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Set in Stone?:: Dialogical Memorialisation and the Beginnings of Australia’s Statue Wars
Get PDFMemorials to white explorers and pioneers long stood (virtually) unchallenged in the heart of Australia’s towns and cities. By occupying civic space, they served to legitimise narratives of conquest and dispossession, colonising minds in the same ways ‘settlers’ seized vast tracts of territory. The focus of this article is a memorial raised to the memory of three white explorers, ‘murdered’ (it was claimed) by ‘treacherous natives’ on the north west frontier. It examines the ways that historians and the wider community took issue with this relic of the colonial past in one of the first encounters in Australia’s statue wars. The article explores the concept of ‘dialogical memorialisation’ examining the way that the meanings of racist memorials might be subverted and contested and argues that far from ‘erasing’ history attacks on such monuments constitute a reckoning with ‘difficult heritage’ and a painful and unresolved past. It addresses the question of whose voice in empowered in these debates, acknowledges the need for white, archival based history to respect and learn from Indigenous forms of knowledge and concludes that monuments expressing the racism of past generations can become platforms for truth telling and reconciliation
Voting in New Zealand local government elections: the need to encourage greater voter turnout
Get PDFWithin a global context, local government in New Zealand occupies an enviable position: it enjoys both a statutorily-defined ‘power of general competence’ and financial autonomy from central government. However, despite this, voter turnout rates in New Zealand local elections continue to fall as ever fewer New Zealanders engage in this fundamental act of civic engagement. This review article examines the decline in voting over the last four New Zealand local government elections (2010/13/16/19). It aims to do three things: plot the decline; identify and analyse the causes of this decline; and suggest ways in which the decline might be countered. The authors reach the conclusion that local government in New Zealand is at a crossroads – it will either be rejuvenated as a source of local democracy and prosper, or decline into an administrative arm of central government
Pivoting post-pandemic: Not-for-profit arts and culture organisations and a new focus on social impact
Get PDFWhile the Australian arts and cultural sector has been adept at shaping the national conversation around its economic significance, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought multiple and serious challenges. Weakened by years of government defunding, the sector now faces the shocks of shutdowns and social distancing on their bottom line. Post-COVID we propose that arts and culture organisations in the Not-for-profit sector express their contribution to society as social impact, in order to access more diverse sources of funding. This paper looks first at established ways of assessing economic value, then discusses the broader social value of arts and culture organisations. It then explores methods by which this can be measured and reported. Lastly, a review of relevant literature and best practice approaches to social impact measurement is provided, outlining a framework to produce evaluations that both strengthen their programs and enhance their ability to communicate their value to funders
Exploring Project Complexity Relations to Scope Changes in Construction Projects: A Case Study of NEC Projects in South Africa
Get PDFConstruction projects are of very complex nature, and subject to circumstances of high uncertainties and risks due to the interdependences of activities and processes in the project performance. As a result of the dynamic complexities inherited in construction projects, changes in the scope of work are inevitable. Of particular concern is that, when scope changes are introduced in a project, contractors follow a systematic procedure in managing the changes, but with poor planning and implementation thereof because the project complexities that underpin the scope changes are not fully understood. Therefore, despite that complexity is an inherent and defining feature of construction projects, studies in the literature have failed to grasp and present the dynamics of project complexity which underlie the scope changes in the delivery of construction project. The TOE (Technical Organizational Environmental) framework was adopted and applied on a multiple-case study research design in order to explore and denote project complexity relations to scope changes in construction projects. Through a content analysis procedure, six key elements of project complexities that relate to scope changes in the construction projects has emerged. Understanding these complexity elements could enable the project management team to apply a front-end planning approach in the initiation phase of the projects in order to better manage scope changes in the execution phase of the project, and eventually to improve the project performance
Respirare il tempo: Re-Azioni di superamento COVID-19
Get PDFThis reflective essays retraces the experience of ‘Mirabilia’, an online project originated at the beginning of the Italian lockdown (March 2020) by a spontaneous group made up of researchers from different disciplines, which had the purpose of showing human creativity and the ability to find strategies for survival and ways to cope with adversity. In particular, the essay illustrates “The Breath of Time”, a virtual exhibition created by Mirabilia: through a public call, many images and narrations of personal and particularly significant objects were collected during the quarantine, and are here discussed and illustrated
COVID-19 and Political Polarization: Notes on Australia’s Chinese Communities
Get PDFIn this article I draw from my personal observations as a participant in two WeChat groups; a group with my university classmates most of whom are now residents of Australia, and the other a skilled migrant group based in South Australia. I explore the main narrative threads of these two groups in relation to their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic during the first half of 2020. I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic sharpened the political polarization that exists between denouncers of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and their detractors, and also underlined particular moral dilemmas.grants from the PRC. 
