Dr Mandy Hughes

Given links between women's economic empowerment and IPV reduction, the 3Es to Freedom: Education, Employment, Empowerment programme aimed to empower refugee and migrant women to successfully navigate their futures by developing confidence, building knowledge and skills, and broadening their experiences to become stronger through their connections to community. The ultimate goal of the program was to support participants to secure sustainable employment of their choice, enabling them to move away from IPV should they need to. Making community connections and developing social networks were key to success in building the participants' confidence and skills, empowering them to pursue employment. In addition, the program supported the women to embark on social enterprise employment projects. Referring to this program as a case study, this chapter will describe and critically reflect on the success of this innovative intervention. The programme was delivered by a non-government organisation in Australia and supported by a long-term university research partnership.

Collaborative media-making is a process whereby a researcher or community worker connects with selected participants to create a safe space to codesign media outputs, including films, photography, and other creative works. Collaborative media-making prioritizes the authentic telling of lived experiences. As forced migration continues to be a compelling issue in the contemporary globalized world, sharing authentic refugee stories is paramount to understanding the complexity of migration and settlement experiences. Collaborative media-making presents itself as a way to engage respectfully with refugee storytellers to represent their journeys navigating their lives in transition or their new homeland. This entry presents background information on collaborative media-making and highlights issues specific to working with refugees in this space, including ethical concerns and the potential positive impact of utilizing this method of knowledge creation and dissemination. Whereas collaborative media-making can take many forms, this entry focuses on collaborative filmmaking.

Many refugee men have experienced significant trauma and face complex, interconnected challenges when settling into a new country. While the men require immediate assistance to meet their daily needs, such as securing housing and employment, in the longer term, they need support to build their confidence to navigate their new lives. Refugee men must negotiate unfamiliar social norms and learn “how to be a man” in their new home. Framed by intersectionality, the author examined the experiences of participants from an Australian refugee men’s social group to consider the challenges they faced and how these experiences overlapped with acculturation processes, such as renegotiating gender roles. Although the men’s group was not openly identified as a Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) prevention program, it embraced behaviour change strategies to develop trusting relationships within the group that encouraged conversations around gender norms to promote gender equality and family safety.

Non-metropolitan HASS students face intersecting educational challenges in a higher education landscape that duplicates entrenched inequalities already experienced in the regions. The Australian Universities Accord drew attention to the ‘compounding disadvantage’ (O’Kane et al. 266) of regional students, yet little material effort has been yet made to reverse the barriers to higher education for regional students, including the introduction, in 2021, of the so-called ‘Jobs Ready Graduate’ legislation, a government- sponsored campaign that has been directly responsible for $50,000 humanities degrees in Australia.

In this environment, the vulnerability of HASS programs in the regions has never been more evident. Across Australia, HASS programs face mounting challenges: low levels of public funding for tertiary education, increased student contributions to HASS degrees with the Jobs Ready legislation, and the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation is even more dire in regional universities, with a system driven by school leavers’ demand prompting decisions to reduce HASS offerings. Moreover, metropolitan universities’ online offerings of HASS programs have persisted after the pandemic, enabling regional students to enrol in programs that provide them with greater choice. With this endangerment of HASS disciplines in regional Australia, we risk ceasing to teach vital skills and knowledge that support equity, social justice, belonging, and truth-telling essential to regional communities and students.

HASS disciplines have the potential to address disadvantage and transform the lives of precarious and marginalised students, yet despite rhetorical platitudes defending the social value of HASS more broadly, these benefits are rarely articulated and even more rarely evidenced. In this essay, we foreground regional graduates’ voices to reflect on how regional students understand how studying HASS strengthened their individual capacity and identity to shape their lives and communities. These graduate stories suggest that the critical, reflexive, and communicative skills provided by a regional HASS program assist in addressing compounding disadvantages. They reveal ways that HASS plays a key role for this cohort of students in building confidence, equipping students for employment, connecting people and ideas, and promoting social cohesion to strengthen regional communities.

