Change Media and their ‘Nukkan.Kungun.Yunnan. project win national award for giving local community a voice

Change Media and their local South Australian project ‘Nukkan.Kungun.Yunnan’ (See. Listen. Speak.), is the national winner of the 2010 Kookaburra Awards for Outstanding Projects, awarded by OurCommunity and Westpac, the national peak body of community organizations, representing over 55.000 partners.  Change Media has been selected from over 700 entries.

The Change Media initiative, run by Tallstoreez Productionz, has won more than $10,000 worth of prizes for their work using digital media to empower local communities, encouraging them to share their stories across the globe.
The project involved Change Media working with the local Ngarrindjeri communities in the Coorong, South Australia, to explore how they could use digital media for social change. Twenty Ngarrindjeri community members from Raukkan and Meningie participated in the workshop that resulted in the production of a hard-hitting and emotional documentary about water problems in the area, with a strong focus on Indigenous elders.

Managing Director and Executive Producer of Change Media, Carl Kuddell said “the idea for the ‘Nukkan.Kungun.Yunnan.’ project came out of a cross-cultural collaboration. We wanted to create a training program for local communities that empowers them to tell their own stories. When we liaised with the local communities we found that the three key issues they were passionate about were traditional culture, their elders and water management.”

“I think the program worked so well because it meant handing the power of media back to the communities to create and share stories that are relevant to them, instead of having no control over their own stories. It’s only recently that digital media has become readily available, so now the challenge is to empower these communities and give them the skills to truly make the most of it.”

“It was fantastic and incredibly rewarding to be recognised nationally on this level with a Kookaburra Award. It’s great recognition for all our community partners who dared to share their stories and put a lot of time and effort into making it work”.

Carl is now optimistic that further government funding will allow the program to continue for several more years, until it becomes self sufficient and the program can fully by run by the community.

The Change Media initiative [formerly knows as The Hero Project] is supported by the  Australian Government through its Indigenous Cultural Support Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, and the Australia Council for the Arts Creative Community Partnership Initiative; and by the South Australian Government through Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities and the SA Film Coporation; and supported by Tallstoreez Productionz and Apple Australia