 Before we start, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and waters of the Australian continent. I'm speaking from Ngunnawal country. James is speaking from Wangal country. We pay respect to elders past, present, and emerging. Future thinkers acknowledge that the sovereignty of the land was never ceded. Always was. Always will be aboriginal land. And the consequences of colonial violence and ongoing settler colonialism are the foundation of iniquity and injustice. And we support all those who resist. I am here with Dr. James Golly. He is a senior lecturer working in literature studies and environmental humanities. He is passionate about including indigenous and other knowledges in our activist agenda to make our work truly inclusive. Say hi to everyone, James. Hi, Alexi. Hi, everyone. Sorry for the terrible photos. Although she's not here with us today, as she's not feeling well. By the way, we are just after a three-day intense climate justice conference held in Queensland. And we all look a bit tired. And apologies for not joining them in January as well. So Dr. Jena Kondit. She's a senior lecturer of digital studies. She's the energy, the innovator, the creator, who leads our activist agenda. And hello, I'm Tilakshi. I'm a first-year PhD student. I'm a social activist from Sri Lanka. I have been a 21st-year student curriculum partner since 2020. We are the Western Sydney University Future Thinkers Team 2020 to 2022. The Future Thinkers Team is one of the five curriculum challenge teams from the Western Sydney University 21st-year curriculum transformation project. As my 21st-year colleagues explained an hour ago, in their exceptional presentation, our job mainly is to co-create trans-specific curriculum. And like you're saying, this picture that we took three days ago, boy, we are having fun. For Future Thinkers, equity and justice anchor our work. Our graduates want a fair future for all. And they want to make that future with the communities finding their place and a sense of belonging in the work that they do. They want to realize their power and agency to engage in positive social change. This is why we advocate for the university as an activist space to support our students to achieve social and climate justice in ways that they value the most. And we reiterate that this is no longer a choice, but it is a necessity. In this presentation today, my job is to provide a little more insight into how we started to advocate for equity and justice through our curriculum and our partnerships that led to our co-founding the Festival of Action. James will then follow and reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of creating an activist university and establishing foundations for the creation of just futures in the present. So what's our story? How do we approach equity and justice and advocate for them in our trans-specific curriculum? Well, we did do this using three ways. Firstly, we approach our curriculum making as practices of everyday activism. We began making trans-disciplinary curricula for all students during 2019 to 2020 push fires. With the intersecting crisis that followed, we had pandemics, we had protests, rapid digitalization. We saw the need to underpin our curriculum with pedagogies of equity and justice. In response to the code red status of climate breakdown and young climate activists calling for those in charge to do something, we took seriously the responsibility for creating a curriculum that responds to the urgenties of our time. From 2020 to 2020, to the future thinkers team developed two interrelated trans-disciplinary minors. Climate justice minor starts with truth telling. Earth's climate is warming and species are becoming extinct at a rate not seen for 66 million years. This minor provides opportunities for learners for all disciplines to consider the origins of climate crisis and supports them to act in response to this knowledge. Equitable technologies minor. This minor involves students to critically evaluate the impacts of technologies, reorienting them towards social and digital equity through social action. It asks, what would happen if technologies, digital systems and devices served the interests of those who need them the most? We are also building equity-driven partnerships, which we call coalitions that are driven by the same goal. As we, as you might have realized from how I introduced our team, each partner team in our team has varied individual social and climate justice goals and approaches. And we bring them together as activism. We have written a journal article and introduced a framework on how we urge to make coalitions for culture, for collaborations, aimed at co-creating social technologies, pedagogies. In our transdisciplinary work, we try to step out of our comfort zones and we partner with external organizations, community-led grassroots movements, such as the Australian Climate Coalition, the Stance Indian Library Services and the Young and Resilient Research Center to put our curriculum into action. We are really keen to learn from them and to pick them about their approaches to justice, so that we remain responsive to goals and needs of our students from diverse backgrounds. The Festival of Action, this is actually by what we are going to talk about today. The Festival of Action was held on the 27th of July, 2020 to at Western Sydney University. It was advertised as a one-day event that brings together like-minded students, staff and external partners to get involved in social and climate action. It creatively linked the classroom to the community in action, offering students and staff members ways to get involved at a local level. It emerged from our team's desire to extend our partnership with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in ways that could appeal to students and demonstrate our 21st transdisciplinary curriculum at the same time. The event was also an attempt to get back to basics in the pandemic conditions and organize a face-to-face event to meet each other and new people on campus. It brought the classroom into the open. It included the following stalls, a creative experience, which was titled, Pay in the Future, the loving participants to realize their vision of a more sustainable world that's helping us reimagine the campus of the future. We also had an interactive wheel of social media action inviting participants to spin the wheel and learn who they are in their social media spaces. We also had a stall by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and they were writing letters to MPs. And we had an interactive gameplay experience where students played a game that offered the chance to grapple with challenge of getting to net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. There was also a stall, this was very popular, Turtle Rock Art Painting by Dr. Ricky Spencer where students painted rocks which were critically symbolizing turtle conservation. And we also launched RC Ports. And now Dr. Jena Kondi is not joining our presentations today, but as I mentioned