How can cultural organisations work effectively with communities?

In this episode, we talk with Jade Lillie and Lia Pa’apa’a about best practice when it comes to community engagement.

They cover topics such as culturally and creatively safe spaces, starting a project the way that we want to finish it and the importance of being able to share failure and learn from it.

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Guests

Jade Lillie

Jade has been working as an executive and leader in arts, culture, health, community and international development, education and training for the past 15 years. She is a specialist in strategy, community and stakeholder engagement, facilitation, collaboration and partnerships, people and culture.

After 5 years as Director and CEO with Footscray Community Arts Centre, she was awarded the prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship for 2018 - 2019. As the Director, Public Affairs with cohealth, she leads research, policy, advocacy, strategic and government relations, marketing, communications and sponsorship.

Read about Jade’s new book project, The Relationship is The Project at www.therelationshipistheproject.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadelillie

https://jadelillie.com/

Lia Pa’apa’a

Lia Pa’apa’a is a Samoan/Native American woman who works across Australia as artist and community arts worker. Pa’a’a’a started out as a teacher, trained in Indigenous Education. She has spent the last five years working on Indigenous and Pacific festivals in urban, regional and remote Australia.  Lia lives in Cairns where she works with the local community to produce contemporary dance shows and is developing her own platform Plant Based Native to investigate the intersections of food/art/community and wellbeing.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/plantbasednative/posts/

https://onepagelink.com/liapaapaa/

Key points

This episode covers:

  • Why community-engaged practice is so powerful

  • How to relinquish curatorial power and create culturally and creatively safe spaces

  • The reason you need to start a project the way you intend to finish it

  • How to leave a legacy in the context of finite project funding

  • The importance of sharing failures and learning from our mistakes

  • Why it’s an issue when CACD is seen as a separate artform rather than a way to work all the time

  • Why we need to avoid using the ‘deficit model’ and adopt a strength-based approach instead

  • How practitioners can think about self-awareness and take responsibility to learn about a community before starting work.

Links

Key resources mentioned in the episode:

The Relationship is the Project – Book by Jade Lillie and Lia Pa’apa’a

Link to book launch in Melbourne on 3 Feb 2020 - https://therelationshipistheproject.com/2020/01/03/melbourne-launch-for-the-relationship-is-the-project/)

CACD – A collaboration between professional artists and communities to create art

Brow Books – website where The Relationship is the Project can be pre-ordered

Plant Based Native – personal ancestral project by Lia Pa’apa’a

 

All episodes

Transcript

Tandi:                           Welcome to the podcast, both of you.

Jade Lillie:                     Thank you, Tandi.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  Thanks for having us.

Tandi:                           So today I'd really love to get underneath the book that's coming out and understand a little bit more about some of the ideas in it, and really I'd love to start, Jade, just by talking a bit about what's led you to this point in terms of your career development. Talk us through the career trajectory that you've had and what's led you to publish the book at this point.

Jade Lillie:                     Thanks, Tandi. I guess my career trajectory, like everybody who works in the arts and cultural sectors, has been wide and varied. I started off as a teacher, high school drama and English teacher along with a whole range of colleagues that I work with in the sector now. We all started off in that space together. And then over time, I guess I refined that practice to become more focused on arts and cultural projects as a way of instigating, initiating, and collaborating around social change with communities.

Jade Lillie:                     My most recent role in the arts was as the Director and CEO of Footscray Community Arts Centre, and the idea of this book really started there. Over all of the years that I've been working with communities and in this space, the questions that people ask and are interested in remain the same, and that might be anything from Lia's awesome chapter around how do we create culturally and creatively safe spaces or how do we work better with communities and people with disability, or how do we make sure we prioritize those peoples first. Those are just some of the questions, along with many others. How do I make art with communities?

Jade Lillie:                     So the various topics that have been shared and explored in the book are a combination of all of those questions that I've been continuously asked over many years. And so when I was lucky enough to get the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, I thought, "What a great opportunity to have some time and space to really make this project possible."

Jade Lillie:                     I talked to all of the great collaborators who are in the book, and for us all to be able to share the things that we know and the questions that we have and the things that we think we might've had some insights on to share with other people. So hopefully the questions change as well. Hopefully the questions deepen, and hopefully we can be better as a sector and maybe stop asking the same questions and start asking some bigger, more systemic and structural change type questions as a result.

Tandi:                           Love to go there with you today on that. So who is the book for?

