Quinkan
NGARRA’s Uganda Village project is a community-based initiative aimed at empowering youth in a remote village in Uganda through the transformative power of photography and storytelling.
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The project follows a simple yet impactful approach: we work with a community, providing cameras, education, guidance, and way to save and tell their story through the lens of a camera. Through immersive workshops, the program enables the community members (usually kids between the ages of 6-16) to tell their stories and share the way they see the world through their own lens, and give their story the power to create lasting change for them, their family, and their community.
These photographs and stories captured are then showcased in exhibitions held in galleries around the world, with 100% of the profits generated from the work directly invested back into the community. Imagine being a young person and providing your community with education supplies, with much needed healthcare and medical aid. Imagine the confidence that comes from seeing that their story is being heard, shared, praised by strangers, and that story providing water filters and food, infrastructure, and equipment that makes them, their family, and their communities lives better. What will that do to a generation of young people when they can see the world cares about their story, about their voice, and what will that do for those that experience these stories, that see they can be a part of, their story too can be a catalyst for positive change, and addressing needs within the community by doing social good?
The objective is to share photographs and stories, and use those to create lasting social change. But more importantly, this creation of art, and sharing it, empowers these young people, providing them with the space, platform, and support to tell their story to a global community. Through art, storytelling, connection, and lore, we can foster respect, understanding, reconciliation, economic empowerment, cultural conservation and preservation… Together as one, ngarra, we can change the world; one frame at a time.
By sharing their photos and stories on a global stage, Ngarra’s projects aim to initiate broader conversations, transcending boundaries of country, language, and belief systems, placing us all under what we call intercontinental-common-lore; a way of being together, as one, for the benefit and well being of each other and the planet. The Lore in the way we talk about it are the beliefs, rules, and customs passed down through generations by our ancestors and it guides us in how we live our lives everyday. The lore is more stories, but rules of living, the law, relational obligations to all things, and the ways to be and not to be – what we know as Right Story. The profound impact that the project can have, not only in the lives of people in the community but in everyone the project touches lies in the opening of minds and hearts, fostering understanding, and promoting collaboration across different cultures and diverse lands.
This is another important aspect of the project, for as we work with the youth, we too sit with the elders, with the parents, aunties and uncles, nanas and grandads, and listen to what they want to share with the world. Pulling all this together, collaborating in this right relation we can share stories, lore, ancient wisdom and knowledge systems from diverse corners of the world that can inspire, and change the way we all act in our lives, and the effect we all have on each other, and bring all of us back under the lore of the land, and take a step in the right direction we need in order to save the planet, and all its people.
Big goals, we know. We got a little carried away there. But bare with the thought – because its achievable if we work together.
To make sure we do this right way, we ground our approach in indigenous knowledge systems; what started in Cape York, Australia continues to integrate different peoples’ ways of being and ways of knowing from every continent people call home. Ngarra can also mean ‘the Law’, not only being together as one, but the ways of governance, and being in relation to each other. Ngarra does not share what IS known, but what CAN be known. Indigenous knowledge holds significance beyond the information and stories it shares. It embodies and holds a way of knowing and a way of coming to know – and this can be seen in every frame.
A new landscape, only some 12,000 years old, a volcanic cataclysm made way for a lush rainforest, & big story. The story of the first currency.
It is in this special place that a rare striped shell was discovered, a shell that is only found on this small stretch of coastline. Because of its rarity, the local people experimented with making these shells have value, giving them a form of monetary value, & trading them across the country, making it the first currency. The result was that the people started to collect the shells, hold them & hoard them. All of a sudden things weren’t moving, there was no velocity in the community. people gathered the shells, hid them, sat on them, protected them. Things slowed down, community & familial relationships were going wrong, people started getting sick, fights were breaking out. Elders seeing this knew it was not the way to live, & warned people, but they didn’t listen.
As part of the dreaming in this part of Queensland at the base of the reef, a form of rainbow serpent was known to come from the sea to the tableland along the waterway. When the serpent came from the sea, these people saw thousands of the shells stuck in its scales, and driven by their greed, dropped a log on him, murdered him, & stole the shells. When they saw what the shells had done, what the desire for the shells had driven them to do, what this monetary system had done to the community, they had killed creation. That is the pattern they could see happening – that anything with value being driven from currency like this would always end in the destruction of creation. The experiment was abandoned, & learned from, never to be repeated.
Why share this story? This is a large reason why Ngarra, and everything I work on are not-for-profit endeavors. This is one of the stories that is why I operate the way I do when it comes to money, and the way my business is structured. This story guides my choice to focus on social good, not wealth. On growing relationships, not bank accounts. Just as the Serpent’s journey was marred by the pursuit of treasures, so can a sole focus on profits fragment communities and ecosystems. My vision is to harness the power of photography, film, and storytelling as tools of unity, empathy, and positive change. Money is important, yes, but I see the corrupting aspects of it all around me, and resist that, but giving all of it away to be traded instantly to help those who need it most. Profits aren’t, and should never be goals in themselves; they are catalysts of impact, channeling support to communities, projects, and initiatives that breathe life into our shared world.
NGARRA’s Uganda Village project is a community-based initiative aimed at empowering youth in a remote village in Uganda through the transformative power of photography and storytelling.