Time for spart: sport + art

Featured in

  • Published 20160802
  • ISBN: 978-1-925355-53-6
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

I LIVE AND work in the poorest electorate in the poorest state in the country, on the north-west coast of Tasmania. It may be beautiful, with the cleanest air in the world – Cape Grim beef chew the cud peacefully up the road, abalone on the rocks – however, the negative social indicators are off the dial: obesity, school retention, intergenerational welfare dependency, rural male suicide and family violence.

I’ve spent a quarter of a century in this community working with social change company Big hART, delivering projects to help prevent violence and then exporting these projects nationally. Over that time the taxpayer has invested in our approach and the organisation has been acknowledged with eight Coalition of Australian Governments Violence Prevention Awards and a World Health Organisation Safe Community Award. A less violent culture would be much easier to encourage – in which fewer coward punches are thrown, fewer women die, fewer children are damaged by violent mothers, fewer husbands receive stick wounds, fewer people are bullied and hazed in workplace port-a-loos, and fewer kids shy away from participation in the classroom – if policing was consistent across all sections of the community, especially in those areas of public life that hothouse public opinion, such as big media and the big business of sport.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Tasmanian utopias

EssayOVER THE PAST three decades, the green hinterland beyond the population centres of the state has held an increasing allure for those working in...

More from this edition

Suspended reality

EssayWHY WOULD A country whose greatest export is a bikini wax be awarded the Olympic games? Brazil – where every night promises to be Carnivale,...

Muscular Judaism on the frontier

EssayTHERE IS NO doubt that soccer began to be associated with European ethnic groups in Australia after the Chifley government’s intake of ‘New Australians’...

Dragon mother

MemoirMy China-born wife, Susan, dreamt that one day our son Max would become the Number 1 golf player in the world; in other words,...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.