Podcasts about creating space project

The Creating Space Project interviewed Miria and Ziggy, two young people on the Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroborree. We were travelling with the Water for Rivers convoy in outback NSW, camping in the river towns from Walgett to Menindee. The purpose was to learn about the plight of the rivers from a First Nations perspective.  The rivers are empty or near empty. This isn't just about the devastating drought or the climate emergency. The rivers are literally being sucked dry by big corporations. It is a death sentence for Aboriginal communities, for whom the rivers are life itself. Miria and Ziggy reflect on the impact that Uncle Bruce Shillingsworth has had on them, as well as the theft of water and climate change.  

Trillions of dollars have been spent by the Australian government detaining asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea for six years. It would be far better governance to bring about an end to this situation.  Cathy McGowan is the former Independent member for Indi, in rural Victoria. She talks to the Creating Space Project and asks each of us, right now, to email our local Member of Parliament and our state Senators and ask for answers to the following questions: What are the Government's plans for the asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea who can't go to the USA? What would it take for the Government to agree to New Zealand's offer? If you are an Australian citizen, you can find the relevant email addresses on www.aph.gov.au and it only takes about 15 minutes.  

The Creating Space Project is currently exploring feminist psychology and intersectionality, through asking listeners the question “What would you ask a feminist psychologist?” In this episode, Sahra O'Doherty and Ruth Nelson talk about Tanya's question regarding how you weave feminism into counselling, about being a values-based therapist, and the embodiment of values.

It’s very hard to find the words, “I have experienced this.” What brings people into counselling? The Creating Space Project talks about therapy and mental health with psychologist Sahra O’Doherty. People can spend a lot of time squishing uncomfortable feelings back down, and get worried that if they lift the lid, they’re not too sure what’s going to emerge. We can be pretty afraid of our emotions. Society teaches us to fear failing. Shame and guilt feel painful. Vulnerability is frightening. So to come and talk to a psychologist can take a lot of courage. And what’s it like to be a psychologist sharing space with clients? Sahra talks about the ways that providing counselling has shaped her and how if we, as therapists, can’t sit with our own discomfort and vulnerability, how can we expect it of anyone else? The research tends to show that 70-80% of the effectiveness of therapy comes from the relationship between therapist and client. It’s the relationship that heals. So if you have a really fantastic and strong therapeutic relationship, that can facilitate positive change.

“I find it very hard to accept that Australia’s national interest is about putting security listening devices of the walls of our poorest, nearest neighbour.” This is an interview about espionage, exploitation and politics. Elizabeth Biok is a lawyer and member of the International Commission of Jurists. She talks to the Creating Space Project about the case of Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery. These two men exposed the Australian government for bugging the offices of the newly formed government of Timor-Leste. “The Australian intelligence agents were asked to put listening devices inside the cabinet room and some of the ministers’ offices in the parliament of Timor-Leste. And that was no doubt to eavesdrop on what the Timorese politicians were saying, while the negotiations were going on with Australia about the oil boundary, and sharing the resources in the Timor Sea.” For exposing corruption, Witness K and his lawyer are charged with breaching the National Security Act and are now imprisoned and facing a trial that lacks open and fair justice. Elizabeth went to East Timor as a legal monitor of the Independence Ballot in 1999 and bore witness to the political oppression and militia violence of the Indonesian occupation. She takes us, with wonderful clarity, through the history and geography of our relationship with Timor-Leste, and our place in South East Asia, to help us understand how this situation came about and how it pertains to processes of economic development, democracy, and our identity and values as Australians.

Australia has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. That is amazing and a credit to our public health system. And, of the people who give birth in Australia, one in three experience it as a traumatic event. Grace Jeffery is a student midwife. She talks to the Creating Space Project about helping people feel safe and empowered in labour, and the importance of continuity of care throughout pregnancy and of good post-natal care, to reduce this experience of trauma for families. Grace also talks to the gendered nature of midwifery, which translates back to "with women", and the ways in which this can exclude people who don't fit a binary construct of gender.  She reflects on how, while it is traditionally a very feminine space, it is fine to extend that space for people who don't identify with "woman", or "man", or "mother" or "father", so that they also can feel safe and comfortable in their experiences of becoming parents.

