Harbinger Consultants
Culture + Complexity + ChangeArchive for engagement
2017 | How can we help?
New Year greetings. We’re looking forward to another year of socially and culturally engaged projects and consultancies that support community and regional prosperity and wellbeing. We start the year with the question, how can we help you achieve your goals this year?
What about mentoring and facilitation?
Harbinger’s John Armstrong has been regularly involved in organisational and individual mentoring to work with people in developing capacity and capability. Mentoring in this way involves facilitating networks and enterprise insight, as well as building a sense of purpose. John has long participated in mentoring programs, including in his previous roles in higher education, and continues to mentor cultural, Indigenous and social enterprises and entrepreneurs.
Harbinger also designs and facilitates many community engagement processes and workshops to enhance community, economic and regional development. In 2017, John will be hitting the road with Flying Arts to deliver workshops in regional Queensland addressing how to communicate about artwork, tendering for and managing public art and establishing an arts organisation.
Both mentoring and facilitation are intended to support leadership development and build ‘leaderful’ organisations and communities. That is, they focus on sharing knowledge, creating learning environments and enhancing purpose.
PROJECTS | Growing our work
John’s project work has been growing over the last few weeks. He has been progressing the work with Plan C on the South West Moree Precinct Social Plan. The next phase is an intensive workshop, this week, addressing the revitalisation of the area using a collective impact approach with agencies and community working together to create positive pathways forward.
John has also delivered a broad ranging lecture about his work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to Griffith University students on the Gold Coast and South Bank campuses. The lecture was well received by the students.
Arts Queensland has re-engaged John as an industry mentor with a number of arts organisations to assist in the ongoing strategy for sustainable funding. He is continuing his work with Liworaji in Ipswich as they navigate the complexities of Federal government funding to ensure their vital and much needed work with the community can recommence after a recent funding denial.
A new and exciting opportunity has recently arisen and John is assisting with the planning of a major long term health and culture project in a remote Northern Territory community.
PROJECTS | Some interesting turns
Our project work has taken some interesting turns of late. As part of upcoming G20 programming, Harbinger Consultants will be acting as Cultural Producer for two half day events to be held in Brisbane’s suburban parks in November. These events will be two of six occurring across suburban Brisbane. With much of the city in lockdown during the G20, residents will have access to high quality local events. Harbinger will develop curatorial direction and engage residents to provide an affordable day out. The events will offer a range of culinary, creative and active opportunities to fuel minds and bodies. The events will be designed to also offer social spaces for meeting and interacting. We’ve just had our first creative and concept development meeting about the possibilities. We’re excited!
Also, we’ve been invited to deliver guest lectures with John presenting a series of lectures at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University at both Southbank and Gold Coast, and Linda presenting a lecture on regional economic development to QUT’s planning program. Having completed a mentoring partnership with Mathilde Bach Stougaard who has now completed the Master of Creative Industries, John is continuing his involvement in the QUT Career Mentor Scheme. Over the next year John will be mentoring Jess Golding who is working on her major project for the Master of Creative Industries (Interactive and Visual Design).
As part of his involvement with the Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research’s Indigenous Led Enterprise project, John will be travelling to Canberra to meet with the Federal Minister for Small Business, Bruce Billson, to discuss the project and other support for Indigenous enterprise and economic development. John continues his involvement with an emerging enterprise in regional Queensland. The initiative is intended to commercialise Indigenous traditional knowledge and deliver economic and employment outcomes for Aboriginal communities.
Linda will also be undertaking research for a University of Western Sydney project exploring open data and urban governance. The research, for project instigator Dr Sarah Barns, will gather information to build several case studies that demonstrate the interaction of open data and governance. This involves interrogation of both the policy and practice dimensions of open data and digital policy.
Linda was also commissioned to contribute an article for an upcoming issue of Artlink addressing ‘sustainability’, the first issue to be produced by recently appointed editor, Eve Sullivan. The feature article focuses on arts projects and practices that actively engage with or develop ‘the commons’ and commoning.
REPORT | Brainy Breakfast BBQ
In March this year, Harbinger Consultants trialled an initiative in health promotion to raise awareness of dementia. The purpose of this initiative was twofold:
- Raise money for dementia research through a sponsored 50km bike ride. We raised $600 dollars simply by setting up a facebook page and asking our facebook network to sponsor the ride by donating $5 (or whatever was affordable) directly to Alzheimer’s Australia.
