NiTRO Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

ANU

In 2015, The Australian National University’s School of Art and Design’s Environment Studio launched a unique field-based program, The Balawan Elective, honourably named with guidance and permissions of the First Nations community on Yuin Country, after their culturally significant mountain Balawan … Seven years on, much has come from

In 2020, the ANU School of Music devised an innovative research project aimed at engaging Indigenous composers with an old keyboard instrument, the Henrion piano.

There are many things that need to be remembered in relation to Indigenous Australians. Here are three we may have chosen to forget or have faded enough from our collective memory that they may be considered as forgotten.

My office in the ANU School of Music shares a wall with Yil Lull studio, one of the few studios in Australia dedicated to recording First Nations’ music. The walls are thin. I often hear the wonderful music taking place on the studio floor.

I am really proud of our music school. It has accomplished a great deal, rebuilding, decolonising and allowing an evolution in First Nations practice to occur … But this is the easy part, the Western way, the way of doing. What I wish to explore is a process of

Many wander through life unaware of the real story that led to their existence and the course their lives have taken. Is it important? For many, not really, for me, vitally important.

The ANU School of Music is currently pursuing a bold and progressive approach to the way it engages and does business with First Nations’ People and communities. At the heart of this approach is a recalibration of relations with First Nations’ Peoples and communities through a fundamental reorganisation of

When a Music School gets it right pertaining to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander engagement a certain feeling grows within the school. “Feel” is a word that I intentionally borrow from music-making … First Nations peoples must feel that they have a place and a sense of directing certain

Yamaha is the world’s largest manufacturer of musical instruments … It feels good to work for a company like Yamaha, knowing the significant contributions it has made to music making all over the world over the years. However, sometimes “Yamaha” feels like a distant idea. Being an old brand

Professor Frank Millward talks to Will Kepa, producer, engineer and director of the Yil Lull Indigenous Recording Studio at the ANU School of Music.