Kim is a Joondoburri Salt-Water woman from Yirin, the traditional name of Bribie Island, South East Queensland. She found out at the age of 21 that she is Aboriginal. As a child, Kim's father was sent to a boys’ home to learn Western ways, his mother having been persuaded that this was in his best interests. In this institution, her father sustained appalling abuse. Now that her father walks with the Ancestors, Kim shares with the Creating Space Project the story of her family and her culture. As well as the trauma sustained by First Nations Peoples as a result of colonisation, this is a story of resilience, growth and joy. “To lose 65 000 years of culture, to lose my language, to lose my stories… I don’t know my language. I would so love to. I know the name of my language. It was Oondoo. But I don’t know anything. Any words. Nothing. It’s a sad thing. But… I know where I’m from. I can connect to my ancestors. I can connect with my country.” TW: Abuse, suicide attempts

Kim works in town during the week and on the family farm on weekends. Her family are trying to keep some of their cattle alive during the drought. Resilience is a complicated business. It is the quality of bouncing back, surviving or thriving, and is revealed in hard times. Kim is the embodiment of resilience. She brings love, hope, commitment and loyalty to the work of emotionally sustaining her family through a drought that is slowly killing their stock. She doesn’t avoid emotional pain, standing side by side with her son as he has to put down the animals. She nurtures a small patch of lawn so her husband and son have something green to see when they return home from paddocks that are nothing but dust and dirt. She finds ways to sustain herself as well, one of which is choosing to tell her story as part of the Creating Space Project. Kim understands the power of witnessing. Just as she stands witness to her son in the fields, supporting him in his work, she talks here to allow us to bear witness to what she is carrying. “I like to think someone’s heard what I’ve said and actually acknowledged what I’ve said.”

Amid the bustle and kindness of the Baradine Country Women's Association hall, Isabelle took time away from volunteering to talk to the Creating Space Project.  Isabelle’s mum, Julia, tells a story about running away to her grandmother’s house whenever she needed a break. Isabelle, confident and insightful, uses that story to reflect on what’s important to her life. Family and working hard. Those things matter a great deal to Isabelle. Having interviewed her grandmother and mother previously in the podcast (Drought Pantry and Fourth Generation), this interview provides beautiful insight, from Isabelle, into the ways that families pass their values down through the generations.    

“I am the fourth generation of incredibly strong women.” When Julia was four years old, she was run over by the family car and pronounced dead. Somehow, she was revived and recovered from the incident without lasting harm. Julia Baird is the daughter of Nea Worrell, the amazing woman integral to the Drought Pantry at the Baradine Country Women’s Association, and previously interviewed on the podcast about the ways this drought, the worst in living memory, is impacting rural NSW, Australia. Cut from the same cloth, Julia talks to the Creating Space Project about the strength of the women in her family, from her grandmother down to her own daughter. She also talks about the faith that sustains her mother and sustains her, one that is linked to Mary MacKillop and the charism of the Josephite Sisters, also women of great strength. “She [mum] just has this attitude – you just get on with life.. I think she got that from my nan.” The intergenerational transmission of values is a process that I am very interested. Listening to Julia reflect on her family provides fascinating insight into the ways that families pass down an ethos of hard work, kindness, and never giving up. “Mum always said “You just get on with it, you’re my daughter, you know what to do, get on with it.” Family is one of the places where we shape a powerful sense of who we are, of our own identity, and this can be one of the forces that generates resilience in us. “Through the telling of these stories and the acceptance of who we were as women, I really took on, “I’m Julia, I know who I am, I have this strength, I have this power.”

The Baradine Country Women’s Association is 90 years old. At the moment, its hall is full of supplies and vouchers, donated from around NSW and Queensland to support farmers and to try and keep the local shops alive.   Nea Worrell, part of a family with five generations in the CWA, talks to the Creating Space Project about the impact of the drought.   “We’ve had that farm for forty-odd years, my husband has been farming for seventy years, and we’ve never had dry dams.”   Nea and her family have been handfeeding their animals, from sun-up to sun-down, for 18 months. They’re reduced to their breeding stock, and are wondering how they get through summer, never mind beyond that.   There is no rain predicted.   Nea’s story is not unique. Farming communities are facing enormous hardship. As well as struggle, though, what shines through is the strength, wisdom and kindness of women like Nea, building community resilience and hope.   “We have ladies burst out crying when they see us. They’re being strong for the men in the farm and then they come in here and we say “How are you? Are you alright?” And then the boom gates open. So cuddles and cuppa teas and cakes are free here at the CWA. They go away feeling restored and better. And if we can do that, that’s great.”

This interview with Auntie Josie is to acknowledge and celebrate NAIDOC week, 2018.  Auntie Josie is from the Wailwan nation. She is a First Nations Person. We were speaking on Darug land. I am deeply grateful and honoured that she has shared some of the stories of her life with me.  These stories concern sexual abuse, domestic violence, suicide and parental death, among other things. Please be advised of these triggers. Listen mindfully for your own wellbeing and with respect for Auntie Josie. Auntie Josie is a woman of remarkable courage, wisdom and kindness. I have been moved beyond words in listening to her stories and by the generosity she has shown in sharing them with me. The purpose of sharing the stories is to help Australians, like myself, understand better the experiences of First Nations Peoples. These experiences are the consequence of colonisation and genocide. I would like to be very clear that I acknowledge that these are Auntie Josie's stories. I am simply privileged to be permitted to release them here as a Creating Space Project podcast episode.  So too, the thumbnail image is the official NAIDOC 2018 logo and I am using it, I believe in good faith, to be a part of this celebration. 

