Inclusion at ICTV

Madison Whitford [00:00:28]:

My name is Madison Whitford. I'm the deputy news director here at ICTV based in in Mparntwe. ICTV services a lot of remote communities. In Australia, we have hundreds of Aboriginal nations. In the office here, we're a small team. As a service, we rely really heavily on people in remote communities to be making their own content and sending it in so that we can share information from the bush by the bush. This is the first year that ICTV has had cadets. So we've got 3 cadets, Tevice, Kia, and Aaliyah.

Madison Whitford [00:01:08]:

They work really well together as a team.

Kiarah h Mack [00:01:12]:

I'm Kiarah Mack. I'm an Arrernte woman from Mparntwe, Alice Springs, and I'm a cadet journalist at ICTV. I can already, like, imagine it. I'm so excited. In my role as a cadet at ICTV, there's a lot of on the job training. We get to observe how things are done, and then we slowly get to take over and practice them.

Kiarah Mack [00:01:41]:

Hi. I'm Kiarah Mack. I'm a cadet journalist at ICTV.

Madison Whitford [00:01:44]:

We at ICTV have a partnership with the ABC, and they've really kindly supplied us with cadetship material. So we take that material and then we appropriate it for young Aboriginal people to learn from. So they work through their modules, and then we do a lot of hands on training. So I'll take them out and we do drone training. They learn how to use not only their, like, run and gun camera setups, but also the big broadcast cameras. And whatever I'm doing, I try to bring them along with me.

Kiarah Mack [00:02:16]:

Oh. At ICTV, this is my first full time job, and everyone has been really patient and kind. I feel comfortable to go up and, like, ask them something, or if I'm not getting it straight away, they're happy to come over and, like, show me. Damn. This is gonna be so cool. In the past few years, I've struggled with some health problems, a lot of inflammation. They suspected it was lupus. Nothing's really been confirmed or diagnosed.

Kiarah Mack [00:03:02]:

How it affects me is I can't do a lot of physical exertion because I get tired or, like, unable to move. It would get to the point where basic walking is really tough or even the movement of getting up from a chair.

Madison Whitford [00:03:15]:

To me, I guess it was quite obvious that Kia had some physical needs that needed to be met, making sure that the storage room where all our gear is stored is accessible and tidy and easy to find things. But then we looked at what we needed to invest in in terms of gift in order for her to be able to pick up gear and just take it without having to rely on anyone. Another way that we've found a good working system is, having the cadets work together.

Kiarah Mack [00:03:44]:

This is my artwork. It's supposed to be a self portrait, and this is devices. I have ADHD. And for, like, the longest time, you know, even during school and whatnot, just, like, really struggled with it. It's not that, you know, couldn't learn. It's just a different way of learning.

Madison Whitford [00:04:07]:

Because I have ADHD, I just kind of have that stuff that I've developed for myself, and I just share that and, yeah, help them develop their own systems if I can. Sitting down and having yarning circles, working out what parts of different processes are getting confusing or overwhelming and really going in there and nutting it out.

Kiarah Mack [00:04:28]:

These are a couple of questions that me and my fellow cadets have come up with.

Madison Whitford [00:04:34]:

This weekend, we're doing an OB for Bush Band's BASH, which is an annual event where Aboriginal bands from remote areas come and play a big concert.

Kiarah Mack [00:04:44]:

This weekend, I'm very excited. The Bush Band's bash event is on Sunday. It is the first time I'm going to that event. And first time I'm going with the crew here with the truck that we have, which carries all our, like, camera equipment. The seventies camera. And, oh my god. That's so cool.

Madison Whitford [00:05:05]:

We're covering that, and it's going live to broadcast, but the cadets will be working on our social media coverage. So they'll be going live on TikTok for the first time.

Kiarah Mack [00:05:15]:

By evening, the festival was packed with excited crowds immersed in live music. As cadets, we got to interview some of the artists that played live on stage. You're watching Bush Band's Bash on ICTV. And this this is just, like, my own random mode to, like, visualize, okay? Let's say you can hear your smile or someone smiling. So I'm like, Yeah. Yo. I think it's very important for people with disability to be represented in media so they don't feel alone in their experience. The kind of stories I wanna tell in the future is, well, where do I even begin? Definitely Indigenous stories, women focused stories, and I would like to have made more, like, neurodiverse characters. I think that's very important.

Madison Whitford [00:06:20]:

In the future, I see Keya going pretty much wherever she wants to go in media. There's absolutely no limit.

Kiarah Mack [00:06:28]:

My advice for other young people wanting to get into this area, just just do it. Yeah. It's great. Go for it.