Dungog NSW, April 2009
CHALLENGE: Arts Upper Hunter invited the Hero Project to run a workshop titled ‘Portraits of Place’, to work with locals to create a film about Dungog. In their first film workshop together, 12 Dungog locals explored a seemingly quirky topic, yet controversial expose of the hidden tensions in their town.
PARTNERS: Australia Council for the Arts Creative Community Partnership Initiative; Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities; Arts NSW; Arts Upper Hunter Inc; Dungog Shire Council; Country Womens Association; Tallstoreez Productionz; Apple Australia
Film: On The Move
Click on the image above or the link to watch -On The Move.
If your device can’t play the clip, click here to watch it on Vimeo.
At first glance the country town of Dungog in NSW feels like any other quiet, small rural town. Driving down the main street, past the monument one would never suspect that the community is divided. The problem is the local icon in the middle of the main street. Is it a monument or an obelisk? A round about or a traffic hazard? And more importantly should it be moved?
OUTCOMES: Dungog locals explored how they could make a film that would portray their town and life AND do justice to all of their creative visions?! This resulted in several intense brainstorming sessions, teams conducting a series of interviews and a fabulous factory style editing suite as everyone crafted the final film. And finally it all revolved around the monument in the main street!
SCREENINGS & AWARDS:
May 2010 ABC Online features On the Move and runs a story about the project.
March 2010 Great news for our Dungog team: Selected to screen as part of the world’s biggest film festival of Australian films, the Dungog Film Festival 2010
2009 Finalist in the Wollombi Short Film Festival 2009. Congratulations to the community media team in Dungog!
2009 Second place in the state-wide “My town is special coz’” competition run by the Department of State and Regional Development NSW. www.artsupperhunter.com.au/files/newsletters/October_Artsbark.pdf
IMPACT & FEEDBACK: After much heated debate and a story development process, the group formed a fantastic creative team…
It is fantastic to see how the story evolved and everyone experimented with new art forms. Their project promptly attracted the interest of the local media, the Dungog Chronicle. The Arts Upper Hunter development officer was also keen to train up the 5 adult supporters, so they could keep producing their own films, with the aim to take part in the Dungog film festival as local artists… the final film screened during the Dungog Film Festival – so watch out, Bruce and Hugo, there’s home-grown competition!
Arts Upper Hunter Inc. is now working with the community to set up their own media centre in Dungog.
One of the young women involved in the project has now been accepted into the Media Studies at Canberra University, as a direct result from the workshop.
Bridget Nicholson, Regional Arts Development Officer, Arts Upper Hunter
I didn’t get back to you earlier as we hadn’t had the screening with the groups to get their feedback. We have now with both and so I would like to say that both groups are very happy and think the end result is true to the intentions of the workshop. [...]
Thanks for all your hard work, everyone here extends their praise and I think we had a very successful project, Sarah from Dungog is now going to apply to a course in Canberra and has just done a week set design something at NIDA so there are repercussions which are just what we hoped for.