Our Journey

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  • 2019

  • Social Impact

Designed By:

  • Melbourne Indigenous Transition School Students
  • Samantha Edwards-Vandenhoek
  • Joanna Gardener
  • Australian Chamber Orchestra

Commissioned By:

Australian Government

Melbourne Indigenous Transition School

Designed In:

Australia

Our Journey is a short animated film written, animated and narrated by students from the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School with Swinburne’s Centre for Design Innovation and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The students developed a soundscape and characters which serve as metaphors for their experiences of living and studying in Melbourne.


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  • CHALLENGE
  • SOLUTION
  • IMPACT
  • MORE

  • Funded by the Australian Government, this project was initiated by Swinburne's Centre for Design Innovation in partnership with MITS to promote their innovative culture-centred curriculum and provide opportunities for their students to explore contemporary design and media practices and study pathways in a culturally safe environment. Challenges include: 1. How to meaningfully and authentically communicate the challenges the students have faced away from home, as well as their pride, resilience, character and leadership. 2. How to enable the students to take ownership of the production and art direction by prioritising their voices, languages, narratives, visual designs and personal experiences.

  • This digital storytelling project resulted in a 5min short animated film, narrated by the students in Indigenous languages. Stop motion animation was chosen as the storytelling medium. The tactile and hands-on nature of stop motion provided an inclusive and expressive space for the students to create and share stories that do not depend on advanced software literacies. Stop-motion facilitates experimental design and image-making practices and often serendipitously unplanned for visual outcomes driven by the students own interests, experiences and vision.

  • The innovative nature of this group-authored film provides a platform to showcase the talents and aspirations of these emergent animators, designers and community leaders in a way that gives voice to and prioritise their stories, concerns and experiences, which in turn builds pride, self-esteem and resilience. It also works towards the prioritisation of Indigenous cultural and design literacy in education and industry practice. In doing so, there are significant long-term benefits for the acquisition and transfer of local knowledges that reinforce how Indigenous design can drive innovation and activate social transformation, shaping the future of the Australian design industry

  • Indigenous design Place-based design education Intergenerational Intercultural Digital Storytelling Social impact