before, she leads our activist agenda. So on behalf of her, Dr. James Golly will read out her section on how the first developed action as creative activism makes space for activism within the university. He will then follow and reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of creating an activist university over to you James. Thanks very much Thalakshi and just bear with me as I juggle a bunch of different slides and scripts in the background. So this is Jena's words and it'll be a struggle for me to differentiate those two voices, but I will try. So Jena writes, the festival of action is an attempt to create the space necessary for more visible forms of resistance and activism on campus. To encourage creative expression about what the future holds and the futures we want to realize together. To do this work, the festival of action sits in a particularly palatable space. We navigate tensions or allow tensions to just exist and sit there. The festival of action is connected to our future thinkers and 21 C transdisciplinary curriculum. It is part of research projects and creative installations. It is part of the library and the library's contribution to the contest of ideas and strategies for social justice. The festival of action is many things. It has to be many things so that more people can identify with it, take action through it and embed themselves in it, shifting who they are through their activist practices. Not everyone identifies as an activist although more people are doing so. We have lots of activist students on campus. Others are worried. There's often a lot at stake when you stick your head above the covers and call out injustices, inequalities, unfairness. There is backlash. There is shame. There's a lot of emotional work involved. The festival of action and what it is becoming is a realm of possibilities for people to get involved with projects and causes with others on campus and in there to find their passion and purpose. I think the last few years have really shifted the mood, making climate justice work more prominent and permissible. People are listening. Students and staff who attended the festival told us their perceptions changed through some of the interactive installations that they engaged with. For the next festival of action, we need to level up and have clearer calls to action and multiple ways for both students and staff to get involved in climate justice. All right, so now as you are, hopefully can grasp my shifting voices here, my tone is definitely different. As you've heard now from Thalakshi and from Jenna, we future thinkers undertake our efforts directly motivated by the circumstances we encounter in our personal and professional lives. As we plan for future festivals of action, we need to address three questions. So those questions are, firstly, how do we contextualize these activist efforts both in relation to the institution's history and in relation to climate activism outside the university? Secondly, how does a collective approach which prioritizes community and activist partners affect established expectations within the university? And thirdly, how do we ensure participants and our team's wellbeing in the challenging space of activism within the institution? So my first response, context is always important. As Thalakshi has described, we have developed a mindful and inclusive approach to our coalition building. A significant element of this practice is ongoing efforts to reframe student staff partnership conversations to include professional university staff in curriculum development and scholar activism. To that end, we have a longstanding relationship with our sustainability education colleagues and acknowledge their ongoing achievements in this space. We're also developing new relationships with the future students team, linking in with their commitment to the Greater Western Sydney region and its young people. We regularly remind ourselves that the university is not the whole world. This means that as part of our efforts, we welcome activists and activism from outside the university into its confines but also that our efforts as individuals and a group are transportable outside the university in our personal and our political lives. A set of reflections on collective approaches and a new university. The opportunity to teach to learners outside the university classroom facilitates our future imaginings of different approaches to curriculum, the learners we engage with and our pedagogical practices. And just to flesh that point out briefly, as Thalakshi said, we're invited to come up to AYCC's Power Shift Conference in Brisbane over the weekend. And we taught to a large group of young people, all activists inclined and training towards political action in service to climate justice. And it was wonderful to have the opportunity to speak to a more diverse audience than only university students. That's a real way forward, I think. Future thinkers curriculum prioritizes curriculum which supports the creation of just futures in the present where knowledge and practice is respected and realizes social justice. For the future thinkers team, just futures need to start now. We can continue to teach future thinkers curriculum to diverse non-university communities, whether these be young people, activist communities and learners from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. And our pedagogies echo our principles with teachers and learners working side by side, prioritizing creative and hopeful experience. And I think that's a wonderful quote from Michael Grillis there, who was one of the Paint the Future participants in the Festival of Action. Because at the end of the day, we're seeking shared goals that ensured solidarity between all participants in our work. And finally, some comments from me on wellbeing and activism. It's necessary to acknowledge that the future thinkers work emerges from climate and related crises. So there is urgency that we are attendant to. But it's also undeniable that activist pedagogies, which combine the personal and the professional, professional have their challenges. The fact that our friend and colleague, Jenna can't be with us today because of illness feels to us like a sign that we still haven't got our wellbeing balance right. With activist pedagogies and practices, it is easy to over commit and work too hard as a consequence of being over committed. We will continue to look after each other as best we can. Our collective approach is built on shared commitment and shared energy, which we communicate to the university community. More than this, we all benefit from acting and learning with others. For future thinkers, we share the responsibility and the credit. And finally, we prioritize positive, creative and hopeful actions. Learning lessons from tried and tested activist practices and methodologies like the old standard, aha, anger, hope, action. We already know we're motivated and the task we prioritize is always the creation of just futures in the present. These futures can't start