Precariousness: Here and There in Ashington and Aboriginal Australia

How can groups that have had their institutions destroyed by neoliberal reforms use their traditional cultural commitments to promote their interests in the present? This film documents the work of non-academic community co-researchers from Ashington, Northumberland and Aboriginal groups around Brisbane, Australia as they visit one another’s communities in 2015 as part of an international participatory project entitled 'A Cross-Cultural Working Group on "Good Culture" and Precariousness’. The film follows an academic, Matthew Johnson, as he works with community members in Northumberland and Queensland to explain the conditions experienced in groups that have been subject to long-term subjugation and managed decline. The outcome is both counter-intuitive and tragic: lives at the heart of many communities are grounded in predictable drudgery of lifelong engagement with welfare systems and management by authorities.