I’ve always been afraid of two things – bodies of water (in which I cannot see the bottom) and heights. At 7, I was stung by a jellyfish while swimming. That same year, I fell off a rock face and into a crevice of fresh lava rock, gouging and slicing my flesh as I tumbled to the bottom – it felt like I fell for miles. I came to dread swimming and climbing things.

Over 20 years later, I found myself miles in the air flying across the world’s largest body of water. All to work for a small organization called CuriousWorks. I’d not heard of them until just a few weeks earlier and in a few days, I was going to be helping them make media with kids in the middle of the Pilbara – a place few Australians (let alone Americans like me) ever get the chance to see.

With just a single Tweet as the trigger, I was going to be over 10,000 miles away from home, in the middle of a vast desert, in a country I’d never been to…

I dove in.

Some mornings, I had magnificent dreams and awoke to watch the sun rise over the desert landscape.

Other mornings gave me a taste of the complex realities of kids in rural and remote communities.

And this was only the first 5 days of my trip…

My second week in Australia found me in the small mining town of Newman, Western Australia. Newman consists of about 5,000 people with an extra 2,000 as ‘fly in fly out‘). It sits about 1200 km north of Perth in the heart of the Pilbara Desert. Because of it’s remote location, food and water need to be shipped in to Newman’s only grocery store weekly. Pilbara literally, means ‘dry‘.

There’s a cultural thirst here too – particularly for the young people of Newman. Pop cultural artifacts like StarWars, Twilight and Subway sandwiches are lapped up. The kids constantly talk about wanting to see ‘bands in Perth’. In deed, many young people – Newman’s potential future leaders – end up leaving.

Because of this, BHP Billiton recognized the need for a more sustainable and permanent infrastructure – something for the long term. That’s where CuriousWorks came in.

As part of the BHP Iron Ore Legacy Project and in partnership with Country Arts WA, CuriousWorks helped Newman’s kids develop a wide range of skills they could put back in to their community. Some of these skills were gained interviewing locals outside of school. Other skills were nurtured by developing a class website. Our final part of the project was putting on Newman’s first film festival.

In starting the project, Senior Advisor of Sustainability and Community Relations for BHP Billiton, Scott Bird said:

“We really want to contribute something significant to the town that demonstrates BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s commitment to creating liveable communities that people want to participate in for the long term. We expect this project will create a lasting impact on both the community members and the landscape of the Newman Township.”

Over the next 12 weeks, we worked with teachers, students and parents to build the media capacity of Newman’s young residents. We moved between 5 different locations to conduct our after school media-making workshops while teaching new media classes in the primary and senior high schools. It was hectic, but a lot of fun and the kids we worked with were very productive.

The project accomplished some great things with and for the young people of Newman:

• our kids got on national television and a national newspaper
• our kids launched a student website with an accompanying lobbying website and youth blog
• we also learned 33 other things…

And yes, we felt happy to call them ‘our kids’. They are awesome.

While we accomplished a lot while there, we were not without our challenges. For one, we were outsiders, not just geographically, but culturally too; a Sri Lankan, a Lebanesian, a snow white Australian with a slight British accent and an Asian-American made for some curious workers in a predominantly white town. There were even a few incidents where I wondered if I’d been discriminated against because of my ‘outsider’ ness. In a conversation I had with a local school teacher, she offhandedly referred to the film production, internet literacy development, and photography we were doing with the kids as not ‘real’ teaching.

Coming into Newman, we also expected to have a stable teaching space to meet with the youth. We had anything but. Not only did the local youth center close down a week before we arrived, but the places we’d hoped to conduct our media workshops were unreliable, in spite of the dedicated efforts of our staff and our Newman partners. The recently closed youth center hadn’t even been open a year. Where were after school programs for youth going to be held? Where were the creative spaces kids could go to continue their learning, playing and making when the schools closed? Who would lead this?

Clearly, there was and is a lot of work to do. I wouldn’t say the kids we worked with were disadvantaged in the sense that Americans (like my self) normally think – poverty, homelessness, language barriers. I’d say their greatest disadvantage is the lack of a stable, supportive center that fosters the creative skills they already have.

