What drew me to Big Stories in the first place was that between Martin and I, we shared similar values when it came to our filmmaking approaches. Martin is a seasoned documentary filmmaker whereas I was a fiction filmmaker who accidentally started making documentaries. Whatever the form, we both agreed that we wanted to make impactful films.

This is how Big Stories works – Big Stories partners with local filmmakers who will do a residency in a rural town for a month or longer. From there the filmmakers will make a series of micro-documentaries (2 – 3 minutes) while conducting filmmaking workshops for the community. At the end of the residency, these films will first be screened back to the community and then placed onto the Big Stories website for the world to see. This format provides an opportunity to move away from urban stories, which are often the focus of mainstream media. It is also a chance to hand the ‘microphone’ back to rural communities so that they become the authors in their own storytelling.

Marshall McLuhan says that “the medium is the massage” and Big Stories borrows from just that. It’s the content that drives the medium and in this case when you’re in a race against time to preserve a rapidly eroding indigenous culture – traditional broadcast documentaries, feature films and books aren’t always the most efficient way to go. They take too long, only certain subjects fit into 30 minute – 1 hour programming segments, and the stories often end with “but the culture is dying”.

Really, I’m so over that.

Broadcasters usually own all the rights to the material, or the films might be restricted to film festivals before they reach the featured community, limiting these documentaries’ use as educational tools. This inevitably contributes to said culture “dying”, so it’s here that we see the importance of cultural appropriation in how we capture stories. Big Stories attempts to respond to the question – how do we make films about communities, in ways that benefit communities first?

Big Stories is a new media micro-documentary project that began in Australia and has since partnered with filmmakers in Laos and Cambodia. Two years after that chance meeting with Martin, together with my producer Beatrice Leong, I’m very pleased to say that we will be the first to bring Big Stories, Small Towns to Malaysia!

For six weeks, Beatrice and I will be residing in Kampung Bongkud, a predominantly Christian Dusun village in Ranau town, just three hours drive from Kota Kinabalu. Beatrice and I visited Kampung Bongkud numerous times since January and with the support of Camp Borneo, we have gotten to know the warm and welcoming people of Bongkud. Everyone, the whole village from kindergarteners to the brilliant Chief Bindang will be making films or be involved in telling the stories of Bongkud in their own way. Our team will be calling Kampung Bongkud home starting from the end of April 2015 leading up to the Kaamatan Harvest Rice Festival at the end of May, which is when we will be screening our Big Stories Bongkud films. Kaamatan is my favourite holiday of the year and this Kaamatan will certainly be one to remember.

People often talk about it and it has also been a dream of mine to collect and digitalise Sabah’s indigenous stories from its modern history to its ancient mythology. This project is meaningful to me for many reasons. Despite being born and raised in Kota Kinabalu, I was hardly exposed to my own Dusun heritage. It has been this cultural disconnect that has in recent years become fuel for my own films. It is likely that my generation of Sabahans will be the last to see bobolians (Kadazan-Dusun pagan high priestesses) and our native languages are too, fast disappearing. On a positive note, my generation of Sabahans are also the first to actively produce our own media content for a global audience and it’s up to us to put that to good use. To me, modernisation should not mean that indigenous Sabahans have to lose our connection to our roots.

Not to put all my eggs in one basket but I see Big Stories as a chance for me to make that dream of documenting my culture come true but on a wider scale than I initially anticipated. I must also point out that much of this is attributed to Beatrice, who is nothing short of a “ninja” of a producer. She’s tiny but she packs a punch (that’s the Kelabit from neighbouring Sarawak in her).

Sabah comes from an oral tradition, making its culture vulnerable and there are many cultures all over the world such as these that exist. I am not under any pretense that we are here to “save cultures” from “dying” but it is my hope that through Big Stories, we will be able to empower indigenous communities today to tell their own stories and preserve them in ways that are accessible to the world and for future generations to come. We cannot keep indigenous communities from modernisation but how we document ourselves can evolve. I don’t know if we’ll be successful through Big Stories Bongkud but I can assure you that we’re going to have fun trying.

