Digital Content Manager at Hitnet

Investigator on the Australian Research Council Linkage Project exploring Music, Mobile Phones and Justice in Melanesia.

the planet spins ltd (tps) is an umbrella organisation that brings together a network of grassroots, unincorporated or informal organisations and individuals who use the creative industries to build resilient communities and healthy futures. It is a social enterprise that provides a hub for national and international partnerships. tps is a community hub with branches across australia and the pacific focused on building networks for collaborative projects and events.

Further Arts (FA) is a charitable association based in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Its main objective is to empower ni-Vanuatu to develop long-term social and commercial enterprises in the industries of creative arts, agriculture and communications that are culturally, socially, environmentally and financially sustainable. It aspires to broaden its presence by opening branch offices across the South Pacific, with representative offices and/or partners in the major nations of the Pacific Rim.FA works closely with the Vanuatu National Cultural Council and the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta. We also work with Wan Smol Bag, Canal Studio, Youth Against Corruption and other partners.The importance of FA as a regional institution has been recognised by the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) which has allocated FA a seat on the Standing Cultural Council.FA is also a Consulting Organisation to the Asia Pacific Screen Academy, with the responsibility of nominating Vanuatu films to the annual Asia Pacific Screen Academy Awards held in Brisbane, Australia.

Lon Marum is a TV-hour length documentary film depicting the relationship between language, culture, place, music, tradition, and magic – in the context of life on an active volcano.Lon Marum means "the path of the volcano" and when applied to the people of Emyotungan it means the "people who live in the path of the volcano". Such is the profound relationship that the people of Emyotungan and West Ambrym have with the volcano. It exists underneath them, the porous volcanic ash soft underfoot is a low-yielding soil. It towers over them, trapping clouds and billowing out poisonous sulphur dioxide in industrial proportions. And it falls down on them in the form of acid rain ruining crops and destroying gardens. It permeates every corner of their existence informing everything from creation mythology through to current land tenure and kinship systems. But the phrase Lon Marum also serves as the metaphor describing the relationship between the people of West Ambrym and the physical environment - and this forms the rhizome of the film's narrative. The volcano features in the film - but as a spirit form, something omnipresent but invisible. The treatment of the volcano as a part of the spirit world reflects the cosmology of greater Melanesia where there is little or no distinction or boundary between the spirit world and the physical world. Magic, music, tradition, and dance are a fundamental part of daily life - all distilled through story and often visually accompanied by intricate sandrawings. We follow a local community leader, and fieldworker for the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, as he takes us on a journey. This journey also reflects the metaphorical quality of "path" or "road" as it pertains to Lon Marum, the path of the volcano. We follow this man as he leads us through his community. It is a community that exists just as much as an abstract concept as it does in reality.