Ni una menos: Colombia’s Crisis of Gendered Violence during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Get PDFIn spite of the shared nature of the global suffering caused by the pandemic, the lockdown imposed to reduce the spread of Covid-19 has exposed and exacerbated the crisis of gendered violence in Colombia. While many countries around the globe have reported an increase in gendered violence during the pandemic, Colombia’s lockdown has taken place in a context of already high rates of violence towards women and girls. Such an environment has proven propitious for the propagation of incidents of gendered violence throughout all strata of society, with indigenous women and girls, and those living in precarious conditions, in particularly vulnerable to often life-threatening circumstances. This article charts the particular impact of the lockdown on gendered violence in Colombia and discusses the reactions of feminists, journalists, academics, writers and artists
Poetics in the Time of Pandemic. There is Always Going to be a Before and an After
Get PDFThis paper reflects on the impact of lockdown in Sydney on artists and creatives. We share our personal story of how we imagined our lives would be before COVID-19 and the changes we observed after entering in pandemic mode. Intertwining images taken with a mobile phone and text, we offer our observations on the evolving new language that appears around us in supermarkets, on walls and on the footpath: signs determining social interactions and affecting behaviour. We also touch on the idea of how writing can bring us home and make us feel closer to our languages and countries of origin. We underline theatre’s importance to tell stories from the time of the pandemic, when governments have been found wanting due to lack of care of the most vulnerable, in particular First Nations peoples. We reflect on the need for reinvention, accepting change, reassessing our human values and making present our links to the natural world. As the pandemic takes us from one stage to the next, we suggest that creativity is the one possible space that offers relief and hope and opens up possibilities to make sense of our new reality while contributing to a collective sense of humanity
Design Delays in Building Projects in India: Effects and Remedies
Get PDFEmpirical evidence shows that design-related challenges influence delay in building projects in India. Based on case studies of building projects from the capital region of Odisha Province of India, the factors relating to consultants and design have been identified and policy interventions were compiled to reduce design linked delay. A survey method to collect data, statistical analysis and a Systems Dynamics modelling approach were used according to different scenarios to propose strategic interventions. The findings suggested that complexity of design and compilation of documents, and the combined complexity of both can cause substantial delay. The model results revealed that the combined effect of appointing competent consultants and communicating effectively could reduce delay significantly. The novelty of the study lies in using a systems approach to develop causal feedback relationships among variables, as opposed to considering one origin of the problem at a time. The study makes three contributions: (1) design-linked challenges and mechanisms of delay, based on causal feedback relationships in building construction, can be diagnosed to evolve appropriate remedial measures; (2) impacts of different interventions can be visualised quantitatively under different scenarios; and (3) an alternative methodology to examine the trend of the project period is offered
\u27Remembering Aesi\u27:: Women\u27s History, Dialogical Memorials and Sydney\u27s Statuary
Get PDFIn this article I draw upon a definition of ‘dialogical memorial’ offered by Brad West to offer an experimental artist\u27s brief that outlines the various ways that a contemporary monument to the colonial artist, Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside (1831-1867), could ‘talk back’ to the nineteenth-century statues of her contemporaries, and ‘converse’ with more recent acts of history making. In contrast to the familiar figure of the individual hero, which we associate with the statuary of her age, I suggest a group monument that acknowledges the intimate intergenerational female network which shaped Aesi\u27s life and also ‘re-presents’ – a term coined by the historian Greg Dening – several native born and convict women from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras who influenced her life. Instead of elevating Aesi upon a plinth, I recommend grounding this group monument on Gadigal country and planting around it many of the Australian Wildflowers she painted in ways that draw attention to the millennia-old Indigenous uses of the same plants. And finally, by situating Aesi’s monument in the Outer Domain (behind the New South Wales Art Gallery in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens and to the east of the Yurong Pennisula, near Woolloomooloo Bay), in an area where she once boldly assumed centre stage before a large male audience in a flamboyant moment of her own theatrical history-making, I argue that this memorial will have the capacity to speak for itself in ways that challenge the underepresentation of colonial women in Sydney\u27s statuary, and, as West suggests, do much to ‘alter the stage on which Sydney\u27s colonial history \u27is narrated and performed’
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