Culture.Is everything.

Between you and me. Connects you and I. In our thoughts, actions, our way of being, even if we are oblivious to it.

Intangible. Tangible.

Here’s my Q:

Just say for example there is a weapon of mass destruction called The Culture Bomb, and it is capable of destroying every trace of culture, and it was dropped on a place near you, perhaps your suburb, your apartment block, your village?

What, in the wake of it’s destruction would remain?

What is the A to my Q?

Public Art Themes: A Quick List

Al Izhar Islamic College

• traditional Betawi Culture
• Totem Pole phone charger
• hour glass hands reaching out
• giant pumpkin
• hands holding symbols
• surveillance camera/giant face and eyes
• globe
• the clock tower development
• clock tower/book stack
• Diversity, Creativity

SDN Pondok Labu 11

• Rainbow
• Diversity
• Boats
• Bears
• children, family, teachers
• all cultures represented

Didi

Al Izhar Islamic College, Briefing senior students about the project

“There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

—Richard Shaull, drawing on Paulo Freire

Apparently my university degree, the notorious, B.A Communication, Theatre/Media, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, was founded on the principles of permaculture. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy Of The Oppressed and Cultural Action For Freedom were essential reading, fused along with Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. We were free range, creativity could grow as it pleased, and what a garden did grow. Wild, mutated, poetic and beautiful.

Today, I wished I had the language skills to communicate Freire’s education theory, to a group of primary school teachers I am working with on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia.

I’m here with another artist, Kim Davis, on a ‘Community Arts In Education Placement’, a pilot program, with the purpose to work with teachers, students, families, artists and the broader community to develop a public artwork in the built environment of, two very different schools, that reflect the unique identity and culture of the school and its community.

Both schools, while being only minutes away from each other, are vastly different. Al Izhar Private Islamic College, with a seriously impressive Alumni, from socialites, esteemed musicians, prominent politician’s children, are highly resourced, with a focus on quality teacher education, and student creativity. The school grounds are impressive, vast and green, Al Izhar is like a small oasis in a screaming metropolis. The question is ‘why public art?’ with an even more pressing challenge of where to situate the creation?

On Jalan Magesatawa, by ‘ojek’, my favourite street in Jakarta, because of the tree’s that provide a fairyland canopy, is SDN Pondok Labu 11, a small multi-cultural primary school. Children always greet me with grace, taking my hand to touch their forehead, the pace is slower and the focus here is on developing trust, and cross-cultural understanding. The question is what is Public Art? But more importantly what is our mutual understanding of the process?

Briefing teachers from SDN Pondok Labu 11 primary school on Jakarta’s outskirts, about the project

The education system is a culture unto it’s self within any nation, state or province around the globe. With policy frameworks, philosophy’s, pedagogies, timetables, curriculum’s, assessments and exams, holidays and the rest, including staff room politics. The style of state based education within Indonesia rests in the authority of the teacher, where there are rarely questions, and the teacher relays information or historical events, otherwise known as ‘rote’.

Australia on the other hand is focused on inquiry based learning, where, in more recent years the teacher has become a ‘facilitator’ of a students learning. Critical thinking is (hopefully) encouraged and students (dependent on school and teacher quality) can embark on a process of enquiry, based within a real life, and or, meaningful context for students. It’s the stuff us Community Arts and Cultural Development artsworkers, managers and producers have been doing for eons, like second nature.

Many conversations with SDN Pondok Labu 11 always come back to the fact that this process will be very new and that the students are not familiar with this method. However all parties are willing to give it a try, and to see what evolves. Slightly hesitant, yet willing.

Enter ‘old mate’ Friere. He criticised the Banking Method of teaching, in which the student was an empty vessel in which the teacher filled with knowledge. He also believed that the ‘teacher-student’ dichotomy be abolished. He was about freedom from the state.

Today I asked myself what would Friere do?

P.S and I havent even broached the topic of colonisation…yet.

“The Community Arts Education Placement is supported by the Commonwealth through the Australia-Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australia Council for the Arts, AusAID and the Australian Embassy of Jakarta.”