NAIDOC, languages and the media

For NAIDOC again this year our focus was working with the media to share inspirational language stories. As part of this outreach, all fifty ABC radio stations collaborated with a local language worker to raise awareness of place names across their regions. The participating language workers impressively managed the friendly facebook conversations which were well received by the ABC audience and management. We’d like to thank everyone who agreed to take part!

A number of great new films have been uploaded to the ABC “This Place” site, with this spectacular collection finding an appreciative public audience. The videos have been featured on the ABC 7.30 Report and ABC News Breakfast during NAIDOC, with the 7.30 Report crediting First Languages Australia on air for its partnership. ABC News Breakfast also crossed live to community contributors Kado Muir and Michael Jarrett to talk with them about the background to their stories.

For those of you on Instagram, there is a growing gallery of ABC This Place photo stories. Tag your posts #ABCmyphoto to have them added to the collection.

ABC Indigenous now have a dedicated language page on their site which collates language stories published across the broadcaster.

ABC has embedded First Languages Australia’s Gambay: First Languages Map on their website, where it is gaining a strong level of interest. We are keen to continue receiving your language videos to add to these outreach opportunities.

ABC Kids commissioned three “This Place” films which began broadcast during NAIDOC.

And, the Community Broadcasting Foundation is supporting a project to transfer each of the This Place and Mother Tongue films to ICTV (Indigenous Community Television) which will broadcast them and share them on their online platform ICTVPlay.

The ABC and First Languages Australia partnership story told

This thoughtful story about our collaboration with the ABC and the dynamic young women working within the broadcaster gives you a feel for the consideration that is going into all the work underway in this major media project.

Our languages on Disney!

First Languages Australia was approached by Media Farm to partner on "Spread the Word", a ten-part series commissioned by Disney Kids. The first episodes in this series were broadcast during NAIDOC. You can read the full story here and watch the first 3-minute episode on YouTube. Once again, our thanks to the language centres and workers who have shared words for the series. The second five episodes are currently in production.

Little Yarns

ABC Kids Listen is sharing beautiful stories in and about our languages in Rudi Bremmer's new podcast series, Little Yarns.