- Raise awareness of brain health and dementia through a BBQ breakfast event at the Sandgate foreshore
Based on an action research approach, the idea of the Brainy Breakfast BBQ was to bring people together in a convivial environment to exchange information, share stories and generally catch up. We like alliteration so the Brainy Breakfast could also be held as a Brainy Brunch or Brainy BBQ or combinations of brunch, BBQ, breakfast. It was trialled with a view to considering options for rolling out the event as a grassroots social communication and/or social learning initiative that encouraged and strengthened social links and prompted awareness of lifestyle decision making. We envision the development of an online kit that anyone can download and use to implement a hosted event.
The report of the initiative, including thoughts on further development, is available online.
PROJECT | Long Time, No See?
Our involvement with the Long Time, No See? project also continues. Long Time, No See? is a multiplatform, interdisciplinary and participatory artistic project that explores ideas of futuring, care and dialogue. The project, funded by the Australia Council’s Broadband Arts Initiative, invites participants to set out to explore and reflect, in the spirit of adventure, to reveal other and emergent ways of existing in this world through poetic actions and relationships that animate a sense of care.
On the weekend, Harbinger’s Linda Carroli, as participation designer and writer, joined project Artistic Director Keith Armstrong to deliver a workshop and walkshop in Noosa. The workshop was presented by Noosa Biosphere at CQU Noosaville. The participants were faciliated in some intensive talking before heading off on the walk. This was the first time the project’s revamped website and app were used with great success. Most users reported ease of access, although there were some iPad glitches. The Field Book, however, was as reliable as ever and some participants used these to document their journeys!
The walkshop, designed by Linda, has undergone some refinement and rethinking. While the project includes a workshop outline for delivery by the project team or DIY, it is not always suitable for the participants. It provides a narrative arc for the workshop that draws participants into dialogue about futuring and care. In Noosa, we had the opportunity to improvise and experiment to facilitate a dialogue process that was led more by the participants. This process is based on the work of David Bohm, who proposes “that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated.”
We realised that the workshop program needs to be redesigned in way that addresses Bohm’s ideas more purposefully, recognising the limitations of time. The idea of social dialogue is more compelling than ‘workshop’ as it encapsulate a sense of exchange in which, as Bohm suggests, “a group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It provides an opportunity to participate in a process that displays communication successes and failures. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues”. It’s not about reaching consensus and highlights the need to be cognisant of mindset, listening and learning to work across difference.
It’s not as simple as having a conversation and requires both stillness and probing. However, in the brief time we have for our workshops/dialogues, it’s not always possible. The process does, however, draw people into interrogation, sensemaking and questioning rather than driving towards solutions. It plants the seed and hopefully imprints the idea that other ways are possible.
The walk was guided by the participants over a two kilometre stretch through bushland on the hospital grounds to an historic Aboriginal site, which featured large stones arranged in the shape of the Rainbow Serpent. Here one of the participants shared her knowledge about the site as everyone listened and learned. Our friends in Noosa are now planning to develop their own iteration of the dialogue and walk in the near future.
Also, QUT’s The Cube will present Long Time, No See? in July, launching at an open day on 5 July, then running for the next two years. The Cube is one of the world’s largest digital interactive learning and display spaces dedicated to providing an inspiring, explorative and participatory experience of QUT’s Science and Engineering research.
How to participate? You can do your own walk and contribute your reflections for the future by downloading the Long Time, No See? iPhone app. The app will guide you through your walk, giving you things to think about while assembling your responses (photographs, audio recordings, notes) along the way. You can do your walk individually or with others. The shape of your walk is then drawn as an island on a map that you can explore both online and on The Cube (from 5 July).
From the launch, you will be able to see your walk on The Cube screens and explore contributions by participants. The project team of Long Time, No See? will also be on site to answer questions and guide you through the project.
You can participate in Long Time, No See? and your contribution will be available for others to see at The Cube and online. If you plan to join in on 5 July, please download the app before you arrive. To view your walk at the launch you will have needed to complete your walk before 4 July.
While visiting The Cube, you can also see The Virtual Reef, a life-sized and simulate marine ecosystem, and the Data Wall, which visualises layers of local data in real time. Like Long Time, No See? both projects visualise data and scientific knowledge to generate interactive experiences for visitors.
When: 10am-1pm, 5 July 2014
Where: QUT Gardens Point campus, Science and Engineering Centre (P Block)
Suitability: All ages; children will need assistance to contribute
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