During the performances audiences are softly invited

During the performances audiences are softly invited into the
Pitjantjatjara speaking domains. People are addressed in
Pitjantjatjara , taught songs including ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and
Toes’, standing up to join with the actions, helping to symbolize the
project’s aspirations for Piranpa participation in language
maintenance.
As a consequence, the language used in the production work was
highly evocative, in part because it was ‘authentic’, in part because it
contrasts enormously with the language and conceptual ideas
normally available to audiences. This style of working is reminiscent
of the tradition inspired by the work of Paulo Freire (1972) who
advocated that this kind of language work must begin by ‘educators’
bracketing their often reductive conceptual devices, spending time
noting the language forms of a community.
Element four: ‘ walytja’ - local ( An angu ) family relationships
are at the core of community development work
From its outset this project was motivated by the desire to encourage
young people to better understand their history and language by
bringing them into more contact with ‘ walytja’ . One senior woman put
it this way, “ Walytja (family) is like, grandfather, grandmother, father,
mother, big brother, big sister. I think of it like this: If we work
together, stand together we are family. You and all of us are together,
all of you are our family. Palya .”
From its inception the project took seriously the need to find ways to
encourage contact across the generations and build opportunities to
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reconnect young people with local social systems and family
networks. Senior people took on important roles in overseeing
storytelling, offering accounts of what it was like to grow up in earlier
times. Often young people who used cameras and operated sound
equipment recorded this.
The contact between different age groups was not one way. For
example, a number of the younger musicians played instruments on
other’s sound tracks, sometimes also supporting the music recording
of older people’s songs. The various stage shows themselves provided
one of the most significant intergenerational opportunities with senior
people, middle aged people, young people and children literally
working side-by-side in the lead-up, during and after the performance.
There were a number of other ways the project continued with a
theme of working across the generations. Young people worked with
visiting artists (both An angu and non- An angu ) who ranged in age and
experience. They consistently worked with people outside of the
conventional teacher/student or child/adult relationship in workshops,
creating props, and in the community performance itself. One might
say that the ‘memory basket’, acts as a legacy for those generations
that follow behind, offering a symbolic gift to future generations from
senior An angu , project participants and Big hART workers.