David Clark
14/11/2022
Whilst in the UK recently, I bought a hardback copy of Gabor Maté’s thought-provoking new book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. Yes, today’s Western society capitalist culture is toxic, according to one of the world’s leading trauma experts. Here is what […]
10/11/2022
![Imagined corroboree by Reynold Hart, watercolour and ink on paper, 25 x 30cm, c.1948. Stan, Melvie and Gael Phillips Collection, 1947 - 65, Berndt Museum of Anthropology. [WU7255]](https://www.carrolup.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/WU2775-960x720.jpg)
It’s hard to believe that The Carrolup Story, our Storytelling, Education and Healing online resource, is four years old. In fact, it is so hard to believe that we forgot to celebrate our birthday yesterday. I’ve been away from the website for some time, first because I was […]
09/11/2022
Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the long period of time since my last post on the website. I was away for nearly eight weeks visiting family and friends in Europe. Since getting back, I’ve been catching up on a number of things, as well as working on […]
16/08/2022
Last week, I wrote about the beautiful relationship John and I have with the family of Cliff Ryder, one of the renowned Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup. There, I linked to the nine blog posts I have written about the family over the past three years, in particular […]
11/08/2022
‘Cliff Ryder’s name was appearing on some of the best pictures, and his manual work, at a country show, had been judged the best of any child in the Katanning district. A serious, sincere, boy, he listened attentively to his lessons, always intent on pleasing and doing the […]
03/08/2022
John and I first visited Casuarina maximum security prison for males in Perth back in November 2020 to give talks about the Carrolup child artists and to see the art class in operation. We also visited last year and then again on 7/8 July this year for NAIDOC […]
02/08/2022
Some months ago, I thought it was time to write a blog post summarising major happenings at Carrolup Native Settlement during the second half of the 1940s. However, I didn’t post the summary immediately and then forgot all about it. Recently, I was going through the website database […]
01/08/2022
Last week, Lisa Martello Hart sent me a copy of an article by Sean Van Der Wielen which appeared in the Great Southern Herald on Wednesday, 27 July. This is the same newspaper that reported on the beautiful landscape drawings of the Aboriginal children of Carrolup back in the […]
18/07/2022
Last year, I was interviewed by Huseyin Djemil of Towards Recovery for his ‘Journeys’ podcast. I was really pleased to be Huseyin’s first interviewee for his podcast, as I hold him and his initiative in high regard. It was also really nice to talk to him again, the […]
19/03/2022
As some of you know, John Stanton and I visited Kojonup in February at the request of Lisa Martello-Hart, who wanted us to meet various Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the community and also discuss the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach. Lisa had been talking with us for […]
16/03/2022
Here, I share the results of John McKnight and Cormac Russell’s deliberation about what is distinctive about an Asset-Based Community Development process. ‘The primary goal of an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) process is to enhance collective citizen visioning and production. This paper discusses each of four essential elements […]
15/03/2022
I wanted to introduce you to an amazing healing resource which appears on a page of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM). ‘The CMBM was founded in 1991 by James S. Gordon, M.D., a Harvard-educated professor of psychiatry and family medicine at Georgetown University Medical School and former […]
14/03/2022
Mrs Florence Rutter visited Carrolup Native Settlement twice in 1949-50. She then exhibited the children’s art in The Netherlands, England and Scotland, to great public acclaim, between 1950-52. During her time in Western Australia, Florence befriended Mrs Mary Durack-Miller and the two corresponded for some years after she returned […]
10/03/2022
I first became interested in Aboriginal culture and in Indigenous healing after reading Judy Atkinson’s wonderful book Trauma Trails: Recreating Song Lines – The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. I developed the educational initiative Sharing Culture which aimed to help Indigenous peoples heal from historical trauma. That website […]
10/03/2022
Members of the Kojonup community have been developing a project, based on an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach, to enhance the social and emotional wellbeing of the community, with an emphasis placed on empowering and connecting youth. Kojonup is the town closest to Carrolup Native Settlement, so the story […]
09/03/2022
I was writing a new blog post this morning when I realised that I had not previously included a section from my book Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe about the first exhibition of the Carrolup children’s art in England. Here is that section: “In their book, Child […]
08/03/2022
In his recent Kindle book Asset-Based Community Development: An Incomplete Guide, Cormac Russell describes eight touchstones of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). He points out that whilst all eight Touchstones rarely appear together and do not represent a step-by-step guide to community building, they do show up regularly in ABCD […]
07/03/2022
The most common approach to ‘helping’ communities has involved focusing on the community’s needs, deficiencies, and problems. This depersonalising approach disempowers and often causes other forms of harm to community citizens. The alternative path to community development, Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), focuses on a community’s assets, capacities, and abilities. Significant community […]