As of this writing, there is still no youth space for the kids of Newman to meet and make media. This is the task ahead for the teachers, residents and businesses of Newman – to grow and build on the things we developed with Newman’s youth. To stay true to our intentions as CuriousWorkers, we need to ensure the communities we work with can serve themselves.

Newman certainly deserves to.

Today I set a game plan with Shakthi on how we're going to tackle the next 6 weeks in the Pilbara.  I'll need to:

• develop/find/improve on some curriculum for 'object-based storytelling'
• develop/find/improve on curriculum to introduce the 'craft' of working with audio and photography
• develop online social network strategy for cultural leaders in the Pilbara

For the first week, we're going to go to Marble Bar (population? 194) to do an ad-hoc community media class – completely open-ended, depending on who shows up an what they'd like to learn.  Could be storytelling, filming video, even djing if that's what they want;)  Should be fun.  Main purpose is to introduce ourselves to the folks in Marble Bar to as well as connect them to the community media network we're in the process of building.

Second week, we begin 5 weeks of work in Newman, culminating in a community festival.  One of our partners on the ground has already secured Thai dancers (WTF, in a rural mining colony in the middle of nowhere???), MCs and a space for the festival.

In the meantime, please enjoy this lovely video of the CW office loft in Sydney.  In it, I give a nice tour of the CW art/office loft.  It's truly one of the nicest spaces I've ever worked (and will hopefully play in soon!).

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Howdy We Operate Best Together Backers and Fans!

Apologies if some of this is old news to some of you, but I thought I’d condense the past months’ adventures for y’all in this email.  Also, I’d asked some of you if I could add you to my eNewsletter list to stay up to date on my project.  Might you resend me a yes or no – even if you already have?  Your privacy is important and I’m currently doing all these batch emails ‘by hand’ – no fancy eNewsletter software yet:p

Onwards with the updates!
-morgan

August and September have been incredibly busy and enriching months for WOBT.  The scope of We Operate Best Together has also expanded a bit to incorporate some new developments in the adventure…

—Adventures in NYC—
I visited NYC (and Boston) and had an amazing time:

•    got a free roundtrip ticket to Boston (care of Ben Sheldon thanks Ben!) for the NAMAC Conference (http://namac.org/conference)
•    toured the Eyebeam art and technology space in New York and interviewed Emma Lloyd, Director of Technology: http://bit.ly/3zfgiy
•    attended my first SHARE event: http://bit.ly/p33AG
•    squatted a loft in Manhattan with a childhood friend: http://bit.ly/1wbtFE
•    visited with WOBT friends at Digital Democracy: http://bit.ly/548f2
•    volunteered some time with the Transmission Project (formerly CTC VISTA) to redo their wiki: http://digitalartscorps.org/wiki

A brilliant, brilliant time in NYC/Boston was had by all…

—WOBT Site Relaunch—

I also relaunched and got a new URL for We Operate Best Together:  Check it out: http://www.weoperatebesttogether.org You can also subscribe to blog updates (different from this newsletter) here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=WeOperateBestTogether&loc=en_US

—WOBT is Now in Australia!—

Aaaand in the midst of adventuring on the East Coast, I got a job in AUSTRALIA with an amazing organization called Curious Works (http://www.curiousworks.com.au/about).  Through creative collaborations nationally and locally, they work to ‘reshape the systems of cultural production in Australia, for the benefit of all Australians’ using new media tools and trainings.

While here I will be traveling to remote Australian communities to do technology assessments, develop curriculum and assist with new media/video storytelling.  Throughout, I will be documenting all my work on the WOBT and Curious Works websites.

Today I venture out into a New South Wales’ (Sydney’s) first dust storm in nearly 25 years to begin my first day of work at Curious Works Sydney artist loft office.  Check out the pix below:

Operate together!
Morgan

P.S.  Don’t forget to send me a quick yay or nay to opt in for ‘hand-crafted’ future updates!

If you want ‘auto’ updates, sign up to get the latest updates from the WOBT blog delivered to your inbox here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=WeOperateBestTogether&loc=en_US

P.P.S.  Feel free to share, bookmark, forward or Tweet this post:)

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