Barkly Education Resource Strategy

The Barkly Education Strategy is a real community affair, with school students creating artworks about caring for dogs to go on posters and in talking books.

Tennant Creek based journalist and AMRRIC Consultant, Ktima Heathcote, is delivering the AMRRIC Barkly Education Strategy in local schools, funded by the NT Government Animal Welfare Fund. The strategy aims to address the serious need for appropriate educational resources and programs in the Shire focused on the health and welfare of animals (with subsequent improvements in public health).

Project partners are working together to develop culturally appropriate, language and visually-based resources suitable for the Shire’s town camps and remote communities. They include the Barkly Environmental Health Program, Julalakari Living Skills Program, Barkly Shire staff, Papulu Apparr-Kari Language Centre and the Julalakari Arts Centre. Ktima also works for the Tennant Creek Times – a relationship that has delivered good media coverage for the project.

It’s all about using simple stories to educate people about how to care for their dogs, and to make those illustrated stories available in languages that can be accessed by people right across Barkly Shire.

Some of the strategy’s initiatives include:

• Paintings by the Artists from the Pink Palace, Julalikari, are delivering messages about dog health in a talking book and in language-based promotional posters and design covers for CDs.
• The Language Centre is translating resources into Warumungu and Warlpri.
• Year 10 students from Barkly College (Tennant Creek High School) are completing four films (animation and power points) with different messages about dogs – from health issues to caring for your dog – taken from the AMRRIC manual Dog Health Programs in Remote Indigenous Communities; An Environmental Health Practitioners Handbook. The films will be translated into local language and put on DVDs to be taken out to communities.
• Other students have been working on messages about dogs in the community – such as ‘It’s Not Cool to be Cruel’. Their contributions will create several talking books and posters.
• Acclaimed young artist, creator of the Cheeky Dog brand, and Tennant Creek Junior Citizen of the Year Dion Beasley is working with his carer Joie Boulter and Ktima to develop a pamphlet using his wonderful drawings.