Negotiating belonging in Australia through storytelling and encounter

Abstract

From 2010 to 2012 a diverse group of young people participated in an oral history theatre project, Chronicles, which aimed to support them to claim a personally meaningful Australian identity. Oral history theatre was used to facilitate a process whereby the young people were able to reconnect with their personal family histories, encounter Aboriginal young people and stories, and together interview Aboriginal Elders. Through this process, they could develop new understandings of their own social identities, and meanings of and possibilities for belonging. 'Centring diverse lives, decentring whiteness' and 'a different starting point: Aboriginal ways of knowing', were the two key outcomes th..