GARMA FESTIVAL, 7-11 AUGUST 2009

Key Forum: Indigenous Creative Industries, 8-10 August

Indigenous Creative Industries: opportunities, culture and knowledge

The Garma Key Forum results from an ongoing and successful coordinated partnership between Charles Darwin University and the Yothu Yindi Foundation. The Forum’s uniqueness lies in people’s ability to maintain the spirit of the two-way partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous societies.

In keeping with tradition, the 2009 Garma Key Forum will take place over three days at Gulkula from 8-10 August, on the traditional land of the Yolngu people in north east Arnhem Land. The Garma site is, of itself, a symbol of Indigenous cultural strength. In essence, the Garma Key Forum incorporates a much more comprehensive Australia-wide view of Indigenous circumstances than those that influence the Indigenous peoples of north east Arnhem Land. However, the sheer strength of the cultural traditions of the peoples of that region and the significance of their country is never absent from the proceedings and this has a distinctly positive effect on the directions and outcomes of the Forum.

This year, the 2009 Garma Key Forum will highlight the breadth, depth and innovations within Indigenous Creative Industries: opportunities, culture and knowledge. As always, the Forum is specifically designed to contribute to the Garma Festival’s celebration of Indigenous culture.

The Forum will include important discussions covering issues and practices surrounding cultural outputs and inputs, and commercial opportunities afforded Indigenous Australians through training, development and practice in:

• Design
• Music, composition, publishing and audio
• Graphic art
• Multimedia
• Film and photography
• Performance arts
• Visual arts
• Broadcasting and electronic media
• New media – animation, games, internet content design
• Professional writing and editing

One of the central issues and challenges to be discussed at the Key Forum on Creative Industries will be the extent and nature of how Creative industries interface with Indigenous Australians, including cultural and commercial rights, intellectual property rights, economic opportunities, and the place of traditional art.

In the process, the Key Forum participants will explore and illustrate:

• the indefatigable vitality that endlessly supports the passage and survival of Indigenous knowledge;
• the spiritual and traditional source of people’s personal stamina;
• the cultural source of social and community wellbeing; and,
• the creativity, strength and determination required to pursue Indigenous economic development.

All sectors within Indigenous Creative Industries are a demonstration of the continuity of cultural knowledge and, through that, the significance of Country as the living foundation for Indigenous social, cultural and economic wellbeing. Indigenous Creative Industries provide critically important opportunities for Indigenous Australians to maintain their own economic independence as well as the immortality of their traditional cultural knowledge within the diversity of the wider Australian community.

These, and related issues, arose at the 20 20 Conference in 2008. Indigenous Creative Industries emerged as one of the central themes, raising such significant questions as:

• Why we need to identify the role of government in supporting traditional and contemporary art forms, and in promoting innovation; and,
• The importance of recognising social and economic benefits of new communication technology for arts and cultural organisations. Among the many benefits that do arise are an increase in community and individual pride; self-esteem; cultural survival; the transmission of knowledge; and intergenerational knowledge.

Garma Festival programs, particularly the annual collaborative work of the Garma Panel, and the Indigenous Recording and Multimedia Training project, have produced significant creative industries outcomes and benefits. These include:

• Opportunities for the artistic and cultural skills of Indigenous people (both collectively and individually) to be recognised, celebrated and showcased and for these artists to be paid for their efforts;
• Assistance for Indigenous artists to achieve their cultural, artistic and commercial aspirations through boosts in presentation, arts activities and economic returns;
• Assistance in the professional development of Indigenous artists or arts workers in Indigenous arts organisations in arts management practices;
• Major economic benefit to entire communities through increased visitor numbers to the area; through making people aware, worldwide, of the region its history and people; through Festival-related employment; and through sales of bark paintings, yidaki and other arts and crafts.

Documentation of Festival activities provides a unique contemporary archive of traditional cultural material. There are many hours of file footage stored as a result of Garma Festival 1999 – 2008 These benefits and practical, positive results will be enhanced and complemented by the outcomes of the Garma 2009 Key Forum on Indigenous Creative Inductries.

Participants and presenters at the Garma Key Forum are a diverse combination of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, including: Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs from communities – remote and urban; industry representatives; private and public sector professionals; Indigenous leaders; senior policy-makers; academics; government representatives; and, people who are passionate about their living culture.

Since its inception 11 years ago, the Garma Key Forum has recognised that Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural differences between contemporary Australian society and the foundations for two way partnerships depends first, on recognising the value of traditional Indigenous culture; and second, on an understanding by non-Indigenous people that the position of Indigenous people is disproportionately one of disadvantage, particularly social disadvantage.

Indigenous cultural realities have a powerful effect on both the processes, and the outcome of creative pursuits whether as a way of life or for the purpose of creating traditional and contemporary expressions of Indigenous culture and knowledge, or striving to achieve economic independence through the same mediums. The Indigenous environment, cultural practices and creative activities may appear to be different but cultural factors – traditional knowledge, family, and relation to Country– are significant for all Indigenous people across Australia.

The 2009 Garma Key Forum provides unequalled opportunities for Indigenous people to focus on the strength of their achievements, as individuals, as communities, and as a people. The Forum also provides opportunities for non-Indigenous people to learn from the Indigenous presenters, and the chance to showcase the practical application of western knowledge within the knowledge base of Indigenous Creative Industries.

Click here to register your interest in attending this Key Forum.