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2014 was a pretty big year for Big Stories. We turned six, and celebrated the only way we know how; by heading out to communities and collecting some incredible stories. Last year we had five residencies running across Australia and the Asia Pacific region: Coober Pedy (SA), Cowra (NSW), Beaudesert (OLD), Queenstown (TAS), and Raja Ampat (West Papua). We worked with dozens of professional and emerging filmmakers and hundreds of community members, all of whom brought their own unique talent to the Big Stories project.

On top of that, we made a bigger push to connect with people online through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogging, and met a lot of amazing people and heard some incredible stories through those platforms, further proof that big stories really are wherever you choose to look for them.

To list every one of our successes in 2014 would probably take most of 2015, but luckily one project in particular has really embodied the massive steps forward we have taken in the past twelve months. Beaudesert, a town of just under 6000 in the Scene Rim Region of Queensland, was the site of one of our most successful residencies so far, with greater funding, community involvement and unique creative ventures.

For this residency we were lucky to have a number of generous and engaged sponsors, both local and national organisations from a number of different business sectors, including arts organisations, government bodies and educational facilities. We had support from Artslink, the Scenic Rim Council, the Regional Arts Development, the University of Queensland’s Centre for Communication and Social Change, Screen Australia, the Media Resource Centre, to name but a few. Not to mention all the amazing locals and Queensland based artists who gave up their time to participate in the project.

Community participation was a major highlight of the Beaudesert project; we had an overwhelming community response. In addition to the hugely generous people who shared their stories with filmmakers, more than 40 people braved our scarred Skippy Deluxe caravan to tell their stories, which were featured at the community screening in September. We had over 70 people attend filmmaking, media and storytelling workshops held in Beaudesert, plus 60 students who came to workshops at UQ. The community response to project, particularly after seeing the finished films, was overwhelmingly positive:

What a wonderful gift you gave to the community[…] It was just another jewel in the crown of how the arts, culture and heritage are slowly being valued in this district.

To say you done a tremendous job is an understatement…for me… it was astronomically out of this world.

But the aim of Big Stories has never been to show off filmmaking skills using small towns as a vehicle, but to empower communities to engage with their own stories, to honor the participants as makers of their own histories. By engaging with the community through local content producers, workshops and a highly collaborative process, we definitely achieved this in Beaudesert:

I am so proud of what we have achieved in such a short period of time and to have you with us on this journey. As community service workers, you don’t get to see the affects you have on people, or the finished product so to speak, such as a carpenter sees his house completed. Having you with us has shown that we are heading the right direction. We are still only in the beginning of our journey, this road is a long one, but when we have people like yourself and other services all walking in the same direction, the destination is irrelevant, the most important aspect is that we are together!

By working so closely with locals, we were able to focus clearly on the stories that meant the most to the Beaudesert community. We covered an array of community sectors and issues, notably exploring cultural and Indigenous issues with the Vanuatu and South Sea Islander Community and the Mununjale community and studies of significant social events, such as the closing of the meatworks. One of the most outstanding projects was the series of films focused on the local Young Men’s Group which encourages young men to engage with their cultural heritage and their community.

 Not a lot of people know my heritage from my father’s side, and I am still learning more and more as I get older myself …The story touched me deep within my soul, questioning, creating tears, emotions & curiosity. This story has changed me from within & now I finally see!

– Sharne Iselin, Young Men’s Group

We had the privilege of working with a lot of young people, not only from the Beaudesert community but also the filmmakers and communicators of tomorrow with Students in the University of Queensland’s Master of Communication for Social Change playing a major role in the project. Sarah Ryan was the producer of the entire project and many of her fellow students assisted in filmmaking, photography, and a fantastic text mapping project. Local content producer Elijah Cavenagh produced a stunning series of films, but also represents a fantastic new element of our program: mentoring the new filmmakers. We first met Elijah in 2013 and assisted in the production of his Blackbird series. We can’t wait to see what he achieves in the future.

In the end, we produced over an hour of high quality documentaries, a flood of photo essays, and inspired a range of new creative projects. There were over 80 people directly involved in the filmmaking process and over 400 people attended Big Stories Beaudesert events.

The films and photos have been archived by both the Beaudesert Council and the National Film and Sound Archive: our small town big stories are being recognized as an important part of our nation’s history. If nothing else, that’s a lasting legacy that we can be proud of.

Here’s to doing again in 2015.

