What it is

Home Lands is an internet television project that connects young refugees to their home lands and separated communities. The participants in both Australia and overseas locations produce digital productions with entry-level digital tools and communicate regularly via a collaboratively produced website.

Online digital media technologies enable production and broadcast of storytellingin multiple media formats while the internet provides a platform for mobile communication and global access.

Home Lands is underpinned by the premise that refugee youth resettlement is more successful if communication and engagement is maintained with home communities. The increasing accessibility of both digital media production tools and the internet provides refugees with the means to communicate globally on a regular basis and to gain access to previously inaccessible media production tools.

The project aims to recognise the positive skills and strategies that refugee young people possess through their displacement experiences. Through enforced migrations young people develop transnational networks of friends and family and in the process gained language, social and cultural skills in multiple locations.

A pilot project (2007 – 2008) was undertaken in Melbourne, Australia with young refugees from Karen and Sudanese refugee communities and the corresponding refugee camps and home communities. Three year funding (2009 – 2012) has been provided by the Australian Research Council for a fully launched project. Training will commence late 2009/early 2010 with young Karen people.

How it works

Teams of young refugees from two or three communities in Melbourne will upload content onto a shared online space. The communities will be based in Melbourne, Australia and will collaborate as content producers with their relevant homelands. The opportunity also exists for related diaspora communities based in a third country to also collaborate. The teams will collaborate locally to produce frequent communication between the locations. Each team forms an editorial, production, design and talent pool to create regular programs to a schedule. A transnational online community will be formed with the purpose of regular communication and this community shall be accessible to dispersed communities.

Internet opportunities - the use of weblogs, global chat rooms and social networks -will enhance the reach of young refugees into their own communities in homelands and the diaspora.

The choice of media will be determined by the producers and may include audio podcasts, digital storytelling, scans of traditional media such as letters and pictures, video blogs and so on. Skills training and mentoring will be sourced from media practitioners and teachers who are also users of newer lower-cost and accessible media platforms.

The project will form valuable historical and cultural documents for home-land and settled-land collecting institutions. Program content is collected, archived and searchable on-line through the growing global media services infrastructure. The video programs can be streamed or incorporated into other community television programs.

The Policy Impact

From 2001 to 2005 approximately 9.2 million refugees and asylum seekers were processed by nations around the world (UNHCR, 2006).

There is evidence that regular communication between young refugees and home communities has a positive impact and that Home Lands will seek to demonstrate the full extent that communication can have on parties at the diverse ends of the refugee path.

Cultural Development Network is a not for profit network of local government community workers, artists and academics. It aims to increase the participation of communities in wider policy issues through participation in arts and creative activities.

Home Lands is a small slice of a potential larger and more wide-spread activity. The City of Melbourne has a unique level of experience and research in the field and local Government is often the major service provider in local communities. The credentials of City of Melbourne, LaTrobe University, Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues and Open Channel make this an exceptional opportunity to examine a key aspect resettlement policy in Australia: identity and self-esteem.

Academic partnership and research is important to impact on policy makers and writers. Presentation of Home Lands at academic conferences and forums will provide essential credentials for arguing for change in current policy.

Development to Date

• Cultural Development Network has initiated Home Lands as part of its examination of how local government, creative arts and communities combine to re-appraise public policy that impacts directly on individuals and communities.

• City of Melbourne as co-producer, has joined with the Centre for Multicultural Youth, Refugee Health Research Centre (La Trobe University), and apc.org.au, a member of the Association for Progressive Communications, as project partners.

What we need

• International co-production and project partners in specified home-lands.

• Partners who directly work in refugee camps and introduce young refugees to the Australian program.

• Contact and communication with family, friends and communities in home-lands or refugee camps to form the first groups of corresponding ‘producers’.

• Major sponsorship and philanthropic partners.

What are the outcomes?

• An opportunity for young refugees to become media producers.

• The creation of audio-visual stories which will form a history of refugee settlement in Australia and a shared collection with the homeland nations.

• Development of a reproducible program that can be implemented internationally.

• Contribution to our knowledge and understanding of re-settlement issues for seriously affected refugee youth and young adults.

• Reinforcement of the importance of cultural identity and how local government community services, cultural programs and arts strategies can assist new refugees to have a positive resettlement in new lands.

• An opportunity to change policy and public perception of refugee settlement in western countries.

• Changing the view of resettlement that puts the onus on refugees to reject their identity, history and homeland community.

Contact:

Bree McKilligan
Project Manager,
+ 61 3 9340 3726
bmckilligan@cmy.net.au