Renewing and extending the Curtin School of Education Research Culture: Towards a Creative Practice in Education Research Hub
The NCP Sustainability Education Sketchbook Project aims to foster educational and cultural exchange between initial teacher education students from Curtin University and Universitas Negeri Jakarta in Indonesia. Participants worked to develop innovative approaches to reframing education practice in response to the shared challenges of sustainability and climate change. Through creative practice research that enables mind-shifting visual and dialogic strategies, staff and students developed a deeper understanding of the role of education in addressing sustainability issues.
PoR was launched by Paul Gardner and Sonja Kuzich at an online International Festival of Resistance, held the day before Trump’s inauguration. January 20th, 2025 was the day the world was thrown into chaos and confusion. People were already sickened by the complicity of numerous governments around the world in the genocide of the Palestinian people, and the Trump regime of kleptocrats lowered the moral temperature to freezing point.
Concerned about the well-being of family, friends and colleagues, the two academics decided to broaden their scope as educators beyond the traditional boundaries of pedagogy and educational research. They recognised that unusual times necessitated new ways of seeing and being in the world. As Paulo Freire intimated, ‘to read the word is to read the world.’ So, if the aim of Agenda 2025 was to disrupt normality by means of lies, misinformation and distortion via social and mainstream media, we have to take back the word and speak back to corrupt power.
Through performance workshops, the aim is to bring people together to share deep concerns about the direction corrupt leaders are taking us. Collectively, we are stronger than alone. Collectively, we are a chorus, and language is our means of staking our claim to a better world. Poetry of Resistance uses performance-based methodology to raise consciousness, improve well-being, generate collective strength and empower people through the realisation that language and poetry can be a powerful means of fighting back.
This project investigated best practice arts making and responding employed by 15 expert Arts educators (3 from each discipline) during and beyond Covid-impacted teaching periods in Western Australia. The resulting publication drew together the experience of arts teachers across lower secondary years as a resource for early career and pre-service arts educators.
December 2024 – Shaping The Space Book Launch, Curtin School of Education, Gallery 501
Paris, L., Lowe, G., Gray, C., Perry, A. & Warwick, L. (2025). Shaping the space: Teaching the Arts in lower secondary years 7-10. Information Age Publishing.
The project aims to develop a better understanding of how displaced persons (DPs) from Ukraine are experiencing their long-distance transition to and life in Western Australia (WA), focusing on the impact of displacement on their wellbeing.
This project is funded by Healthway and Lotterywest and is conducted by Professor Jaya Dantas and Dr Tetiana Bogachenko, with assistance from Larysa Chybis and Yuan Lim from Curtin University.
“The Story Of Us’ is a body of work that is focused on asylum seekers and refugees in Australia. I’ve painted portraits of them and also recorded interviews with them so the viewer listens to their story while they view the paintings. ABC, SBS and The West have all told me they are coming along to cover it”
Seasaw magazine noted: While refugees are visible in the media, their individual stories are often unheard. This paradox drove artist Sid Pattni to create a new immersive exhibition that brings the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers to light.
A Creative Works research project at The Moore’s Gallery, Fremantle, March 2020
A Digital Sabbath is the practice of unplugging from all technology for one day per week, with the aim of increasing social connectedness and mitigating stress and burnout by decreasing our overuse of technology.