To stay afloat of all Big Stories projects follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook, or both.

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Ah, technology.

As a digital media project, we do love our technology. Big Stories was founded as a way of leveling the digital playing field, to give people from rural and remote areas a chance to get amongst the online action and share their stories, adding their voices to the cacophony of bloggers and vloggers and all the other loggers. There are a lot of voices out there, so one of the challenging parts of the job is making sure the Big Stories voices are heard. This year we’ve tried to increase our social media presence so that more people know about the project and can enjoy the fantastic stories we’ve collected. We’ve been posting more on Facebook, tried our hand at Twitter, we got ourselves a Google Plus page, we’ve shared a few happy snaps on Instagram (@bigstoriessmalltowns), heck we’ve even got a Pinterest (but then spent too much time looking at cake decorating ideas and wedding dresses, so we haven’t given it a whole lot of love lately).

And of course, we have (had?) a YouTube account. But in a cautionary tale, warning against any kind of Spring Cleaning (’cause who doesn’t like hoarding, right?), a few old email accounts were deleted and our YouTube account went down the plughole with it. Perhaps more of a cautionary tale about maintaining good records so that you can keep track of all the flaming knives of social media that you’re trying to juggle, and ensuring that the accounts are attached to the main admin account, rather than anyone’s personal account (there’s a #hottip for any #social #media #masters out there).

But not to worry, we’ve been working hard and testing our upload speed over the past few weeks to get the channel back up and running. It’s a little rough at the moment, but you can check it out here (all our new content will be going up soon, so feel free to subscribe to be the first to see all the Cowra, Coober Pedy and Beaudesert content). In a way, this little inconvenience was a blessing in disguise: sitting down to re-write the the descriptions for each video (here’s another #hottip: keep a copy of all video descriptions in a word document, then if the videos get deleted, you can just copy and paste!) we rediscovered so many wonderful people and incredible stories that we had all but forgotten about. Like this one and this one and this one (actually, that last one is one of our all time favourites, we just wanted to share it again).

It was a bit stressful during those weeks, thinking that people might have been trying to access the videos via YouTube but were unable to because of an admin error. We rushed to get the channel working again, but it proves that often technology isn’t as reliable as we would like it to be. Luckily we don’t have to rely on technology to get our fix of big stories. Big Stories isn’t about finding extraordinary stories, we don’t have any kind of radar or tracking equipment that tells us where to go to find these incredible people. We just pick a town, and the stories just happen to be there, because big stories are everywhere. Incredible people are everywhere. If our channel, or our website, or (god forbid!) our blog goes down, and you’re itching for your fix, don’t panic, just go outside, talk to a neighbour, ask your parents. Big Stories are everywhere, you just have to find them.

Since our technology has already had its holiday for the year, we’re looking forward to going on ours. We wish everyone a good summer, a very Merry Christmas, and a wonderful 2015. We’ve got big plans for next year, so watch this space.

If you want to be a part of our big year, don’t hesitate to contact us via any of our social media pages or good old fashioned email: bigstoriessmalltowns@gmail.com

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And then we found this. A response to the article from Melbourne-based artist Dave Lamb, who respectfully disagreed with Browne’s article on a number of levels. He reveals that the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on the arts isn’t actually all that much, per person, and that this funding isn’t solely used to pay artists, but to subsidize arts events and make everything more accessible to people from all demographics. He also writes, with wonderful passion, about the social importance of arts in society, that it ‘tells us who we are’ and ‘allows us to recognize elements of ourselves […] in other people’.

We agree with Dave wholeheartedly, but he is speaking from the perspective of a metropolitan artist, so we thought we’d add our voice to the conversation: the voice of regional arts practitioners. Big Stories is a not-for-profit organisation; we are supported by funding from government bodies and independent arts organisations, and are very grateful for all the support we receive. We use the money to pay our filmmakers to work in small towns across Australia and the region. The funding mean that the filmmakers in residence can take the time to get to know the community, to participate in workshops, engage with community feedback, and ensure that the end result is an engaging and truthful portrait of the town and its people. The goal behind these filmmaker projects, too, is to allow the community to share their own stories, bolstering community pride awareness of just how amazing small town communities are. The money also funds the local workshops, allowing locals to benefit from the knowledge and experience of our filmmakers to develop their own skills. And the money is used to assist in the distribution of the funds, for the maintenance of our website and the like, so that these Big Stories can be enjoyed the world over (for the record, people in the US make up a substantial amount of the traffic through our various webpages).

