Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 514
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Hidden diversity in the conservatoire: A qualitative enquiry into the experiences of higher education music students with disability
    Thompson, G ; de Bruin, L ; Subiantoro, M ; Skinner, A (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.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Dramaturgical Thinking: A Creative Conversation About Australian Dramaturgy
    Walton, RE ; Campbell, A (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.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    X (for Kate)
    Selenitsch, N (Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne, 2022-08-04)
    X (2022) was a site-specific work that considered the nature of colour, representation, and the limits of minimalist affect. A monochrome (yellow) chalk drawing, X was conceived as a memorial artwork in remembrance of late colleague Kate Daw. “X” is a kiss. “X” marks the spot. “X” is also an end. X (2022) extended upon the legacies of Mimimalism to consider representational and affective experience. A monochrome of bright yellow chalk covering the entirety of a salon-style gallery wall, the colour was the same bright sun-yellow as a gifted cashmere jumper. It was also a colour Kate would wear. The density of the chalk pigment presented a kind of visual absorption. As an affective experience, and through metaphor, X (2022) innovatively and sympathetically presented an artwork of affective memorialisation. X (2022) was created for the exhibition “Love, work (for KD)” held at Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. The exhibition was a tribute exhibition for the artist and academic Kate Daw (1965-2020), who was the Head of Art, VCA, School of Fine Art at the University of Melbourne when she passed. She was a close colleague and friend. A vastly popular and influential figure, the exhibition “Love, work (for KD)” was notably well attended by artists, academics and industry figures. The experience of attendees, including critic Amelia Winata (winnyyoyo on Instagram) were frequently shared on social media, often featuring the artwork X (2022).
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Self Care Action
    Just, K (Beechworth Contemporary Art Award, 2022-09-15)
    Self Care Action is an ongoing series of 20 hand-knitted panels bearing texts relating to self-care. The project explores how self-care has its roots in radical activism. As a term, it dates to the US based civil rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Each work operates a simple reminder that I consider crucial for my own emotional survival and resilience. It is also an invitation to others to imagine how they might prioritise caring for themselves and the personal and political implications of self care, particularly for women. The knitted Self Care Action panels are all the same size. They are brightly coloured and deploy the same rounded font. These simple design elements underscore the optimism of the project and the clarity of the actions. Actions from the series include: Ask for help, Stay Present, Switch Off Your Phone, Love Yourself, Make Art, Get Into Nature, Feel Your Feelings, Get Therapy, and Say No. The works were shared on Instagram via @katejustknits and using the #katejustselfcareaction with images of each work, pictures of me holding each sign up, and text about each self-care prompt. The work considers how in a political climate in which women's rights are being challenged and threatened, war is being waged around the globe, and a pandemic is unfolding, how art and conversation around self care can provide a mode of resistance and resilience. The fact that the works are knitting further amplifies the potential to use craft as a medium to explore and cultivate ideas of care. The Beechworth Contemporary Art Award was a competitive award in which only ten finalists were selected, attesting to the works significance. Knitting events held during the presentation of this work at Beechworth were well attended by the public. Radio interview on 94.9 Maine FM shared the project more widely. The work will continue to be developed to a major presentation of 45 works at Linden Gallery in March 2023, and then be included in a curated exhibition of textile artists at Hugo Michell Gallery in July 2023. Interest from Shepparton Art Museum and Tamworth Textile Triennial further attest to the works' relvance at this time. The work was funded by an Australia Council Fellowship, a prestigious art award that goes to one visual artist in Australia each year.
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Can't touch this
    Clarke, A ; King, S ; Leach, A ; Van Acker, W (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.
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Home-based family caregiver-delivered music and reading interventions for people living with dementia (HOMESIDE trial): an international randomised controlled trial
    Baker, FA ; Soo, VP ; Bloska, J ; Blauth, L ; Bukowska, AA ; Flynn, L ; Hsu, MH ; Janus, E ; Johansson, K ; Kvamme, T ; Lautenschlager, N ; Miller, H ; Pool, J ; Smrokowska-Reichmann, A ; Stensaeth, K ; Teggelove, K ; Warnke, S ; Wosch, T ; Odell-Miller, H ; Lamb, K ; Braat, S ; Sousa, TV ; Tamplin, J (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.
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    [Down City Streets with Father Bob Maguire]
    Luby, S (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
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Cannes vs Netflix: A screen battle of blockbuster proportions
    Luby, S (University of Melbourne, 2018)
    As the curtain opens on 2018’s Festival de Cannes, without any Netflix entries, there’s an economic side as well as a cultural one to this cinematic wrangle
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Reliability and short version of the Dunphy Outcomes Framework (DOF): Integrating the art and science of dance movement therapy
    Dunphy, K ; Lebre, P ; Dumaresq, E ; Schoenenberger-Howie, SA ; Geipel, J ; Koch, SC (PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2023-09)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    All the things I should have said that I never said
    Cribb, G ; Da Silva, J ; Lazaro, D ; MCQUILTEN, G ; Sequeira, D ; Teale, P (Bunjil Place, City of Casey, 2022)