Project description My Place Asia Australia

My Place Asia Australia is an innovative educational exchange between Australian schools and students and their counterparts in China, Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Partnerships are established between groups of schools in Australia and the above named countries. The program commenced in March 2000 and has been conducted across 55 schools with 1400 students. Exhibitions have been held in China, Korea, Western Australia, Northern Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania.

My Place Asia Australia offers students the opportunity to create visual artworks reflecting their ideas, feelings and beliefs about places of significance in their lives and write an accompanying short story. Through the development and production of sustained and purposeful visual art making and written stories the emic or inside views of the child are made publicly explicit. Metaphor is a valued facilitator in this cross-cultural project enabling teachers and students to recognise the multiplicity of perspectives.

Images representing bedrooms, the backyard, visiting grandparents, being with friends, going on holidays, fishing, school, significant cultural icons, special physical environments, playing sport, dreaming and imagining new and surreal places demonstrate insights into the ideas, beliefs and feelings of the students.

Students develop their ideas after class and group discussion, brainstorming concepts of place. Experimentation with a range of painting and drawing media is encouraged as sketches are developed.

In the My Place Asia Australia project, visual art and literacy provide the vehicles to enhance cultural understanding and further communication. They allow students to present in tangible form their experiences, which, in turn, facilitates their views, beliefs and values to become explicit.

Notions of audience, particularly the cross-cultural peer group, influences the development of ideas, choice of materials and the final artwork of the participants. Often students remark during the art making how they want to make their images clear to inform overseas students. The final artwork reflects considerable thought and the use of the students' preferred art media.

The artworks and the translated stories are mounted and laminated to form a series of travelling exhibitions. These exhibitions are shown in galleries, museums, shopping centers and the participating schools across Australia and the nominated Asian country. The role of the exhibition in this cross-cultural study emerges as significant. Teachers, through questioning and directed activities based on the exhibition, encourage students to realise the value of multiple perspectives and experiences. Students develop higher level thinking skills enabling them to respond with less emotion and greater levels of tolerance, thus challenging previously established stereotypical views.