Arts funding is definitely not just about money in the artists’ pockets but about facilitating global storytelling, connection, participation and communication. Don’t take our word for it though; even a brief read through the websites of various arts organisation will reveal that community building is at the heart of most regional arts ventures.

Queensland’s Regional Arts Development Fund lists nine key performance outcomes for its funded activities, all of which have strong connections to the community. For example, a ‘diverse range of local people must have a say in RADF related decision making’ and ‘RADF supports local employment and/or professional development opportunities’. Even just skimming through the arts grants and funding pages on Australia.gov.au words like ‘enrich’, ‘diverse’ and ‘community’ are scattered across each page. Anything that encourages diverse participation in enriching our communities and cultural identities is something that, in our opinions, definitely deserves a bit of financial support, especially since so many of these programs aren’t ticketed events that can regain their costs, they are community events that are free or low cost so that they can be enjoyed by everyone.

Plus, the process of applying for and receiving arts funding is not as simple as it may seem: artists can’t just hold their hands out for government money, they have to write extensive applications outlining their projects, including budgets, schedules and desired outcomes. If these outcomes don’t line up with the key principles of the funding body, the application is unsuccessful, and as application junkies ourselves we can tell you that applying for grants is a long, hard process and a rejection at the end of all that can be heart breaking. But we pick ourselves up and carry on because that is the nature of the industry, and in all honesty it is the art itself that drives us, not the money. Regional Arts Australia provides $2.5 million of funding every year, which they say allows them to engage with ‘over 4,000 artists, 30,000 participants and audiences of over 70,000. Those are some big numbers, and that 2.5 mil gets spread pretty thin: if you divide that money equally between the artists its only $625 each! But nothing beats the feeling of watching smiling or thoughtful faces enjoying your work, it gives us the juice we need to hunker down and start working on the next round of grant applications.

Matt Browne might not be too happy about it, but we are certainly thankful for the opportunity to work and create with people in regional areas of our world, and for the money that allows us to do so.

Cheers arts funding!

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Jenny Ainge, one of our filmmakers in residence who helped to make the whole project happen, had a busy night ensuring that the event ran smoothly and chatting to all the generous community members who helped to facilitate the projects, lending the times and their stories. Compliments were flying, especially for local contributors Rebecca and Marion, and the effort that the school kids put into their very own film projects.

Jenny has said that ‘overall it was a buzzy night’ but was surprised that a lot of people seemed amazed that there was such a range of stories. Jenny’s favourite comment of the evening came from the local school teacher who exclaimed:

‘I didn’t know we lived in such an interesting town!’

Well, now the secret is out, Cowra is a beautiful town, a wonderful community and a great place to live, or visit. We’ll be letting everyone in on the secret when the full Cowra content goes online later this year. For now, we’ve got some great happy snaps from the launch last Wednesday night.

Brooke, our exceptionally talented photographer in residence captured some wonderful moments:

Steve Best, our other filmmaker in residence, put in a gargantuan effort to ensure the night ran smoothly and everyone had a great time. There was very high praise for his work, too, especially his photography; many people were amazed at how  Steve had  captured the natural beauty of the land and the town. Here’s a sample of his photographic skill from the launch night:

And Steve’s wonderful teaser trailer for the Cowra films.

A huge thank you to everyone who worked tirelessly to make this project a reality. Thank you to our wonderful filmmakers, Jenny and Steve, and the brilliant community participants whose films and photos speak volumes for the talent and artistry waiting to be discovered in regional Australia, along with the stunning landscape and gorgeous communities they capture.

Thank you to Screen Australia for their support, and to local arts organisations such as Arts Out West.

And the biggest thank you goes to the wonderful community of Cowra. It was an absolute privilege to work with such a brilliant group of people, we wish we could have stayed longer.

The full Cowra project will be launched on our website later this year, until then join us on Facebook or Twitter.