Introduction to Conversation with Merle Conyer I talk to Merle Conyer. I had a particular question, about the interface between Western psychology and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge. I’m exploring that because of a work role I’ll be taking up soon, as part of the Creating Space Project. As part of my preparation for that, I was put in contact with Merle by Paul Rhodes. Merle has been grappling for some time with the same question that has only recently come to me. Merle works with Aboriginal communities. She’s a South African woman who’s been in Australia for many years. As she describes it, she is in that intersection of human rights and wellbeing and social justice. So I sat with her on her carpet and listened to her, and in listening to her, I have learnt an enormous amount. For her the word genocidewas shattering. She realised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in her lifetime have encountered the five conditions for genocide laid about by the United Nations (1948) Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. There is shame attached to that: The shame for a South African woman, and the shame of being in Australia and realizing the systems of oppression that exist here, the structures of colonialism. A phrase that has stayed with me from the conversation with Merle is about moving from shame to responsibility and how you tease apart toxic shame from helpful shame. This interview has helped raise in me lots of questions: As a therapist, in what ways am an instrument of oppression?” When I’m in a therapy room with a person who experiences racism, structural oppression, in what way do I perpetuate that oppression? How do I seek restorative action? How do I seek to redress that? How do I deconstruct the racism that I have been raised in? How do I dismantle those processes of colonization in myself. Merle explores the idea of cultural humility. As I understand it, this is about making space within my space, and within the spaces I operate in for voices from other cultures and other systems? Merle then talks about the therapeutic modalities that have served her well in practice. These include somatic therapies and postmodern therapies, including narrative therapy. I am also in conversation with First Nations Peoples, this interview is just one act of preparation.

This episode is part-two of Bearing Witness: The backstory to Creating Space where we hear the inspiring yarn behind Ruth Nelson and how this podcast came into being. In the first episode we followed Ruth who, as an 18-year-old, inadvertently signed up to volunteer in community work with refugees leading her on the path of studying psychology.   She survived a brain encephalopathy, and in not choosing the path of least resistance, Ruth headed to northern Uganda at the age of 26 to work in community outreach as an NGO. It’s in this episode where we pick up Ruth’s story as she struggles with the futility of her presence, as a young inexperienced community worker, in an active conflict zone. Ruth saw her role, initially at least, as bearing witness to the atrocities of this insidious and complex conflict but over the two years she initiated and facilitated many programs, some of which had surprisingly comedic outcomes.   After Ruth returned to Australia to complete her qualifications as a psychologist and to work in the field, life happened, and she made a difficult decision to put her career on hold to dedicate her efforts to raising her child. It was during this period, Ruth felt like she was losing hope as social media reflected a world of growing ignorance and intolerance. So she decided to share stories. What was supposed to be a blog, became a podcast and Ruth searched far and wide to ask women to share their own stories at the virtual campfire. Ruth believes we are sentient bags of saltwater who just love a good story, and in listening to others we can readily identify shared values despite coming from different, seemingly alien backgrounds.   Since the Creating Space Project started in June 2016, Ruth has facilitated, so far, the sharing of stories, in a narrative framework, of 73 ordinary, yet extraordinary women. It was my opinion Ruth’s story needed also to be shared and she eventually acquiesced to my appeal for an interview. I think it makes for a particularly inspiring listen … enjoy!   This is the last episode before Ruth takes a break for a few months, as she is due to have another baby. But fear not - the Creating Space Project will return!

It seemed remiss - to me at least - with all the stories that have been shared by this project of ordinary, yet extraordinary women, it had not featured the captivating journey of its creator, Ruth Nelson.   It took 12 months and some gentle persuasion for Ruth to acquiesce to my appeal for an interview. The notion that she would become the object of interest left Ruth feeling ill at ease, yet her experience, I argued, was at the essence of the Creating Space story.   I knew Ruth’s personal story would make for a fascinating and inspiring episode, but as it transpired, the yarn - much like Ruth herself - proved difficult to contain and so, I proudly bring you the first episode in a two-part series.   We start with Ruth at 18 lying to nuns about her experience and inadvertently signing up to volunteer at a charity, Josephite Community Aid, with refugees. Following a stint in Tanzania, an encephalopathy left Ruth with three weeks to live and the prognosis of a living in a group home after she failed to die. Not content with just surviving, Ruth completed a degree in psychology and left for Africa, this time, again inadvertently, landing an active conflict zone. She spent two years in Northern Uganda and witnessed the region transforming from a state of war to post-conflict society.   When listening to Ruth, in her characteristically understated manner, we might be fooled - for just a moment - to believe her story is anything other than extraordinary, because it is. She possesses a generosity of spirit, that leaves very little room for ego. There is also a joyfulness in her manner, and despite the sometimes-horrifying and traumatic experiences, Ruth delivers humour and hope.   We hope you enjoy episode one of Bearing Witness: The Backstory to the Creating Space Project   Guest host Sarah Down interviews the usual host of the Creating Space Project, psychologist Ruth Nelson.   

