Local identity global focus

Local Identity Global Focus was a hands-on festival artistry research project based on industry practice conducted over three Yalukit Willam Ngargee: People Place Gathering festival programs during 2009, 2010 and 2011. The aim of the research project was to program and produce, in association with the City of Port Phillip, an environmentally sustainable metropolitan Indigenous festival and critically observe how it created spaces for reciprocity and Indigenous community identity. The research project's festival programs included an Indigenous Media Scholarship; a festival marshalling and hosting program; a contemporary Indigenous dance performance, called Lu'Arn, that incorporated cultural reclamation practices; an art exhibition of works by Indigenous prison inmates, titled CONFINED; and a program that developed festival environmental sustainability measures. Under the guidance of Indigenous elders, the festival artist - the researcher - worked collaboratively with artist colleagues, community cultural development organisations, community members and festival staff; this involved multiple layers of decision-making processes. A proposed emergent festival unique theory was examined through qualitative mixed methodologies. To this extent the Local Identity Global Focus methodology incorporated aspects of Indigenous research methodologies, arts-based methodologies and action research. The research project and festival unique theory came about as a response to a limited - albeit emerging - field of Indigenous festivals' literature motivated in part by a familiarity with and desire for Indigenous self-representational expressions. The research project results indicated that the Yalukit Willam Ngargee was a complex specialist festival that provided spaces for safeguarding localized intangible cultural heritage and for transformative programs to occur