In this CAST OUT LOUD event, Lia Pa’apa’a and Merindi Schieber will share their project Ngamumu (For Mothers), a community focused creative arts and cultural development project that seeks to decolonise maternal health by supporting mothers during the first 1000 days of motherhood. Through visual and performing art forms, Ngamumu is creating culturally safe spaces for cultural exchange between the indigenous communities, mothers and families they work with. Please join Ngamumu founders Lia Pa’apa’a and Merindi Schieber, and moderator Dr Ruth De Souza for a conversation on the value of the arts to build relationships and stimulate community dialogue and shared cultural experiences.

Please note that there will be close captioning available for this event.

Dr Ruth DeSouza 
Dr Ruth DeSouza is a 2020 RMIT Vice Chancellor's Fellow, based in the School of Art. Her background is in nursing where she has extensive experience as a clinician, community engaged researcher and academic in New Zealand and Australia. Ruth set up a maternal mental health service in Auckland, New Zealand and her PhD examined the experiences of new mothers from migrant backgrounds using a postcolonial feminist lens. She is currently developing a podcast about decolonising maternity and examining cultural safety, and reproductive justice in settler colonial contexts. Ruth is also investigating the use of apps in pregnancy during COVID-19, following up on recent work about digital health literacies and refugee and migrant background mothers. Ruth has extensive networks across the Melbourne creative industries and is on the Fair Play project reference committee.

Lia Pa’apa’a 
Lia Pa’apa’a is an artist who hails from Samoa and the Luiseño nation of Southern California. She is a Creative Producer and Community Arts Cultural Development practitioner who produces community empowered multi-artform projects with Pacific Islander, culturally diverse and Indigenous Australian communities across region and remote contexts. Lia has been highly successful in delivering dynamic programming across community cultural festivals and projects that focus on community empowerment, capacity building and intergenerational exchange across art forms. Lia lives in Cairns and is reinvigorating and reimagining ancestral practices to support her family’s and community’s health and wellbeing.

Merindi Schrieber 
Grounded in a deep connection to her mother’s country, Kuku Yalanji (Mossman, NQ) Merindi Schrieber’s Language, culture and history is embedded in her artistic practice. Merindi’s Bama resonance and soulful compositions echo her passion to educate and empower, which is the driving force behind her involvement in community initiatives, festivals, gatherings and events. From performer to producer, participant to listener, singer to weaver, Merindi’s versatile roles in the arts sector is reflective of her Yalanji name Jankaji, meaning Wealth of Knowledge — growing, learning, teaching and working towards the betterment for generations to follow.

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Image credit: Ngamumu Founders Lia Pa'apa'a and Merindi Schrieber. Image courtesy of the artists and Bridies Journal.