| Nonprofit Nuff Stuff brings digital technology to disadvantaged youth down under.
Bunji Elcoate had always learned to appreciate the differences among people. Her father, a British ship captain, gave his daughter many opportunities to travel throughout Australia and Southeast Asia. Her mother's family — from Irish, Spanish, and Aboriginal descent — had lived in the Northern Territory of Australia since the late 1800s. With such a diverse background, Elcoate learned to celebrate the distinctions among people and cultures, and she expressed her passion through the arts.
One child, Comunjii, uses a Macintosh to edit a video clip at a workshop that Elcoate helped to teach. For more information on Nuff Stuff and Big hART, visit www.bighart.org.
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After studying graphic design, acting, and new media in Sydney, Elcoate decided she wanted to bring her skills home to help the youth — particularly the Aboriginal youth — of the Northern Territory. After successfully working on a community arts program with Big hART, a nongovernmental organization, she was asked by officials from the territory's correctional services agency to conduct a long-term multimedia project at the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Center. The nonprofit Nuff Stuff — which means “good stuff” — was born.
Elcoate, now the project director for Nuff Stuff, says that while 25 percent of the Northern Territory is Aboriginal, 80 percent of the population in the local prison system is of indigenous descent.
“Australia is a great country to live in, but the high standards of living are not shared by all,” she says. “There is inequality, and many young Aboriginal children do not finish school and their literacy levels are quite low. There are many divides, and I am helping to decrease the digital divide by providing training to some of the most disadvantaged young people in the Northern Territory.”
Through Nuff Stuff, Elcoate and other instructors conduct video production, graphic design, animation, music production, web design, storytelling, screen printing, puppet making, and broadcasting workshops with the 13- to 18-year-old youths in the detention center. Elcoate says that while many of the young people have low verbal literacy skills, their visual literacy is extremely high. As a result, she designs many of the programs to be visually based, emphasizing storyboarding and GUI navigation.
Through the creation of a nationally broadcast anti-drug campaign, the Nuff Stuff team won a Sony DV PAL DCR-TRV27E for the program. Workshops use both Apple Macintosh and PC computers. The center's software includes Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator; Macromedia Flash, Director, Freehand, and Dreamweaver; and Macromedia SoundEdit 16, Syntrillium's Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition), and Image Line Software's Fruity Loops for music production. Nuff Stuff procures most of its hardware and software through grant funding.
Elcoate says many of the young people see the camera and computers as storytelling tools. “By concentrating on the story and the content, the participants do not feel daunted by using the various equipment — they just see it as part of the process,” she says.
In addition to the anti-drug campaign, Nuff Stuff contributed to a music video for a local hip-hop group that won the organization a new media award at the Down Under International Film Festival in 2003. Other Nuff Stuff projects have been exhibited in Australian galleries and screened at various festivals around Australia and overseas.
Despite the success of the program, Elcoate often finds that her biggest challenge is convincing others to give the young people in the center a chance.
“I have funding bodies tell me that I should find a target group that is more likely to succeed,” she says. “Often young offenders are put in the ‘too hard’ basket or are considered to be beyond repair. All young people should have the opportunity to contribute positively to their community regardless of background.”
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