Jade Lillie:                     Probably not dissimilar to your great podcast, Tandi. It's for people who are interested in working better with communities, it's people who work in arts and cultural sectors and community development spaces. It's for artists, for cultural practitioners, for arts mergers, for CEOs, for marketing managers, for everybody who is interested in becoming a better collaborator, really.

Jade Lillie:                     So, students, if there are people studying arts and cultural management degrees or education or any of those things that really involve communities and making something together for a social change impact or a greater community impact.

Tandi:                           You write in the book that community-engaged practice belongs as a part of every art form strategy organization that has a focus on working with people. And when I read that, I thought, "Wow. It kind of is an increasingly important thing that all organizations need to be doing, isn't it?"

Tandi:                           I see more and more interest and more and more different types of organizations working with communities in different ways, and I guess there is more potential to see these ideas applied in different context. Would you agree?

Jade Lillie:                     Yeah, absolutely. I think really the reason why organizations exist, why we exist as a sector is for artists and communities, really. And still now, I see different organizations and institutions, and practitioners to a point, looking to community engagement as an add-on or as a workshop offering or as an audience development activity, or a way to share the thing that we're doing rather than putting communities right at the centre along with artists and asking, "Who are we here for? What are we trying to do together, and how are we all contributing to the cultural landscape of this country by working collectively on creative and cultural issues?" I suppose.

Tandi:                           Fascinating. So let's bring Lia in. Lia, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and your career journey so far. Tell us how it all began.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  Yeah. Thanks, Tandi. Actually, similar to Jade, I was a teacher. Yeah, and I didn't know that about you, Jade. But I trained in indigenous education and was working in a prep to 12 college and working predominantly with indigenous and Pacific culturally diverse young people, and found just more and more that I was engaging artists and community elders, leaders, to engage that cohort of young people.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  So very quickly, I became this kind of art project manager within the school, and saw the connection between arts and culture, and our culturally diverse young people's learning and engaging and sense of self and wellbeing. And so when some work came up in the arts, I then moved into working in the northern territory, doing youth-based music programming and then found myself living in a remote community.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  But again, very varied, which is something that I really love about this practice is that it's always moving and changing and constantly growing.

Tandi:                           So your chapter of the book, Lia, is about culturally and creatively safe spaces. What do you mean by that?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  I guess my practice has been predominantly with Pacific Islander communities, which is where my mom's lineage is from, and then indigenous Australian communities in regional, remote, and urban. And so, for me, interestingly enough, I didn't even know that CACD (Community Arts and Cultural Development) was a thing until probably five years into my practice. To me it's really about a way of being and knowing, as an indigenous person myself, and I think that stems from understanding very particularly with Pacificers, you have a life of service, and so what you give, that's your role as a young person in a community. Respecting your elders and facilitating spaces. I knew that it was never me that had all the knowledge or even all the tools or the understanding of what was potentially happening within any given space. And I didn't necessarily need to know, I just needed to facilitate people to feel like they could explore their journeys and they could bring themselves and their culture into that space.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  So I guess I always understood that it was never about me. It was always about the project and the communities that I was servicing. And so from that, it was my job to learn what those communities needed, and then as a producer, go out and get those things, whether it be food, whether it be buses access, making sure the right people are there, giving time and space for each community to get the people there that needed to happen like the timelines of different mobs and what that looks like didn't always work in a white fella framework

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  So it's complex and it's varied, but you know it when you feel it, when you're in it, that people are engaging, people are smiling, people are talking openly, and yeah. I guess it's something that you feel. But it's not necessarily easy to achieve.

Tandi:                           Yes. That definitely strikes me as, I guess an outsider to CACD practice, for want of a better word, but it strikes me that it can be really difficult to do it well. So I’m curious for either of you to answer why. What's the imperative or reason why this work is important for our sector?

Jade Lillie:                     You go, Lia

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  Like Jade said, we're doing it for artists. This sector is about supporting artists and communities, and the stories that need to be told and the work that needs to be done on a ground level. And me coming from a particularly remote and regional context, people who have never been to the Art Centre Melbourne or seen a major theatre production, it's what is applicable to them? How do they communicate their stories? How do they grow and get all the benefits that the arts and cultural sector has to offer? Because we know there are so, so many, but how is that relevant to someone living seven hours from the nearest Woolworth, in very remote places?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  And so in my chapter, I'm kind of talking about the first step is knowing yourself and who you are, and understanding your lenses so that when you come into a space, you can check yourself and your understanding, and just be really open and willing to go on a journey with the participants of any given project. That you don't have to understand, you don't have to know everything, but you need to be open to listening and to being told what to do, rather than you being the boss of everything. And as producers, we're used to being the boss. And doing that deep listening and understanding so that you can kind of create these spaces.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  So I think for me, it's absolutely where all the work is, and there is so much work to be done across elders and young people, and everyone in between really of how that meaningful engagement can happen for people with the art and cultural sector.

