional leaders to effectively apply features of inclusive, caring, professional practices so that music students with disability can thrive in higher education.
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ItemDramaturgical Thinking: A Creative Conversation About Australian Dramaturgy(IATC, 2023-12-01)This recorded public panel discussion brings together five graduates of the Victorian College of the Arts’ (VCA) Dramaturgy Masters program with the course’s founder Alyson Campbell. The only course leading to a degree in dramaturgy in Australia was introduced in 2015 as part of the graduate training program at the VCA, University of Melbourne. This course grew from the ecology of VCA’s theatre school and its Animateuring postgraduate course that produced influential graduates working experimentally at the intersection of theatre and site-responsive, community-engaged, solo, and directorial practices. Dramaturgical thinking is central to the course’s pedagogical rationale, designed around the premise that, while we may not always be in the professional role of “dramaturg”, we bring with us a set of practices, ethics and knowledges that can mobilise insight and productive discourse across a wide array of contexts, collaborations, and forms, including community engaged and pedagogical practices, First Nations theatre, new writing, devising, criticism, organisational management, live art, curating, opera, musical theatre, new media, transmedia, screen, and dance.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCan't touch this(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2019-05-10)Australia’s laid-back, sun-drenched beach lifestyle has been a celebrated and prominent part of its official popular culture for nigh on a century, and the images and motifs associated with this culture have become hallmarks of the country’s collective identity. Though these representations tend towards stereotype, for many Australians the idea of a summer holiday at the beach is one that is intensely personal and romanticised – its image is not at all urbanised. As Douglas Booth observed, for Australians the beach has become a ‘sanctuary at which to abandon cares – a place to let down one’s hair, remove one’s clothes […] a paradise where one could laze in peace, free from guilt, drifting between the hot sand and the warm sea, and seek romance’.1 Beach holidays became popular in the interwar years of the twentieth century, but the most intense burst of activity – both in touristic promotion and in the development of tourism infrastructure – accompanied the postwar economic boom, when family incomes were able to meet the cost of a car and, increasingly, a cheap block of land by the beach upon which a holiday home could be erected with thrift and haste. In subtropical southeast Queensland, the postwar beach holiday became the hallmark of the state’s burgeoning tourism industry; the state’s southeast coastline in particular benefiting from its warm climate and proximity to the capital, Brisbane. It was here – along the evocatively named Gold Coast (to Brisbane’s south) and Sunshine Coast (to its north) [1] – that many families experienced their first taste of what is now widely celebrated as the beach lifestyle.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHome-based family caregiver-delivered music and reading interventions for people living with dementia (HOMESIDE trial): an international randomised controlled trial(ELSEVIER, 2023-11)BACKGROUND: Music interventions provided by qualified therapists within residential aged care are effective at attenuating behavioural and psychological symptoms (BPSD) of people with dementia (PwD). The impact of music interventions on dementia symptom management when provided by family caregivers is unclear. METHODS: We implemented a community-based, large, pragmatic, international, superiority, single-masked randomised controlled trial to evaluate if caregiver-delivered music was superior to usual care alone (UC) on reducing BPSD of PwD measured by the Neuropsychiatric Inventory-Questionnaire (NPI-Q). The study included an active control (reading). People with dementia (NPI-Q score ≥6) and their caregiver (dyads) from one of five countries were randomly allocated to caregiver-delivered music, reading, or UC with a 1:1:1 allocation stratified by site. Caregivers received three online protocolised music or reading training sessions delivered by therapists and were recommended to provide five 30-min reading or music activities per week (minimum twice weekly) over 90-days. The NPI-Q severity assessment of PwD was completed online by masked assessors at baseline, 90- (primary) and 180-days post-randomisation and analysed on an intention-to-treat basis using a likelihood-based longitudinal data analysis model. ACTRN12618001799246; ClinicalTrials.govNCT03907748. FINDINGS: Between 27th November 2019 and 7th July 2022, we randomised 432 eligible of 805 screened dyads (music n = 143, reading n = 144, UC n = 145). There was no statistical or clinically important difference in the change from baseline BPSD between caregiver-delivered music (-0.15, 95% CI -1.41 to 1.10, p = 0.81) or reading (-1.12, 95% CI -2.38 to 0.14, p = 0.082) and UC alone at 90-days. No related adverse events occurred. INTERPRETATION: Our findings suggested that music interventions and reading interventions delivered by trained caregivers in community contexts do not decrease enduring BPSD symptoms. FUNDING: Our funding was provided by National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia; The Research Council of Norway; Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany; National Centre for Research and Development, Poland; Alzheimer's Society, UK, as part of the Joint Programme for Neurodegenerative Diseases consortia scheme.
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ItemNo Preview Available[Down City Streets with Father Bob Maguire](The Conversation, 2023-04-24)Return to overview If the camera was there with the blessing of Father Bob Maguire, people felt safe: my relationship with a marvellous man
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ItemNo Preview AvailableReliability and short version of the Dunphy Outcomes Framework (DOF): Integrating the art and science of dance movement therapy(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2023-09)