Dear students enrolled at Charles Darwin University (CDU)

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With a team of colleagues, we are announcing the creation of Digital Arts NT (DANT), an interdisciplinary collective dedicated to supporting your creativity and upskilling in digital communication.

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The first aim of Digital Arts NT is to foster the creativity and mental well-being of CDU students. To achieve this aim, our collective will provide CDU students with a student-led digital platform, opportunities to connect with new mentors and networks, support for socially engaged research and high-impact publications, and funded awards to develop student-led multimedia projects and innovative live-streamed events.

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The second aim of the Digital Arts NT is to build community resilience to assuage the distress and divisions caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic (COVID-19 pandemic). We will aim to generate student-led digital works and innovations for supporting vulnerable individuals and groups affected by the pandemic.

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Disciplines currently represented in Digital Arts NT include the Visual Arts, Literature, Indigenous Studies, Languages, Music, Philosophy, and the Digital Humanities. But we wish to invite contributions from all students, including students in Biological and Environmental Sciences, Computer Science, Education, Humanitarian Services and Disaster Management, Health and Psychological Sciences, History, Law and Business, the VET sector, and any other unlisted disciplines.

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To start the project over the next few days, we are offering 10 start-up awards to support 10 teams of CDU students to join the collective and lead ambitious projects for the Digital Arts NT website and our communities. Each award is comprised of a first installment of $250 combined with mentoring from our team. Outstanding projects may receive additional financial support.

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The creations we welcome include, but are not limited to:

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- documentaries and podcasts about front-line work during the COVID-19 pandemic,

- empowering podcast interviews with individuals made vulnerable by the pandemic or ethical decision makers,

- enquiries that contribute to truth-telling about Australia history and policies guided by truth-seeking,

- ethical digital designs and innovative new apps,

- experimental films and online concerts for supporting individual and collective healing,

- live-streamed events and digital works that can foster critical thinking about information on the Internet and debunk conspiracy theories,

- digital works that can help people better cope with the emotional impact of uncertainty,

- digitally enhanced research articles,

- digitally enhanced literary writings and readings,

- imaginative systems for empathic communication designed to comply with policies regarding physical distancing,

- proposals for partnerships with other institutions and universities anywhere in the world.

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We will encourage projects that think outside the box to foster compassionate cooperation across communities and across social identities.

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CDU staff members and partners from other institutions may encourage students to form a team; and they may be listed as members of a team. But we can only award funds to proposals that are led by a CDU student. Both undergraduate and postgraduate CDU students are eligible.

 

There are no deadlines for submission: awards and mentoring will be offered on a continuing basis during the Second Semester of 2020

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Yours sincerely,

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The founding team of Digital Arts NT