2014

CCAT at the Disrupted Festival of Ideas

Four CCAT members – Kim Scott, Len Collard, Katie Ellis and Eleanor Sandry – were among a host of international, Australian and local creative thinkers who participated in the joint writingWA / State Library of Western Australia event, Disrupted Festival of Ideas, 31 October – 2 November 2014.

Kim Scott and Len Collard were part of a panel discussion on ‘First Words’ which discussed several local Noongar language revitalisation projects and explore the relationship between language, land and cultural identity. The policies of past governments vigorously discouraged the use of traditional languages and left devastating effect on Australian Indigenous languages, Today, language revival is now a priority for many Indigenous groups with a range of exciting projects underway nationally.

Katie Ellis and Eleanor Sandry led a two-part presentation – Depending on Technology – exploring the ways in which products such as smartphones and tablets have been integrated into our daily lives in an almost prosthesis-like fashion. While for the majority this has meant new ways of doing things, for people  with disabilities the technology is providing previously unavailable forms of participation and social inclusion. Using illustrative examples ranging from robotic prosthetic limbs to robot home helps, Eleanor Sandry considered the issues relating to design choices, accessibility and integration of these technologies into people’s homes.