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We were overwhelmed by the community response we experienced in Beaudesert, this is our first venture into the Sunshine state, but hopefully not our last. We were welcomed into the community with great warmth and enthusiasm, and we very much hope that we have captured that wonderful community spirit in our films and photo essays.

It was a pleasure to see so many smiling faces at the launch on Friday night, thank you to everyone who made it out to the event, we hope you enjoyed it too! Our photographers were still hard at work throughout the evening, capturing the community spirit on display:

Big Stories is all about collaborating with communities, and producing work that is a truthful depiction of the town and its people — and a significant factor in our work is the feedback we receive from community . We had some pretty positive feedback from Beaudesert locals, we left feeling pretty chuffed, not just about the films and photo essays that have come out of the project, but because we have had the privilege of working with a community with such a strong sense of identity and pride.

What a wonderful gift you gave to the community last Friday evening. It was just another jewel in the crown of how the arts, culture and heritage are slowly being valued in this district.

Ailsa Rolley.

I want to take this opportunity to say how amazed I was at the launch on Friday night.

To say you done a tremendous job is an understatement…for me… it was astronomically out of this world.

I am so proud of what we have achieved in such a short period of time and to have you with us on this journey. As community service workers, you don’t get to see the affects you have on people, or the finished product so to speak, such as a carpenter sees his house completed. Having you with us has shown that we are heading the right direction. We are still only in the beginning of our journey, this road is a long one, but when we have people like yourself and other services all walking in the same direction, the destination is irrelevant, the most important aspect is that we are together!

Sharne Iselin

On behalf of Big Stories, we would like to thank everyone who poured their hearts and souls into this project.

Thank you to our wonderful filmmakers and facilitators, the incredible staff and students of the University of Queensland’s Centre for Communication and Social Change.

Thank you to our supporters: Arts Link Queensland, Scenic Rim Council, the Regional Arts Development Fund.

Thank you to the generous spirit of Donna, Skippy and Robert.

And of course the biggest thank you of all goes to the wonderful community of Beaudesert for welcoming us into your town and your lives, your hearts are as big as your stories.

All the Beaudesert content, films, photos and stories, will be online later this year. For more check out our Facebook and Twitter

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Sam Ryan, one of our fantastic filmmakers and facilitators, also currently completing her Masters at the University of Queensland, was the first to come up with the idea to bring a story-telling space to the Beaudesert Show. As a major event on the community calendar, the Show would provide a great opportunity to reach as many people as possible. To drum up interest in the Big Stories project, the space would have to be something interesting, unique and inviting.

As luck would have it, Sam already had something in mind (which also had the added bonus of being completely portable): a caravan! The caravan would be open to the public – people were welcome to come inside to read and listen to other people’s stories, as well as recording their own to share with others.

Luck, it seems, was on our side, as we also happened to know someone in the area with a beautiful classic caravan. Donna, a generous and (as we soon discovered) forgiving woman, was the proud owner of a 1960s caravan which she had lovingly restored over the past six months. Donna agreed to lend us her pride and joy, and we were absolutely over the moon about it – everything was falling into place for a wonderfully productive Beaudesert Show.

Martin and Sam hitched the caravan, named Skippy, to the back of the Big Stories ute: an enormous beast of a vehicle, which had been altered for use in the mining areas, and now sported a number of unusual features including a recessed towbar, which brought Skippy closer the vehicle than usual.

When Sam confessed she was too nervous to drive the ute with precious Skippy on the rear, Martin bravely took up the keys. And for the most part, everything went smoothly: Skippy was a hit with the locals! But it all came to a crashing halt (literally). In what Martin describes as a ‘soft’ U-turn on the highway, the back of the ute pierced right through Skippy’s plywood body.

How do you jackknife going forward? How is that physically possible?!

Despite his adamant stance that the damage was actually physically impossible in the circumstances, Martin had to call Donna and tell her that her darling Skippy had been wounded in the line of duty. His face falls as he recalls how her voice fell when he told her the news. She wasn’t angry, just disappointed.

Martin assured her that Big Stories would fix poor Skippy no matter the cost. But Donna didn’t know anyone that could carry out the specialised repairs needed to restore Skippy to his former glory. She had restored him herself, but that work was mainly superficial – she had no idea how to repair such a large puncture. But the Big Stories team know how small towns work, so they called someone, who called someone else, who called someone else, who just happened to know a man just outside of town who builds and repairs caravans.

