These field-based initiatives provide students from across the ANU with meaningful learning opportunities that encompass aspects of the depth and vibrancy of First Nations culture. Key values of respect, reciprocity, truth telling/listening, and cultural safety are central to course objectives and emergent community outreach programs. 

The Environment Studio Team’s (EST) Balawan and Buugang Electives are internationally unique in their repeat format, field-based delivery. They are co-designed with First Nations staff and collaborators who, alongside non-Indigenous contributors, engage students in culturally safe, respectful and, at times, challenging learning environments. 

Camping on country, participants experience the potency of peer learning and course content directly from local cultural knowledge holders. Such a format is not only intellectually invigorating, but often personal, and a deeply motivating means to inform creative practice. Experiential field-based learning opportunities provide students the “breathing space” to reflect and creatively respond within a culturally safe framework, in opportunities that are frequently described as “life changing.”

The EST provides opportunities for transformational learning, encouraging students to explore their own creative learning journeys in a multitude of ways. Students are drawn from a wide range of creative practices and spanning all visual arts workshops, as well as from the wider University. A healthy respect for diverse perspectives and approaches to the creative process results.

At the heart of these courses are sustained collaborations with contemporary First Nations voices and an unequivocal commitment to including these perspectives – unfiltered. Alongside nuanced cultural material and truth telling/listening opportunities, students frequently encounter challenging themes. Consequently, great care is taken to support pastoral needs, alongside individual academic learning requirements.

Field-based educational environments are internationally recognised in promoting transformational pedagogical learning opportunities. The Environment Studio Team’s First Nations focus, and co-delivery ensures culturally appropriate ways to learn on Country as a means to foster experiential, reflexive creative responses and collaborations.

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As teachers, they transform learning, transform lives, and transform and encourage creative futures between First Nations people and students.

Julian Laffan, Sharing Stories Arts Exchange, 2023

It was more than just a course, it was knowledge that I will use for the rest of my life and a reminder to hold myself accountable to continue to learn about country I live on and, most importantly, to listen to First Nations voices to be the best ally I can.

Bridget Fitzpatrick, Buugang student, pers. comm., 2021