Dr Janet McDonald
University of Southern Queensland
Redeeming “Poo”woomba: Using Visual Arts and Theatre to Enable Cultural Engagement along the Balonne
This paper discusses recent developments in a partnership between University of Southern Queensland’s Creative Communities and the Queensland Murray Darling Committee (QMDC) in St George, Surat, and Dirranbandi which are all located along the Balonne River; an area discussed and debated vociferously in Murray-Darling catchment issues.
QMDC are chiefly an environmentalist group working to improve the promotion of natural resource management in the Maranoa-Balonne and Border Rivers catchments. QMDC first contacted USQ Visual Arts and Theatre in early 2005 to help them develop cultural pedagogies for engaging with their clients in regional and rural areas in order to promote better understanding of natural resource management. Using the work of Richard Florida (2005) and recent work on innovative communities by Ian Plowman, Ashkanasy, Gardner, and Letts (2005) this paper discusses how this kind of improbable partnership produced new “learnings” about how arts processes and products might affect how communities “read” their environment and how “city” artists/academics from Toowoomba (“Poo”woomba) might “read” water and metaphors in the Lower Balonne.
This research project recorded the stories of school-aged participants and their cultural attachments to their river between August and November 2006, which were used to create and curate an arts exhibition and theatre-in-education performance entitled The Doctor and Nursey-Wursey’s Most Amazing Hydrological Examination which toured throughout the area from the 5-8 December 2006.
Biography
Dr. Janet McDonald received her Ph.D. majoring in Theatre for Youth from Arizona State University in 1999, where she was also awarded the 1998/99 Distinguished Graduate Teacher Assistant Award. She has been a high school Drama teacher since 1987 and is currently lecturing in Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba. Her current research interests include: regional youth theatres, developing strategies for sustaining theatre arts practice in regional towns, as well as her ongoing research into masculinities and actor-training at USQ.
Email: mcdonaja@usq.edu.au