And that’s how Martin and Sam found themselves driving 41km to Tamborine in the middle of the night, punctured caravan in tow, determination etched onto their faces. Driving through the rainforest, they stumbled upon the property. Vehicles and spare parts were scattered across a large clearing, with a large 1970s homestead sitting impossibly in the centre of this grassy island scarified from the surrounding trees.

Artists Impression, care of forsythfamily.com

It was if aliens had just dropped this house in the middle of the rainforest. It was eerie: arriving in the middle of the night, we had no idea who this guys was, we had been told that he could fix the caravan, so we went. It wasn’t till we got there, with this huge eerie house, that we were like. ‘Oh, we could die here.’

But the thought of Donna’s disappointment was greater than the fear of death, and Martin and Sam ventured forth to find the caravan repair man. A man emerged from the house, and introduced himself as Robert. Martin explained the situation to him and, taking one look at the caravan, he proclaimed

Oh, you’ve f—ed it. This is going to cost you some money.

But he laughed when he saw the panic on their faces.

Do you want a fast job or good job?

He was going to help them; Martin was visibly relieved and told him to do whatever was necessary. Robert got to work right away, finding the spare parts he needed, tinkering away with adjustments to make them match Skippy’s unique décor. It became a family affair as his grown sons emerged to lend their father a hand. ‘Poppa,’ they would call ‘how much plywood do we need?’ They were a well-oiled machine, Martin and Sam watched in awe as they crafted plywood slats to fit and polished up a 1960s vent that plugged the puncture wound perfectly. It was beautiful, perhaps even better than before (Donna didn’t quite agree).

Skippy was saved, Martin and Sam were over the moon. Robert’s handiwork was incredible. This was definitely going to cost them: the quality was top-notch, and would no doubt have a price tag to match. But when Robert approached them, calculating the cost of a late-night caravan repair on a perfectly restored 1960s model, he just smiled and asked for just $200 to cover materials. Martin and Sam went from being gobsmacked by his generosity to being very embarrassed as they searched their wallets to find only $100 in various notes; to being even more gobsmacked by his generosity as he said that would be fine, took the $100 and waved them on their way.

Donna was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the handiwork, and while she’s still a little disappointed by the damage, she has forgiven us for the incident. It was certainly quite the adventure, though one Martin is not eager to repeat. But it illustrates something that we have encountered time and time again in our work with regional communities across Australia and the Pacific region: the wonderful generosity and community spirit of the locals. Wherever we go, we always find people willing to lend a hand, share their skills, and help continue the work that we do.

Big Stories was founded for these people, to provide a platform for sharing your stories, but it is only because of you, and your generous spirits, that we can continue to do the work that we love.

Thank you.

For more on Skippy the Caravan, check out our Twitter or Facebook.

Beaudesert Big Stories is launching on the 7th of November, see here for more details.

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“Ability has no gender: opportunities are created by hard work, drive and passion.”

Susan Bower, Westpac head of agribusiness.

Last Wednesday was International Rural Women’s Day. According to The Land, over a third of Australian women live in regional areas, but here in Australia and in many other parts of the world, particularly developing nations, rural women can feel more constrained by traditional gender roles than those who live in metropolitan areas. Lauren Hewitt, Agforce Queensland policy general manager and the 2014 Queensland Rural Woman of the Year, spoke to ABC Rural about the role women play in regional Australia, and revealed that many women underestimated the importance of their work in their communities and lacked confidence in their abilities.

The feature that I really love, but also hate at the same time, about rural women is this feeling that they can’t contribute and what they’re doing isn’t interesting, is nothing special or not worth a mention.

But, as Hewitt went on to say, this belief is completely unfounded, and in many cases the absolute opposite of the truth. Women are increasingly active in the boardrooms, council offices, farms and households of rural areas. Jenny Mitchell OAM, past president of CWA of NSW and previous South Pacific Area President of the Associated Country Women of the World, told The Land that ‘statistics tells us that women are responsible for much of the work in rural areas globally’. And it is benefiting entire communities.

