Introducing 'tni'

PURPOSE: the nudgelbah institute was established to facilitate research and publication relevant to the development of more inclusive 21st Century understandings and imaginings of 'place'.

THE VISION: The vision for the nudgelbah institute is for it to be a network of research networks and researchers – education institutions, museums, cultural orgainisations, heritage networks, cultural producers, galleries, publishers, et al – that is devised to be:

• A vehicle through which place oriented scholarship and cultural endeavours can be acknowledged, honoured and promoted;
• A research entity that celebrates placedness, placemaking and placemarking;
• An agency through which research capital can be built upon and invested in;
• A research network via which the network's cultural and scholastic collateral related to 21st C understandings of 'place' can be exploited, built upon and published;
• A entity through which new understandings of cultural and social realities can be advanced; and
• A research collective that facilitates scholarship and the publication of wide range of research outcomes, including cultural production, that belongs to 'geographies' and places – monographs, novels, anthologies, essays pamphlets, performances, video, exhibitions, websites, podcasts, etc.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR THE INSTITUTE: Given that in a broad 21st C context there are evolving and new confluences are bringing together scientific, social and cultural discourses that can be variously seen as being at the interface between social innovation, cultural production and social aspirations – science, technology and industry in other contexts. The emerging discourses often find themselves at the cutting edge of social development and cultural change. Against this background, and given the institute's relatively recent evolution into a more cohesive network of researchers, a projected set of goals and objectives for the nudgelbah institute might well be:

1. To engage a network of researchers and cultural producers in a critical discourse that explores the possibilities and parameters of the interfacing concepts that define and determine placedness, a sense of place, in a real world 21st C context;

2. To advocate innovative, sustainable inclusive understandings of place within interdiciplinary discourses and especially so in relation to current communication technologies, social structures and cultural practices;

3. To operate in collaboration, cooperation and alliance with like-minded individuals, institutions and groups and where appropriate under the auspices of one or more established and incorporated groups/institutions that have symbiotic sets of goals and objectives;

4. To investigate the ways in which social and cultural realities in a regional context interface with current technologies, social structures and cultural production – local and international – and the broad spectrum of research can;

• Relate to changing, and new, understandings of placedness; and
• Shape and/or reshape cultural and social realities in a 21st Century context relative to place.

5. To be proactive in the initiation of projects that engage researchers, innovators and cultural producers – writers, design practitioners et al – with the wider community towards developing new understandings of ‘place’ and one place’s interfaces with others in a 21st Century context;

6. To facilitate the development of new interactive networks towards the promotion of more inclusive and sustainable understandings of place; new/pioneering communication technologies; and inclusive research enterprises informed by current circumstances relevant to evolving 21st C understandings of place;

7. To be proactive in the publication and dissemination of the outcomes of individual, cooperative and collaborative research and cooperative projects relevant to the institute’s raison d’être; and

8. To seek funding and in-kind support for scholarship in a broad context plus projects, conferences, symposiums, seminars and education programs that advance the institute’s research and support its publication outcomes.