For the past 16 years, ILBIJERRI has been touring theatre performances across Victoria aimed at educating First Nations communities around health issues. While these performances are engaging for audiences, ILBIERRI and its stakeholders have identified the need to develop more community-engaged participatory approaches that place target audiences at the centre of the storytelling process.
Evidence suggests that arts-led approaches, and specifically theatre, can strengthen sexual health promotion and education in First Nations communities. By centring participants’ stories and experiences, participatory theatre gives community members ownership over material being explored, and agency in discovering culturally safe ways to reduce stigma and address sexual health. With ILBIJERRI receiving confirmed funding from the Department of Health and Human Services and Creative Victoria to develop a new STI theatre work, the University of Melbourne will work with them to:
- Develop a best practice model for community-engaged transformative sexual health education through theatre;
- Gather evidence around the development and delivery of this model through a participatory research methodology - contributing to broader understanding of arts- and community-led approaches to health promotion and education in First Nations communities;
- Build capacity within communities and community organisations for approaches to be adapted and translated into other settings, contexts, and health/wellbeing needs. ILBIJERRI will build and train a ‘Social Impact Ensemble’ - a core group of young First Nations practitioners with transferable skills in arts-led community health and wellbeing.
The ensemble will then work in Bunjilwarra Youth Alcohol and Drug Healing Service to co-design and test a model for participatory theatre addressing sexual health. The young people will be engaged as co-creatives and co-researchers to develop the theatre workshop and performance approach, which will then be rolled out and evaluated in 6 communities and sites across Victoria.
This project will extend the impacts of ‘Stigma Stories’ through building the evidence base; and developing a framework for effective education and translation of findings between community members, professional practitioners, leaders, policy makers, and academic disciplines across the arts and health sectors.
This will be achieved through extended data collection and analysis; community capacity building workshops for health services and organisations in 3 of the 6 targeted communities; presentations at key public health sector events (ASHM and SEXrurality); an Indigenous Arts and Health symposium; and accessible research outputs (digital, print, online) that will assist knowledge stakeholders at all levels to develop best practice approaches to health promotion and education in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
‘The Score' addresses gaps in evidence, program design, and research evaluation methodologies for effective sexual health promotion and education among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.
The project will inform current strategies being developed at Federal and State level to address Blood Borne Viruses and STIs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, with potential to influence public health and related policy settings. The research methodology privileges Indigenous knowledges and cultural values, emphasising the cultural determinants of health in addressing best practice in public health.