Aboriginal art and culture explained

Aboriginal art and culture workshops have been held at Woy Woy Peninsula Community Centre by Mingaletta Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation

The workshops were delivered by some of the Aboriginal students enrolled at Gosford TAFE in the courses about Aboriginal Art and Cultural Practices and for Aboriginal Education Assistants.

The workshops were held over three nights and covered painting, cultural awareness and craft.

There were 18-25 participants on each night.

The workshop was for non-Aboriginal people wanting to learn about reading and understanding Aboriginal art and the culture.

The painting workshop was delivered by Kylie Cassidy and Ron Smith.

They spoke about how to read Aboriginal paintings and understand symbols painted on the Aboriginal paintings.

The participants then did their own dot paintings using modern symbols.

The cultural awareness class was delivered by Loretta Hardcastle and Ray McMinn.

They touched on areas such as the stolen generation, aboriginality, traditional aboriginal society, effects of government policies and health and wellbeing of aboriginal people.

The last workshop was on craft, delivered by Allison Trindall and Ron Smith.

Originally the participants were going to woodburn their art onto wooden plaques and boomerangs but, because of the sensitive smoke alarms, this was changed to dot painting onto the plaques and boomerangs.

The workshops were presented jointly by Mingaletta and the Purrimaibahn Aboriginal Unit of Central Coast and Hunter Institute of TAFE, and were supported by Gosford Council's community development section through a cultural grant.

Organiser Ms Denise Markham from Mingaletta said: "Mingaletta and staff of the Purrimaibahn unit had a chance to meet and greet some genuine caring non-Aboriginal people who were interested in the local koori community on the Peninsula.

"This provided a valuable opportunity for the local community to see an Aboriginal corporation having positive presence in the Peninsula community."

Press release, October 13