Hit Goals - Not Each Other

"Hit Goals - Not Each Other - SAY NO TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE" - A Hockey Art Workshop and Clinic combining sport and culture and creating message sticks through the medium of hockey equipment facilitating the voice of the young people and showing how they feel about this issue through the art. 

In partnership with the following organizations 

1. Active After School Care Program
2. Tagai State College Leaderships Programs
3. Horn Island Campus Leaderships Programs
4. Torres Strait Islander Sport and Recreation Association
5. Local artists
6. Local departent of families, housing and community services as well as domestic violence councellors

The Remote and Indigenous Communities Hockey Development Program has an existing program that combines the painting of hockey equipment with undertaking workshops and clinics to deliver messages that are important to the community in a new way.
We have done this specifially in the remote and indigenous communities and our objective is to combine sport and culture to provide the service delivery and allow the message to be communicated in a different way and one that might have some impact.

This project would be a partnership - we would be targeting young people within the community and we would be looking at work shopping leadership skills, self esteem issues, discipline and self confidence issues, self awareness and community responsibility issues all in a manner that would be able to understood by the target audience.
To make it unique - the message that we want to get across - Hit Goals - Not Each Other can be painted on hockey sticks and balls we provide. The messages can be told in many unique ways through art. We always ask that each person writes their story behind the artwork to match up with the painting.
The workshops advise them of their options and opportunities, the dangers of domestic violence and responsibilities but the artwork allows them the freedon of expression in particular with the young people to express different solutions they believe can work - whether it is slogans, variations of programs, focusing on different messages.
When we read the stories and see the artwork - we get to understand what the young people really believe and what they think might be solutions they can relate to.

Activities would include:-

1. painting of the equipment and writing the accompanying stories
2. discussing the issues that are relevant
3. understanding how sport, fitness and leadership activities can lead to changing this behaviour
4. showing how the artwork and stories will be published on web site and getting young people involved in this
5. on going community involvement

It is well known and understood that when young people see and are the subject of domestic violence it is a difficult cycle to break - however here we are targeting younger people in an enviroment where they feel comfortable, the activity they will be doing is not invasive to them and gives them artistic freedon to express their views without having to verbalize it or write it down.

There is nothing like this in the area and these types of clinics have worked in the past as part of our program although we have not identified the issue of domestic violence.

The information that will be delivered shall cover issues that would be normally delivered to the target age group and indigenous and/islander cultural background but we modify it a little as we make comparisions and show the young people ways to hitting goals and achieving targets rather than solving frustration through violence.

Once they begin to understand this and they have a message they can tell - this is when they will paint the hockey equipment  and turn it into a message stick of sorts. We also train local artists to participate in these courses so they will be available to continue to work with the school and other community organizations after these clinics. The great advantage we have experienced with the Hockey Art project that it encourages many varied and different parts of the community rather than focusing on just one.

Horn Island campus is a predominantly Aboriginal community in the Torres Strait while Tagai Campus on Thursday Island is a Torres Strait Islander community and although we can undertake the programs together while encouraging other cultural community groups of young people - these will be our main focus.

Family is strong on the Torres Strait communities and we will be able to encourage family participation easier on Thursday Island rather than Horn Island but if we do this together we may have the ability of encouraging family participation when otherwise it may have been difficult.

There are a number of languages spoken in the Torres Strait and we can use this to our advantage - the messages can be through the artwork and the stories can be written in traditional language as part of the project.

We will see that there are community people and elders available to see to the translation etc. Again it is allowing them the freedon of constructing their message freely through a medium they are comfortable with and more likley to engage.