tomorrow. They have to start today. Back to you, Thalakshi, to wrap up. Thank you, James. So as we spoke about this topic, so the university of four students and staff, plenty of opportunities and spaces to move beyond we as consumers and to experiment with you be as collective subjects to co-create knowledge for collaborative survival. For us, as students, this seems a bit early on. We are used to paying for a ticket, taking the backseat and enjoying the ride. But coalitions are waiting for you. The climate and the society are waiting for you to get inside the driving seat and change the direction for the just world. As future thinkers, we just have to decide, start, fall. And the speaker before us said, just start somewhere. So on that note, if you'd like to talk to us, you can join our email list. We will send you information about curriculum for social and climate justice as well as research opportunities for young people, such as working young people who can work as core researchers in climate action projects. And also, if you want to know more about the festival of action, you can also scan the KOR codes. James will also post all these links in the chat. So thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much, Thalakshi and James. Does anyone have any questions? Grant, I'm thinking if we can sort of double back to what's happening at Western Sydney in terms of what you had talked about earlier as well, why is there such interesting stuff going on at Western Sydney at the moment? Thalakshi and James, I'm asking that question too. Why don't you go first, Thalakshi? Why are things happening in Western Sydney? I think the university itself is prioritising things like sustainable goals and especially because of the 21st century transforming the aspect of student-staff partnerships where the students are actively getting involved, not only in curriculum creation, but they're also now getting involved in governance and all those aspects as well. So the university is the culture of partnering with students, understanding their language, their responses, their needs and goals. It has become a priority in our university. And actually, as we mentioned, this conference over and over again today at AYCC, it was, I don't know if I'm proud of my university, just sponsoring us to go there, to sit with grassroot movements and then to providing us with that opportunity to learn from them, which I found to be fascinating. Then just because there's this always, there's people think there's a disparity between youth movements as well as the institutions such as university because those are considered as monumental machines. But the opportunity to just bridge those two is great. And I think Western Sydney University is realising the importance of that. Thanks, Laxie. Yeah, I suppose I would respond in two ways. So it's pretty clear to me, I've worked at Western Sydney University for almost 10 years now, that there's been a series of policy shifts over that decade that have enfranchised students in a diverse number of ways. So students and student voices are being really systematically incorporated, especially on the teaching and learning side of the institution. Although I think we are able to point also to some of our achievements in co-research and co-research practices prioritising young people, especially in the Young and Resilient Research Centre. I suppose the other point that I would make however is that there is the institution's achievements around the UN Sustainability Development Goals, as the Laxie referred to. And what I've found is that they are, that achievement is a really important way for students and staff to hold the institution accountable over medium term timelines. And that is actually a real opportunity for the university to deepen its commitment to a student voice and to also ensure that student agency is realised because a student voice doesn't necessarily equate to agency for young learners. Aidan, does that solve some of your problems? Yes, I think that was like the perfect follow-up presentation. It's like, here's what you could do. I think that was really amazing, such a cool project. And Aidan, I just wanted to add as well, we really appreciated the kind of consonants as well because the reality is that you are laying out the theoretical groundwork that to be frank, we have often encountered on the run and we are, as I'm sure is already pretty clear, we encounter lots of opportunities but have to manage lots of challenges throughout those opportunities as well. And yeah, adversity is part of the activist mindset, I think, and you've got to be able to manage that. But I really love to hear from Grant, who I remember teaching as an undergraduate a long time ago. And I'd love to hear your perspective on the student voice situation at our institution because my other impression is that different parts of each institution have really varying experiences. And yeah. Yeah, for sure. And yes, no, I was going to acknowledge that as well. I love full circle moments like this. Yeah, I think that we, look, I'll be honest, I feel like sometimes we are sort of siloed off from each other, like not only institutionally, but also internally to our own institution. And I think, you know, really kind of for me catching up on, because I'm very much aware of like the 21C project and the projects that sit within it. But yeah, I feel sometimes like I maybe personally don't give myself enough time and also like by extension, like encouraging, say the elected student representatives on the SRC, which is sort of the kind of the meat, if you will, like the predominance of aspect of my work to kind of link in with these other bits and pieces that are going on. And yeah, for me, I think my takeaway from this is actually, like, because you made a good point, James, about sort of Aidan providing really a really sort of strong theoretical kind of grounding to what, yeah, like it's probably already there. And I'll be honest, in my presentation, I was really drawing like from a lot of work that you democracy had sort of already done that kind of covered that theoretical groundwork. So because that's not my strong suit, my sort of, my work is very applied by the seat of my pants most of the time, to be honest. So yeah, I like the different perspectives that's coming together there. And maybe the optimism out of all of this is that what we can continue doing, and I'm certainly like sort of putting my hand up to kind of be like, yes, I'm holding myself accountable to this because I really want to see it happen. And I think it needs to happen as well because given the context of what you were saying, Aidan, we don't have time, like time has basically run out now. Yeah, really kind of joining forces and becoming this kind of like, I'm just such a kid at heart. So the analogy that I'm about to present to you all is like in my head, I'm like, we're becoming like a big, what's the power ranges thing when they all kind of combine together? The Megatron, no, that's Transformers. You know what I'm talking about.