Tandi:                           I'm so curious about what goes on creatively in a process like the ones you're talking about. Can either of you share any insights or experiences about what happens creatively in a process where an artist or an arts organization is engaging with the community?

Jade Lillie:                     I guess I'll jump to that in one second, Tandi. I was just thinking as Lia was speaking about the kind of concept of power. And one of the things that happens in community arts and culture development project, I think, and it's also why it seems to sit separately to other art forms in some ways, which I think is a bit of a mistake, but there's a different kind of power that takes place in the CACD project when it's really at it's peak, and that's a collective power. You're sort of working on this incredible thing together, and all bringing your skills and expertise, whatever they are.

Jade Lillie:                     So the community are bringing their kind of context and the artists and people who are wanting to do something big together. And if we're the producers, say, or the artists working in that space, then we're collectively bringing all of those skills together. And I think one of the things that makes it work is you have to be willing to let go of your curatorial premise, or what you anticipate that project is going to do or be. You really have to trust that that process will deliver, and it generally does.

Jade Lillie:                     So I think what happens creatively is you are working together, talking about the things that you want to share collectively, and understand more through this project. Let's say it's about ... it could be anything. A really important project to do with people would be around our climate crisis in the futures. What are the things that we want to explore together? How do we want to do that? What are some of the art forms that would best serve that particular conversation and outcome?

Jade Lillie:                     And then we just go about building that together, and delivering an outcome that speaks to the things the community and the artists are wanting to say, as well as how we might influence that particularly issue, socially, culturally, and politically.

Tandi:                           Would you agree with that, Lia?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  Yeah, absolutely. And I think Jade's talking about the outcome is also ... we have to take off our curatorial lens, but then also we're identifying who the audience is, and so when people are creating work for themselves by themselves, what that then looks like, and that's really important to do that. And I know that I've had grand visions of remote community festivals that I soon realized was never going to peak over 200 people, and what does success look like? So taking away our kind of bigger story and Instagram, all those different things, it's like what does that actually look ... what is a success, and how does that then maintain the potential future learning or development? And so I think that's really important as well.

Tandi:                           I'd love to hear an example or two of what you found to be successful and/or challenging in a process. Can you talk about any real examples

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  I've got one that comes to mind really quickly, I was running a traditional dance program in a remote community of Borroloola. I'm not from Borroloola, I am not a dancer, and I'm also not indigenous Australian. So for me, the beauty of that CACD is that I don't actually mind what art form it is, it's about telling the stories, which allows you to work across all sectors, and that's really exciting part to me. But I was doing a traditional dance project where we realized that all the traditional dances were created by the old people, and the elders of the community talked about the old people, so they'd all passed away, and then recognizing that dances are on a continuum, culture's on a continuum, and that there hadn't been any new dances created in about 50 years.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  So we got an amazing indigenous dancer, Juana Gallo up there to do a bit of choreography. Got the grant, flew her up there, got her in the room with all the buddy buddy, the old ladies who range from 70 to 90 years old, also can't be told what to do. They do things on their time, as they should. And we got there and Janoa and I ended up basically sitting down the whole process because as soon as those ladies got an opportunity to think about it and talk about it, they wrote like five songs in two days. They then went out and started dancing, much to everyone kind of laughing joyfully that all these old girls were getting up and stomping in the dirt.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  And one of the dances was about the mine that was there, and they did a whole dance about how they want the mine to leave, that then got performed in front of the mine later on, but it was done in traditional language, so no one knew any better. So it was just this really exciting outcome where Juana, as an artist we engaged to support this, ended up learning and just having a real kind of creative and professional development for herself, and was happy to just sit back and watch and be available rather than kind of leading it out. So even as the artist, she had to change her understanding and expectations of the project really quickly.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  And we couldn't have asked for more. Like Jade said, the expectations usually actually exceed anything that you can think of yourself, as an outsider. They're so much more deep, and those dances have been performed for the last four years at their annual traditional dance festival. So it's just intergenerational. It's amazing.