From farmingfirst.com

In fact, one of the focal points of this year’s IRWD was the idea that women are an ‘untapped catalyst for development’. Making up approximately half of the world’s population, women also make up half of the world’s work force, a force that is still very much under-utilised. Studies have shown that if women were given better training, education and access to resources, it would make a huge impact upon global issues such as poverty and food security. For more on the global impact of gender inequality check out this video.

But there are so many incredible women already working hard for their rural communities, working towards a better, more prosperous future for all. We have had the absolute pleasure of working with many of these women and would love to share a few of our favourite stories:

Vi Thonh lives in Phnom village in Cambodia. Although she never learnt to read or write, she has taught herself to weave. Weaving has provided her with a way to honour her culture and an income and has empowered her as a skilled and knowledgeable member of her community. She passes this knowledge on to younger members of her village to ensure their prosperity into the future.

After Strathewen was devastated by the Black Saturday Fires, the community decided to manage their own recovery program, to great success. Many women in the community led recovery programs, such as Barbara’s Chook project, Marion’s Letterbox project, and Vicki’s efforts to rebuild the town hall.

‘I can catch bricks’, a Big Stories favourite, is the short film by Jane from Port Augusta, who has battled with breast cancer her entire life, but found the time, energy and compassion to provide support for other cancer patients both in her career as a nurse, and as a cancer survivor. She is truly an inspirational woman who has made an incredibly valuable contribution to her community.

And finally, one of our own: the supremely talented Jeni Lee has been our filmmaker in residence in Port Augusta, Murray Bridge and, just recently, Coober Pedy and has produced some of our most popular and significant films and photo essays. She and her partner, Sieh, have been making incredible documentaries as Carousel Media for years, all while raising a young family. If you look up superwoman in the dictionary, don’t be surprised if you find a picture of Jeni smiling back at you. Read more about Jeni here.

Who are the superwomen in your life? We’d love to hear about them! Shoot us an email, tweet us @bigstories or post on our Facebook wall. Trust us, all stories are big to us, and we want to hear all of them.

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But the future of mental health in Australia is looking brighter, as new programs are being put in place to strip away the stigma of mental illness Australia wide, and to improve health services available to people living in regional areas. This week has seen a number of fantastic initiatives launched to raise awareness about mental health and to provide a platform for sharing stories of illness and recovery.  The ABC have been running ‘Mental As’, their biggest ever cross-platform programming event, Mental Health Australia have been touting the Mental Health Promise initiative, and many of the major cities have had special events running all week.

Image care of ABC Open

A major feature of many of these programs is a focus on storytelling and sharing, and it should come as no surprise that the team here at Big Stories have thrown all our support behind these initiatives. Storytelling has been a part of our culture for millennia; a way of passing on knowledge, creating and maintaining individual and group identity. It is a fantastic way of opening up a dialogue about a subject that is often shrouded in stigma and taboo. For someone suffering from mental illness, hearing someone else tell their story, particularly someone in the media spotlight, or someone that they look up to, can normalize the situation, and prove that they are not alone. A story of recovery can give guidance for someone seeking treatment of support.

It’s not just people facing mental health issues that can benefit, but their friends and family too. It can be difficult for someone suffering mental health issues to ask for support, and their friends and family may not understand what they’re going through and might not know how to help. But by engaging with other people’s mental health stories, they can develop a better understanding of what their friend or family member may be going through and how they can provide support.

Of course, everyone has a different way of telling stories, just as everyone may have a different experience of mental illness. Listening to different stories of illness and recovery, from comedies like Josh Thomas’ Please Like Me to deeply affecting stories of PTSD, engaging with this wonderfully broad range of stories helps to strip away the stereotypes of mental illness and encourage the idea that just as every individual is unique, their experience of mental illness, and their way of dealing with it, is just as unique and should be treated and supported as such.

During our residencies in regional Australia, we’ve spoken to a number of people who have bravely and generously shared with us their mental health story.

We met Kelvin Kelly in Murray Bridge, and he gave us this fantastic film detailing his recovery from alcoholism. He spent three months in rehab centre, working hard to overcome his addiction so that he could be there for his family, his daughters and his beautiful grandchildren. For many Australians suffering from addiction, Kelvin’s story shows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it can be reached.