Marghanita da Cruz is standing as a Greens candidate for the Leichhardt Ward in the forthcoming Inner West Council election. She took time from her campaign to talk to the Creating Space Project about cumquats.   Cumquats are a small citrus fruit. The variety grown in Sydney can’t be eaten fresh, it’s too sour. Marghanita has a cumquat tree in her backyard. The fruit, she gives away to people who make cumquat jam.   In this story, simple though it may seem, cumquat jam becomes a metaphor for the networks that emerge between people and between generations. I give you the cumquats from my tree, you give me some lemons.   The making of cumquat jam is knowledge that is passed down through generations. There is value in holding onto this knowledge. Modern Western society often encourages us to purchase so much of our diet and to waste what we do not consume. The women who gather to make cumquat jam are custodians of a wisdom that took a long time to be achieved. It is the techniques for cooking that are learnt only through observation. It is the understanding that in times of glut, we can preserve our food for the future, rather than letting it spoil.   The time spent together over an activity like jam-making is valuable too. It is time in which stories emerge. Marghanita recounts some of the stories of Hilma, an elder of Marghanita’s community who passed away two years ago, stories that teach us about the resilience of the human spirit.   If you think about the wise women in your own life, when were the times during which you got to hear their stories? What were the activities in which you stood side by side while they imparted their wisdom? I loved listening to Marghanita. It got me thinking about my grandmother, the stories she would tell while we cracked almonds or made Christmas cake.

- Nick is joined by Ruth, a psychologist, activist and host of the Creating Space Project podcast.- Avoiding being a shooting star as an activist.- Activism as a privilege.- Mental health as a political issue.- Bede Carmodys talk Sustainable Activism, How to avoid becoming burnt out as an activist.- An introduction to activist burnout and why it is important.- For more information on the episode and for links to all of the stories and clips from it, including a link to the activist burnout questionnaire Bede mentioned during his talk, go to: http://progressivepodcastaustralia.com/2017/07/11/177/

Alison Harrington is a formidable woman. She is a woman with a great deal to teach the world about creating a life of meaning and purpose. Alison is also a fabulous illustration of Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset,” which is about the underlying beliefs people have about learning.   A social entrepreneur, Alison tells the Creating Space Project a simple story about getting seniors to dance around nursing homes with silent disco technology.   “I’m really fascinated by how we can use this technology to improve the outcomes for people with dementia and basically make people healthier and happier.”   Alison has a post-graduate degree in social impact.   “It’s incredibly gratifying to do something where you effect the emotional outcome of people, particularly people who may not have great circumstances.”   Alison has undertaken a number of entrepreneurial enterprises.   “It’s always great for me when I’m creating something entirely new.”   New business ventures are a risk. For some people, that is such a daunting prospect, that they retreat from their ideas. For Alison, it is a lure. She values testing the limits. She’s a pioneer and she values failure.   “It’s always a combination of fear and excitement. It’s that trepidation, it’s that stepping over the edge.”   Alison explains that failure isn’t something to avoid. It’s a necessary part of growth. It’s better to take an opportunity, to say yes and fail, than to let it go due to not knowing whether you can do it or not.   “Even if you tried doing it and you can’t do it all, you might get 80% and everything is about learning.”   Alison describes the sensation of taking the risk of moving forwards in business as like going over a cliff.   “The image I have is abseiling.”   But, she says, not only do you have to go over the cliff, the more you do it, the more accustomed to the sensation you become.   Being a social entrepreneur is about creating businesses or value in the social sector, Alison says. Using innovation to improve the outcomes for another human being.   “It ultimately comes down to impacting another person at the most basic level.”   It has taken Alison many years to get to where she is in her career now. She describes it as being a place where she is authentic to the elements that drive her: The creative, entrepreneurial side; and the social side, which is about providing something meaningful and purposeful for the world.   As Alison says, “The funny thing is all the failures and all the experiences have all helped me, in a way, be where I am today.”

- Following on from our discussion with Kirsten Bayes from episode 164, this part of the discussion covers stopping arms fairs and linking human rights and animal rights. - We also discuss our trip to the UK, specifically London. - We cover our visit to the British Museum, great bike lanes, the Creating Space Project and vegan restaurant recommendations for London. - We also discuss the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, but we keep this discussion right until the end of the episode and there are plenty of spoiler alerts. - For more information on this episode and for links to all of the clips and stories from it, go to: http://progressivepodcastaustralia.com/2017/03/20/165/