Tandi:                           Wow. That's epic. So let's talk about challenges now. I'd love, Jade, you talk in the book about epic fails and how talking about failure is really important. So what can go wrong?

Jade Lillie:                     In a project?

Tandi:                           Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jade Lillie:                     This is the thing about working in a community-engaged way, it's the most experimental thing you can do because it's people. We're all people, and we're just bringing ourselves to something. So what can go wrong? There's so many things. Partially, I think a project that I was involved in many years ago, learned some big, hard lessons. The thing that went terribly wrong is that we weren't asked by the right people to do the project. So we were asked by a non-government organization and an agency in the community to deliver a particular project, and when we started the process of consulting with community, we realized that there were already people living and working in the community who could've delivered that project. And we weren't from there. We lived in Brisbane, and this community was a remote community off the east coast of Queensland. So that's one of the things that can go wrong, and that was ultimately the failing of that project.

Jade Lillie:                     There were some great things that happened within it, but it didn't start the way it needed to finish. And I think that's always the intention is if you can start something the way you want to finish it, you have the right people around the table, you've been invited by the right people to participate in this idea and to support the development of it, and then to build it together. And I guess one of the things that I see go wrong often is that there is a lack of transparency around what's possible in a project.

Jade Lillie:                     We all know that we come to any project with a series of parameters, whether that's a budgetary parameter, or time, or we have some constraints that we're really working towards a particular type of outcome. And if we're not upfront about those from the get-go and being really clear and letting people know where we stand and what the offer is, and whether or not people are interested in taking that up or changing it or challenging it, or growing it, then those are some of the things that can, in my experience, go terribly wrong.

Tandi:                           And so talking about failure, that idea comes up again and again in different forums. Why do you think it kind of hasn't happened yet? It seems like we all agree that talking about failure and challenges are important, but what's needed, you think, to support more of us to do that more of the time?

Jade Lillie:                     We have such a real-time example at the moment with the climate crisis happening in Australia, and the fact that it's generally from our white leaders, and it's generally from white people that can't actually acknowledge that we've made a mistake. So at the biggest, most structural and systemic levels, we have leaders who aren't willing to stand in front of communities who are really suffering and say, "You know what? We got it wrong. We've had it wrong, we got it wrong, and now we need to fix it."

Jade Lillie:                     So I really feel like it's a systemic and structural and cultural issue, really coming from leadership and within White communities more than anything. Being able to acknowledge that we've had it wrong and we need to make it different. There's sort of a reluctance to admit failure, and then try to fix and repair or change, or withdraw from that particular project or discussion.

Jade Lillie:                     I think from an arts and culture point of view, there's not a huge level of encouragement from our founding bodies either to talk about failure. Some of them are better than others. And again, I think that's a systemic and structural issue. Philanthropic trusts and foundations are much better at it, and actually much more open to hearing about the challenges and the failures. And that's why some of those relationships are often the most rich and generative.

Jade Lillie:                     But I think from a government funding perspective, there's a real reluctance for people to be able to sit down and say, "You know what? We failed on this project," without the sort of threat of, "Okay, you've got to give back all this money that you've already paid people with and invested in a project that didn't work." Sort of this constant search for what were the outcomes and what was the excellence, when actually sometimes we do need to get it wrong to be able to get it right next time. And I just don't think we're thinking long-term enough in that way, sort of project to project, or issue to issue, or election period to election period, rather than the bigger picture conversation about where did we go wrong and what do we need to do differently.

Tandi:                           It's something that I think there's a lot of fear to do it. But when you do do it, I think people respond to it really well, don't they? Like like I saw a recent discussion with some ladies really sharing, being quite vulnerable, actually, about sharing some past failures and I came away with just such positive feelings about it all, thinking, "That was real. That was helpful," that those leaders are actually amazing kind of thing. So there's a lot for us to gain from doing it, isn't there?

Jade Lillie:                     Agreed.

Tandi:                           All right. So I think what I'm curious about to ask both of you is when we're talking about these ideas, often we're talking about a community-engaged project, if you know what I mean, like a CACD project, what do you think the wider relevancies of some of these concepts or ideas in other arts and cultural settings?

Jade Lillie:                     Sorry, Lia, do you want to jump in on that one?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  No, you go.

