Postcards from our Red Centre: MiCN Mentor Peter Lowson blogs from Alice Springs
2010 MiCN Award winner, Peter Lowson, has been working with Indigenous Youth and Adult education programs since 1983. In 2004 he started Drum Atweme, initially as a means of encourage school attendance. The program uses a variety of percussion instruments. Although primarily Afro-Cuban and Brazilian influenced, the rhythms are worked around the songs and stories of the indigenous participants’ culture. The program has transformed the lives of countless Alice Springs town camp-based children. Far exceeding its initial aims to help ameliorate social isolation and low self-esteem, children also show improvements across all their school subjects. Peter’s strong mentoring and peer leadership program within the drumming project has now resulted in 13 of the children attending boarding schools interstate. It is hoped that these children will return to the Alice Springs community as the leaders of the future.
We join Peter just as he has returned from a week long camp out at Uluru. Follow Peter throughout October as he takes us inside his uplifting and effective program as it changes young lives.
