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 of the Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup is an important historical asset for the community. Noel White and the Aboriginal children of Carrolup have left an important legacy for schools in Kojonup, and those further afield.
This Kojonup section of The Carrolup Story website has been developed so we can ‘track’ over time developments of the citizen-led Kojonup project. In addition, I am posting a varied content that I believe helps members of the Kojonup community with their project. For example, I have posted a collection of blogs related to the ABCD approach, as well as blogs that focus on the healing of trauma and the work of world-leading experts in the healing of trauma such as Bruce Perry and Judy Atkinson. These blog posts contain links to a variety of posts relevant to the particular topic.
In this post, I provide links to various important resources related to the story of the Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup. The website itself contains over 180 blog posts (as of 9 March 2022) related to the story of Carrolup, not just what happened at the time of the Aboriginal child artists, but also prior to their arrival at Carrolup and what is happening today. The twelve parts of the Story section of the website summarises the story in order—we have included links to the most pertinent posts relevant to each part (I’m still adding links to these parts).
There are three Galleries—Art, Photos, Memorabilia, Videos—which contain a wide variety of resources related to the story of Carrolup. The Videos Gallery comprises film content (38 items) from The Carrolup Story YouTube channel.
The Healing section of the website comprises over 100 posts related to the healing of trauma and its consequences. In addition, there is a Healing Video Gallery devoted to films from a wide variety of sources related in one way or other to this topic. You can read about John Stanton, Ash Whitney (our website developer) and myself in the About Us section.
I also run another website, Recovery Stories, which focuses on recovery from addiction and mental health problems. You can read my personal story here. John has written a fascinating article on his life as a Social Anthropologist. Finally, I should mention my Sharing Culture website, which focuses on the healing of historical (or transgenerational) trauma. I haven’t updated this website for over three years, but I thought I should leave it up as it contains some important content and is still viewed by readers.
You can obtain information about the detailed eBook (Kindle book) I have written in association with John Stanton, entitled Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe. The book uses ‘faces’ and ‘voices’ of the past, providing access to a wealth of photographs, pictures of the children’s art and schoolwork, letters, documents and media clippings, that help bring the story ‘alive’. You can find details of how to purchase the book (cost A$9.99) here. The book will have to be read on your phone, computer, or other device. I will shortly be trying to find a publisher for the book.
If you want to read a shortened version of the Story, you can read my article—The Aboriginal Child Artists of Carrolup—that was published in Early Days, Number 104, 2020, the Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society.
Finally, I would like to introduce you to a song about Carrolup written by Dilip Parekh and performed by Dilip ‘n The Davs. You can read about how this song came about in this blog, which also links you to a recording of the full song. I then made a film of Carrolup-related photos with part of the song as the background music. We hope you enjoy!