Jade Lillie:                     I was just thinking that ... I guess this comes back to the fact that I think that there's a bit of an issue about community arts and culture development being a separate art form. And in fact, the way that the arts and cultural sectors talk about art forms generally ... We’re so busy talking about dance and visual arts and theatre, what everybody else is doing, and what our advocacy positions are and how we're working, than to talking more generally about what is our arts and cultural offering in Australia, how we're all contributing to that, regardless of art form. And I think community arts and culture development ... I understand why it was prioritized and kind of elevated in a way and the great work that people did in doing that, but I do think that it's meant that people do think about it as a separate thing rather than it being a way to work always.

Jade Lillie:                     Years ago, I did a research project talking to artists and collectors across Southeast Asia about this concept of community arts and culture development and what it means and some of the shared terminology perhaps. And we were literally the only place that talked about communities as separate to creative and cultural practice, or arts and culture practice. Everyone else was like, “but you can't have art without communities.” And so I think that's really where we need to be heading.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  Yeah. I totally agree and I guess that kind of feeds into what I was saying earlier, that I didn't even know that CACD was a practice. It was literally the way I walk in the world as a service provider and as a cultural being, and a facilitator/educator artist. And so when I realized that, I was like, "Oh, man. I could've gone to Uni and studied this."

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  So I was surprised, because like Jade said, this is the way as an indigenous person from the Pacific and the Americas myself, this is how we operate in the community. We are part of the community, we don't operate as individuals, and so therefore everything we do is embedded in community and family and kinship and country.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  And like I was saying earlier, the joy of CACD being across all art forms is that we get to work across all art forms, from weaving projects to traditional dance to contemporary dance and gaming. It's like CACD actually belongs in all of it. And what I feel like it allows these projects to do is this concept of legacy that I talk about, that it only might be so little, but you're leaving a place or a community or a space better than when you got there, whether it's through something simple like putting in three-phase power into the community so anyone can show up to that community at the rodeo or whatever and have access to putting on a big gig, to the training and capacity building of communities so that whether or not you ever come back, that there's a legacy there that people can continue to build on in their own art and culture practice.

Tandi:                           Yeah. I think that idea of legacy is important, particularly with more organizations getting involved with communities on a project basis. I think what I find challenging, and I know others do as well, is given the funding climate where a lot of this work is now being funded through project grants, how can we ensure legacy when the funding for a project finishes and an organization wants to or needs to move on? What can be done in that situation to lead that community and that relationship in the right way?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  I think for me personally, and I started working in the indigenous Australian sector very young, and so I recognized it wasn't my community, and so the concept of always working yourself out of a job doesn't allow you to kind of climb any lever or any kind of western construct of success. But I was always working myself out of a job from the day I got there. And that, in fact, has been the basis of my very rich and long-lasting career in the arts, because communities know that I'm not there to take people's jobs, I'm not there to stay and take up resources. I'm literally going to come in, I'm going to do what I can with what I have, and build community in the ways that they feel that they need, and I'm going to go. And that has meant that communities now contact me when they need the additional support because that's kind of my reputation is that I leave.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  So it can also be a positive. It doesn't have to be a negative. It's not a failure on an organization or a project that has to end. It's more like Jade was saying. You want to start like you're going to finish from the get-go, that you're not staying so what can you do every day to pass on any skills or practice, or even broker relationships that may not have existed in there because organizations don't understand that there are locals there who actually had all the skills to do it. And so you didn't really need to be there, but maybe your role then is brokering those relationships because people are more comfortable with the outsider and pulling those things together.

Jade Lillie:                     I think, too, on that, Lia, the fact that people still call you, that's also the relationship too, isn't it? The relationship changes. You still have relationships with people even outside of a project if that project has been delivered in an honest and transparent way. So I still have relationships with people that I worked with 10 years ago in communities, and it all comes back around, you know?

Jade Lillie:                     People call you in different roles, in different ways to ask questions or to partner or collaborate or ask if there's an artist that you know, who could work in that context because of a project that's been delivered by somebody else. So I think it is just about those relationships being held in a respectful, meaningful, and honest way over time. Even if your job on that project changes, the relationships still exist.

Tandi:                           Yeah.

Jade Lillie:                     Outside of any funding agreement. It's just so that people-

Tandi:                           Yeah. One of the things that emerges when we do audience research or evaluation following these projects we've been invited in to work with the stakeholder to evaluate a project is that sometimes an experience in a project like this can really awaken something in a member of a community or a young person, and they get inspired to develop a practice of their own. And I think there's not always a path for them to explore that. What can be done to help people like that?

