New Media Production

Four phases of content development have now been completed, each building on the last in terms of sophistication and level of interactivity:

• Diabetes and Pains & Sprains, simple text & illustrations;
• Alcohol, Deadly Kids and a revamped Diabetes module, introducing multimedia, interactive games and stories, on-screen quizzes (self-risk assessment) and brief intervention tools (these were also available on CD rom);  
• The Grog Story and Put It On (sexual health for young people), new narrative learning modules featuring interactive photo stories and video, created to actively engage community people in production, and to introduce a more user-centric style of interaction combined with a constructivist approach to learning (originally  available on CD-ROM and DVD, but have been upgraded to iDVD format).
• Creating Futures, an DVD featuring 8 prominent Indigenous health leaders from around the world speaking about mental health issues. The DVD features each leader’s conference presentation (at the 2006 Creating Futures Conference), their powerpoint and curriculum vitae, in addition to interviews with Mark Bin Bakar about themselves, the legacies they wish to leave when vacating their positions of power, and how they plan to hand over to the next generation. The DVD is designed for use by Public Health professionals, students of Psychiatry, Medicine & Nursing.

The current phase of content development sees the project producing three new modules, reflecting its capacity to adapt existing materials and to be responsive to local needs:

• Granny, why don’t you smoke?: an animated historical story for kids about the dangers of smoking (rejuvenating & recycling an existing flipchart);
• Healing Spirit – Bularu Yealamucka:  a story of community renewal – a community-based interactive video documentary, set in Yarrabah, to promote personal resilience and reduce self-harming behaviours; and to share this community’s experiences in:
• Developing personal skills (Community Voices)
• Creating healing environments (Yarrabah finding a way)
• Strengthening community action.

• Frame of Mind: performance and multimedia in the service of generalist Health Worker mental health education: a series of locally-specific mental health photo-stories created at low cost in six Cape York communities, to be made available locally via individual kiosks, and then with community approval, to be shared with other communities on the network (11 in Cape York).

A proposal is currently under consideration by the Commonwealth for a module on petrol sniffing.  Another has been accepted to fund a youth-focused cultural identity project in Yarrabah, to build on work currently under way to promote personal resilience (as above). Discussions in Yarrabah have also focused on the potential to produce a feature-length documentary on their ‘suicide prevention’ success story, one of the direct outcomes of which was the ‘Deaths in Custody’ inquiry and report.

There is community-driven interest in producing further modules on:

• Maternal and child health
• Child sexual safety
• ‘Going to hospital’
• Adult smoking
• Men’s and youth health
• Mental health – a variety of issues
• Work readiness (particularly in regard to the mining industry).