After the devastating Black Saturday fires tore through Strathewen, destroying properties and lives, the small town was plunged into a period of mourning and grief. The community had to find a way to move forward, and looked to each other for support. Their community based recovery and support program was extremely successful as it recognized that each individual had experienced the tragedy differently, and were grieving differently, and needed to recover differently. The support network that they formed catered for that difference, providing a range of programs and initiatives that gave each individual the space and support they needed to grieve and move forward.

Big Stories worked in Strathewen after the fires, and provided a platform for community members to tell the story of their grieving and recovery process. This storytelling in itself became part of the process as people found different ways of expressing their grief, providing catharsis for the individual and new perspective and insight for those who watched the films.

Sharing stories is such an important part of our lives: catching up with friends over a coffee we always share a laugh over a well spun tale of office gossip or family feuds. Equally, storytelling is important for our health, our mental health, and we encourage everyone to tell their own stories, to enrich our understanding of each other, and perhaps provide hope for someone else out there going through something similar.

You can share your story with us, shoot us an email or a Tweet or a Facebook message: we always love a good story.

You can share your story through the ABC’s Mental As program, or maybe start a blog, or just tell a friend.

If you are living with mental health issues and need support, please contact Lifeline or any of these fantastic support services. There is help available 24 hours a day:

Lifeline

Beyond Blue

Reach Out

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Past experience tells me that engaging with rural communities through these types of projects is one of the most rewarding, enriching, educational and soul expanding experiences that can be had.

Raef grew up in Tasmania, and ‘fell into’ making documentaries while studying at Art School in Hobart:

I came across the video department. It was this strange dark place full of analogue video equipment that I had no idea about. Under the guidance of Leigh Hobba I learned enough technical skills to start experimenting and I suddenly realised I had found my calling! This led to working with Steve Thomas at Roar Film where my raw enthusiasm was honed into the craft of story-telling through various documentary projects. I owe a lot to both of those guys.

We are very lucky to have Steve Thomas of Roar Films working with us in Queenstown, too, and can’t wait to see the fantastic work that Raef and his mentor will produce. Each of our residencies are shaped by the filmmakers, their particular film style and community interests guide the process, which is extremely exciting as each film, each photo, each residency produces vastly different content, which helps to unveil the individuality of each community across the country and the region. So what kind of content can we be expecting from Raef and the Queenstown team?

I’ve always been excited by strong narrative cinema and documentary, particularly when the boundaries are pushed through experimentation and bold innovation. I also find the spatial aspect of gallery-based and site based film exciting, and enjoy working between these forms, allowing them to bleed into each other.The beautiful materiality of Tacita Dean’s 35mm multi-channel work and the large-scale spectacles of Doug Aitken spring to mind. I also respond to the slow, meditative and durational films of Chantal Akerman and Andy Warhol; the authenticity and experimental form of Lars Von Trier.

Authentic, site-specific, spectacular filmmaking: Raef’s style lends itself wonderfully to presenting a genuine portrait of a community. And he has been very successful in doing so in his past projects (check them out here). For all those aspiring filmmakers out there who want to follow in Raef’s footsteps:

My advice would be to get a solid understanding of all aspects of the production process whilst refining your particular passion. Whether that be storytelling, editing, shooting, sound recording or all of the above! Understanding the process will help improve your contribution to the end result.

As well as understanding the filmmaking process, Raef also understands the regional lifestyle as he spent his primary school years in a rural area and ‘loved every moment – so much freedom and exploring to be done!’ Now, grown up and with a family, Raef harbours a ‘romantic dream’ to move to a small country town, but knows that the city is more suitable for him ‘at this stage of life’.

This is a major issue in Australia: some small town populations are dwindling as young people move away to find work in the cities. However, Raef has a very hopeful outlook:

There will always be some rural industry that requires communities in those areas … and technology can actually open those areas up, rather than closing them down by bringing industries that can function remotely

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. This notion that technology has the potential to connect individuals across communities, and to connect industry to small communities, in order to facilitate self-expression and growth is at the heart of the Big Stories philosophy.

Queenstown, here we come!

We are very excited to be working with a filmmaker who connects with our goals, and understands the dynamics of small town living. Our team will be in Queenstown from October 27 – November 21, come and say Hi if you’re in town, if not, keep an eye out for  photos and films shared across our social media.

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