Jade Lillie:                     I honestly think it's about making sure that your project is not operating in isolation. So who are the various partners or people? I guess it's about your sphere of influence is what I'm trying to say. So who do you know that can also be of benefit to the community or to that young person that you're working with?

Jade Lillie:                     One of the things that we used to talk about at FCAC is even if we're referring someone to somebody else, that's still us connecting. We're not the answer to everybody's questions, either. But it may be that we know a great organization down the road who also does that and how do we introduce them and just bring our networks to that project or experience for people as well?

Tandi:                           Thank you, that's helpful. So I'd love to ask you each for a tip, a practical tip for someone who might be listening who's not an CACD practitioner, but wants to do better at working with community. What's something that they could think about or a practical step that they could take to increase the quality of their engagement?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  I think one of the biggest learnings and realizations I've had is to lose this deficit model thinking. That rather going in and trying to fill the spaces of what a community or a young person doesn't have, to actually just build a strength-based approach to what you do. Who is there? What's the cultural context that you're there from? What are the stories, the song lines, the sacred spaces that are there, and those kinship frameworks? What's the artistic practice, all the way down to who are the organizations who's already operating in that space.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  Done is the time of this deficit model thinking. There is so much richness and amazing attributes to any community, being the natural beauty and the beauty of the people and also of each community's different story and colonial history, it's all so diverse that I think if we, as practitioners, can think of a strength-based approach from the start, it really just flips the script on everything that you're doing.

Tandi:                           Well said. That's a really good point. Thank you. Jade, is there anything you can suggest?

Jade Lillie:                     I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree with what Lia's just said. I think communities were absolutely fine before you got there and they're going to be fine after you're not. I think also for me it is about making sure you've done your own research, and trying to understand what you don't know, and figuring that out before you start asking people to help you understand that.

Jade Lillie:                     An example would be going into an Aboriginal community, and you're working with an organization, make sure that you've done some of your own work to understand what's happening in that community, what's happened before, what projects have happened before, what's the appropriate language to be using, what is the context currently taking place, rather than walking in and asking people those questions. Taking responsibility for what you don't know and trying to figure that out before you start. I think that's really key.

Jade Lillie:                     A lot of what happens when working in community context is people learning on community time, and I think we don't need to do that anymore. And I guess that's part of what the book is trying to do, is be a place where people can at least have a starting point to say, "Okay, I really don't know about that, but I want to know more about that," so this is a good place to start.

Jade Lillie:                     So I just think self-awareness, really, and knowing a bit more about what we don't know and then going in, figuring that out.

Tandi:                           I love that. So we're recording this at the time when the book is not yet available. But Jade, where will people be able to access it, where can people find out more about you and the ideas that we've talked about?

Jade Lillie:                     You can currently order it online, pre-order it through the Brow Books website, and for that pre-order link is there. And I think print versions are due to land around mid-January, and then people will have those posted out to them then. And then there's a launch in Melbourne happening on the 3rd of February. And then it will available at different bookstores, we're just working that out with the distributors at the moment, where it will be. But the best bet right now is online.

Tandi:                           Fabulous. And Lia, where can people go to connect with you, find out more about your work?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  My most direct is through Instagram at the moment. I'm working on a personal ancestral project for myself, called Plant Based Native. So you can follow me there and-

Tandi:                           Tell us a little bit about that before we finish up.

Jade Lillie:                     It's so great.

Tandi:                           What's Plant Based Native about?

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  I guess it also came from my CACD work. I recognized that food was a huge part of how I brought together culturally and creatively safe spaces. I fed people, I host people, I make them feel welcome. And so in recognizing that as part of my community practice, I wanted to explore that more through an ancestral lens of my diverse eclectic cultural heritage and how I can ... I guess when I'm living off-country in Australia and have a son now, how I can connect him to his ancestors when we live so far away from our homelands. So it's been an amazing journey that's included plant-based medicines, plant-based food, weaving, and just all the medicines that plants bring for us and how we can connect to them and our ancestors.

Tandi:                           Amazing. I love that. Can't wait to hear more about that. All right, we are going to wrap up. Thank you so much, both of you, for sharing a little bit of your knowledge here with us today and giving us a little bit of a taste of what's in the book. I'm definitely going to be ordering my copy after this.

Jade Lillie:                     Thank you.

Tandi:                           Thanks again.

Jade Lillie:                     Thanks, Tandi. Great to talk to you too, Lia.

Lia Pa'apa'a:                  Thanks so much.