The Perspective

Issue 2 - July 2021

News and Views from CPG

Pino Migliorino, Managing Director

Three months on and keen to welcome you to The Perspective, the Cultural Perspectives Group’ quarterly newsletter. A lot has happened in three months, and we have picked the best and most interesting bits to present.

Technology features prominently in this issue. My piece on the emergence of QR codes as a multilingual necessity complements an engaging piece of how we are using VR (virtual reality) experiences in our work and community education. Our research feature focuses on the inherent risks of monolingual research for a multilingual society. Our marketing feature focuses on our work with the Children’s Hospital Foundation to uncover new and diverse areas of philanthropy.

All this and heaps more.

Fri, Jul 02

Job Vacancy: Account Director

Cultural Perspectives are seeking a communications specialist who also has a passion for social justice, for this new Account Director role. We are looking for someone with outstanding communication

Fri, Jul 09

QR Codes - The Sleeping Giant

For so long they were the quaint indecipherable square blotches on posters and bus shelter panels, QR codes have now come into their own not only indispensable in disease management but also as a

Thu, Jul 08

VR – Whose reality matters?

In this important piece about the use of VR technology in community engagement and education, Cultural Perspectives’ Engagement Lead, Rea Singh explores the value of story telling as an effective

Thu, Jul 08

The Irony of Monolingual Research in a Multilingual Society

In this piece CIRCA’s Director of Research and Evaluation, Lena Etuk casts a critical eye on the annoyingly consistent and problematic tendency for Australian research companies to undertake English

Fri, Jul 09

Tapping Philanthropy in CALD Communities

The subject of giving and volunteering has been a focus in our research and marketing work for the past 5 years. Most recently we have been working with the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation to

Italian Republic Day

“All you could smell as soon as you came into the office was potato”. This was posted in our staff chat room on the day we took pause to celebrate Italy’s National Day in early June. The team is always hands-on only this time it involved, potatoes, flour and eggs. Yes, we made gnocchi.

Making them from scratch and learning how to role, cut and shape those ‘tasty pillow’ of goodness, we enjoyed them with burnt butter and sage sauce and with a pork bolognaise sauce all washed down with a few bottles of prosecco.

Viva Italia!

NAIDOC Week 2021

We also take the time to recognise NAIDOC Week. Whether it be adding an acknowledgement of the week and our signature blocks or changing the virtual backgrounds to carry the message Heal Country, or by stopping work on Wednesday the 7th July to watch ‘In my Blood it runs’ as a virtual collective. Celebrating this week is a must for us.

This year’s NAIDOC theme ‘Heal Country! – calls for stronger measures to recognise, protect, and maintain all aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and heritage.

Working on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation in its emotional heart, Eveleigh Street, we acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the

MiAccess Engagement

COVID 19 permitting we have continued to get the MiAccess message out to communities conferences and workshops. Setting up here for a community conference on age care, at information and Cultural Exchange in Parramatta.

With a mix of innovation, IT and some great giveaways we have been achieving significant buy in to the multilingual disability project, MiAccess (www.miaccess.com.au)

Best of Campaigns

In this issue of The Perspective, we wanted to put the spotlight on two recent and important campaigns being led by amazing community organisations.

Developing the Right Language for Coercive Control

Advance Diversity Services has played a pivotal role in producing six easy-to-read, pocket-sized brochures about coercive control released in May to coincide with Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Month.

The launch of the brochures in six languages – English, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Nepali, Thai, and Bengali – also coincided with Jess Hill’s See what you made me do, a three-part series exploring the scourge of domestic violence in Australia, which premiered on SBS, NITV and SBS On Demand.

To view the report please click the image.

Politely Racist – An exploration of on-line Commentary

Politely racist explores online reader comments in response to negatively racialised opinion pieces about Muslim people, published by Australian mainstream newspapers. As All Together Now’s previous research shows, Muslim people are negatively targeted in a disproportionate manner by mainstream social commentary in Australia. The aim of this report is to unravel the role played by comment sections in perpetuating, normalising and consolidating racist ideas. Politely racist seeks to generate a discussion around the insidious nature of conversations taking place in the comment sections of negatively racialised opinion pieces.

NSW Health & COVID 19

In no other time in our multicultural history has the premium of multilingual information delivery been as high as it has during this COVID-19 pandemic.

This week the New South Wales Department of Health issued information relevant to the stay-at-home health directive. They did so in 56 languages. The effort and commitment to ensuring that people in New South Wales from all backgrounds are aware of what is required of them to help limit the spread of the virus is to be applauded.

Managed by Multicultural Health Communications in the New South Wales Department of Health, we can only wonder at the effort it would have taken to organise 56 individual pieces of translation in both large and extremely smaller language groups.

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We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters in which we work and the knowledge-holders of the oldest continuous cultures in the world. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.