As trauma survivors, women and girls from refugee backgrounds face significant challenges when settling in host countries; the risk of domestic and family violence (DFV) accentuates these difficulties. Reflecting on findings from a seven-year university and industry research partnership, this article explores the etiology of DFV in women from refugee backgrounds living in non-metropolitan Australia. Drawing on action research principles and intersectional and social ecological theoretical frameworks, this study captured diverse women’s views about experiences and strategies for addressing DFV in refugee communities. Having developed trusting relationships with participants over the different study phases, the first author conducted in-depth interviews with women of refugee backgrounds, listening deeply and confirming findings with participants as they emerged. Interviews were also conducted with staff from settlement, health and specialist domestic violence services to offer a broad perspective on how best to support refugee women experiencing DFV. Key findings revealed stressors and support that impact violence, such as employment status and acculturation, and identification of who the women would trust if experiencing violence. By understanding the interweaving factors influencing women’s risk of DFV and strategies to address it, global healthcare providers will be better positioned to collaborate with refugee communities and specialist services.

The pursuit of the dream of classical music is not an equal playing field.

My recent study looked at the inequalities rural and regional young classical musicians face, which are unknown to their city-based counterparts.

There are systemic music inequalities in Australia based on where you live and where you go to school. Inner-city, private school kids are often the most likely to access music education. Kids living in rural areas are the least likely to have music opportunities.

Music inequality also exists between states. Queensland has had a long tradition of offering accessible instrumental music lessons and ensembles, but most other states fall short. Many children cannot access instrumental music education.

Sharing refugee stories through visual research can be a powerful way to educate communities and promote social inclusion. This becomes even more effective when refugee participants are deeply involved in the process of their representation and feel a sense of ownership of the research products. In this chapter I discuss considerations around refugee representation and collaboration by examining two projects from non-metropolitan Australia. In these case studies, films and other visual products were co-created to inform locals, programme funders, and broader audiences about the lived experiences of diverse community members who had unique settlement stories. Telling these stories enhanced the participants’ sense of belonging and community connectedness and also challenged negative narratives about refugees that had been previously promoted by conservative governments and xenophobic community members. Audience interactions with these visual products demonstrated a greater sense of compassion and understanding of the newcomers, as well as a desire to welcome them and support them.

The 3Es to Freedom was a program for women from refugee and migrant backgrounds, operating in northern New South Wales and South East Queensland, Australia, from 2016 to 2021. The program offered a welcoming space where the women could build on their skills to develop confidence, enabling them to pursue their ambitions. This article focuses on how the program’s responsiveness supported the needs of refugee women in regional communities. Place making and a place-based approach provided a theoretical framework to analyse the ways in which the staff embedded the program in local, distinctive regional communities, which provided opportunities for the women to forge bonds to build bridges into their broader communities. The place-based approach can be identified in how the women walked together to discover local places of interest, secured a plot in the community garden, and connected to social groups and local services. Involvement in art exhibitions acknowledged and gave voice to the women’s presence in the community, enhancing their sense of belonging and increasing public understanding of how these newcomers enriched their chosen communities. By investing in these local connections, a sense of place was established, contributing to the women’s adaptation, resilience and social inclusion in their region.

This article shares the narratives of young rural and regional classical musicians in Australia as they navigated their musical journeys. Challenges are explored, including the lack of resources, and the need to travel long distances and the associated costs. Study participants reflected on their feelings of isolation and lack of understanding from their nonmusic peers and stressed the need to connect with other like-minded musicians. The benefits of being a young musician in a non-metropolitan area are discussed, including unique opportunities offered in a nurturing, less competitive environment. Regional conservatoriums' role is highlighted, particularly through the Regional Youth Orchestra NSW (RYO) initiative. Study findings demonstrate the positive impact of regional youth orchestra programs in connecting talented young classical musicians with professional orchestras and peers to support and inspire their musical ambitions and address entrenched music inequalities.