Ashleigh

In the 2019 winter break, I was fortunate enough to undertake an internship at PARADISEC through the Aurora Internship Program. PARADISEC works with a group of researchers, musicologists, linguists, dance historians, digital humanists, curators, artists and cultural historians. Their main purpose it to safely preserve digital sources (like audio and film recordings) that are in danger of being lost. They also work with the descendants of the people who were recorded, and wherever possible make these recordings available to them and their communities, which I think is very important. I was interested in working at PARADISEC because I liked the archive and history aspect of their organisation. I wanted to gain some more experience in these areas and so they were my Host preference for an internship. In my 4 weeks, I was able to work on two really interesting and fun projects. I spent time going through online archives looking at old photos of Indigenous performers from the 1930s, I researched native plants and their uses, and I was able to watch footage from a performance at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. My supervisors were two smart, kind, and fun women who made the time fly past.