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RHD Australia

Pop Art: Healthy Heart Message Finds a Fresh Beat

How one township made art from the heart, and in so doing, found a way to spread the RHD and ARF message to its young folk.

230km southwest of Darwin in the remote community of Wadeye, a gaggle of excited singers prepare to front the camera. Over a four-day period, students from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School have mixed, brainstormed and danced with Red Dust, a team of Melbourne-based health promotion experts. With the performers’ preparation now complete, it’s time to make some noise – and a music video to boot.

With broad smiles, they hum a bass line that mimics a heartbeat: “Boom-boom, boom-boom…” Lyrics then flow in the community’s local language Murrinhpatha. These lines carry the message that strong hearts go hand-in-hand with strong bodies. The music also warns that any person displaying symptoms of sore joints and/or a sore throat should present to a health worker for a check-up.

My heart is beating, beating like a drum. My heart is strong, I have a strong heart

RHDAustralia’s Christian James, is one of the minds behind the song’s messaging. “Red Dust contacted RHDAustralia to provide technical guidance and support,” he says. “Our role was to help deliver the Acute Rheumatic Fever (ARF) and Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) education and to provide technical knowledge to the project.”

The result is a brightly lit, catchy music video entitled ‘The Makulkul Mob’. Colette Davis, project manager at Red Dust, says of the end creative product: “It was really well received. By the end of the program all the students knew the words to the song, and when we debuted the finished product at the assembly, there was a lot of laughter, singing and pride in what the students have produced.”

Beyond the school environment, Red Dust also garnered positive feedback among Wadeye service providers, as well as among community workers with strong ties to young folk.

Davis explains that the video formed part of her organisation’s Healthy Living Program, which seeks to raise awareness about the link between lifestyle choices and chronic disease. For Red Dust’s previous trip to the Top End, the focus fell on healthy skin. Healthy hearts won the spotlight this time around.

“Red Dust made contact with the NT RHD control program and RHDAustralia to incorporate some ARF and RHD messages in the context of the healthy heart theme for the program,” she says. “Working in partnership is really important. A multidisciplinary team strengthens our delivery via key messages that are consistent, and with the development of resources that are useful to community and service providers working in that area.”

Davis says: “Christian was an integral part of our team. Having a representative from RHDAustralia provided us with reassurance and support that the resource produced was appropriate, accurate and did not duplicate other resources. More importantly he was able to discuss ARF and RHD in the school environment, and this increased the students’ and teachers’ understanding.”

Red Dust believes that from the line-up of health promotion tools, music, sport and the arts are effective avenues for cutting through to young people: all encourage participation and the building of skills and knowledge. Producing music videos in particular, she says, gives young people a real ownership over the song, lyrics, music and video production.

Christian James reflects on his experience in Wadeye: “To put the project into perspective, the Red Dust team had four days to re-establish past networks with the community, create a project theme, then write, interpret and translate this message into the local language, then set up, film, record audio visual effects and manage a portable studio. Then in the evenings, the production team would stay up well into the early hours editing and planning what was recorded for the next day.

“The final product that Red Dust delivered to Wadeye community was of the highest standard and the message it delivered is in line with the current ARF/RHD control program concepts. Seeing the impact of education in language has inspired RHDAustralia to look into the development of a comprehensive language based ARF/RHD education package.”

James says, “The Indigenous kids have so much natural talent and creativity; it was inspiring to work with and learn from them.”

The Makulkul Mob - Wadeye from Red Dust on Vimeo.

Last updated 
29 June 2020