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JB Consultancy continually strives to offer services that are tailored and unique, bringing people back to having honest conversations about culture and history. Too often, organisations are not clear about what potentially could be a beneficial, valuable and rewarding process in learning and understanding Indigenous culture. For this reason, the facilitation and training workshops provided by JB Consultancy are a real point of difference to the stock standard approaches. We take the focus away from the political correctness and over-sensitivity of the subject matter and create culturally safe environments for audiences to ask questions, discuss and learn more. Participants naturally have a level of curiosity in this space, particularly around history and Indigenous exclusion and inclusion. Our services are about instilling a confidence so that people can go away, reflect and implement learnings in their own practices, departments or organisations.
As a talented Didgeridoo player, John Briggs will regularly incorporate this into his professional and interactive workshops. JB Consultancy flexibly delivers for a range of settings and audiences; from university lecture theatres, TAFE, early years centres and kindergartens, national conferences, conference centres, mining sites and many more. All workshops, excepting Children’s Shows are complemented by PowerPoint presentations, as a way of offering visual cues and conversation starters.
Cultural Awareness Training delivers content from evidence based research, through conversation and interactive workshopping. Groups explore the socio-political views through a timeline that allows each participant to build an understanding about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander targeted programs and strategies in 2016 – what they’re built on, where they come from, their philosophies and basic framework. Our training incorporates professional conversations that uncovers the idea behind ‘exclusion to inclusion’, as well as, deconstructs unconscious bias and other blockers preventing effective practice. Workshops build individuals confidence and understanding in how to action this space, within a culturally safe environment. Each participant has the opportunity to interact with the facilitator right throughout the workshop, with many giving feedback that it was much more than they had expected. Most sessions are delivered in blocks of one to four hours. However, in an early years setting for certificate III and diploma students, modules will typically be extended to five or six hours.
JB Consultancy offers Mentoring and Coaching services to assist and educate organisations and the general community about the benefits of start-up Indigenous employment. Together, we explore the real-life challenges of retention and some best practice models. It is a discovery process for many that empowers well known clients to maintain retention rates of 80-90% nationally with regards to their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment targets. Mentoring and coaching challenges participants to have those honest conversations, which build trust and transparency. We also assist a number of organisations with setting Indigenous employment retention goals and devising plans for the successful implementation of Reconciliation Action Plans. We continually develop strategies for organisation to achieve and maintain these well into the future. Sessions also look at the engagement of Indigenous communities and individuals. This is a niche service that has been addressing gaps in the corporate and government sectors for many years.
Professional conversations look at the three components of history, Indigenous culture and possible actions moving forward. Retention is often a true indicator and measurement of an organisations engagement success. However, where engagement may have been traditionally quite easy during the initial stages, the test is in the time it takes to keep people in roles beyond 6-12 months. Professional Conversation Workshops enable participants to gain an understanding about some of these challenges faced through an honest approach and looking at evidence based research. Many corporate clients understand that the professional conversation is a benefit to linking their inclusive targets under organisational diversity strategies, Reconciliation Action Plans and other engagement documents. JB Consultancy allows audiences to analyse and critique inclusion targets in a way that creates perspective of where inclusion was originally derived. These sessions have very clear objectives in a non-judgemental setting and have been well-received right across corporate Australia.
Our Early Years upskilling targets educators and the early years sector, with regards to meeting reporting requirements and targets under their framework. These workshops have been well received by many audiences on a national basis, due to their philosophy of removing the emotion from the subject matter and looking purely at what is ‘exclusion to inclusion’. We are experienced in delivering the three core modules to students studying a certificate III or diploma in Childrens Services. All of our training is industry benchmarked and JB Consultancy delivers a service that continually exceeds the needs and expectations of students and educators. At these workshops, we introduce Aboriginal artefacts, demonstrate how to use and talk about these, as well as, provide activity examples for creating dialogue with children. Participants leave the workshop with an elevated confidence and understanding about what their practice could or should potentially look like. It is a journey of discovery about Indigenous inclusion, with strategies for implementing more regular referencing, outside of the designated events such as NAIDOC week. Positive outcomes of these workshops, lead to many educators and centres who go onto developing a local framework for engaging and building relationships within their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Children in the 0-5 space are introduced to Indigenous Australian culture through the medium of storytelling, artefacts, song and dance and always enjoy the large collection of Didgeridoo’s. While playing the Didgeridoo, children are given clap sticks to tap along with, as a way of creating a safe space to learn and engage. Inclusive language is introduced at these workshops so that children can begin to understand that it is not someone else’s culture they are learning, but that it is ‘our culture’. The use of ‘we’ and ‘us’ supports children to form their becoming, belonging and being focus, which are the three pillars of the early years framework. JB Consultancy tailors and aligns to the deliverable targets under the early years sector, by not only benchmarking these but also creating linkages through content. Shows are built on the philosophy that children need to explore culture in a safe way so that they will continue reflecting on this as they reach the prep – grade 12 education years. JB Consultancy develops the shows from a generic basis, to ensure they are well-received and remain educational without impinging on community perceptions or the local culture. Children that are provided with a healthy foundational understanding of Indigenous awareness will go on to being better equipped and more open minded throughout their education. Shows are popular right across the Greater Brisbane, Gold Coast and Northern New South Wales regions, as well as, in many other parts of the country and they continue to be booked out well in advance.
Sessions can be delivered according to requested timeframes and in a range of different formats. Typically workshops take 60-90 minutes in order to flexibly slot into pre-set agendas. Content can also be tailored based on clients’ objectives and the desired outcomes. Popular Professional Development Forum topics centre on the discovery of ‘exclusion to inclusion’. More recently, JB Consultancy has been requested to speak at a number of forums around the impacts of the NDIS rollout on Indigenous communities, including rural and regional locations. Professional Development Forums are about creating an opportunity for groups to ask honest questions and benefit from interactive dialogue with a specialist facilitator. We have assisted early childhood educators, school teachers, Queensland Police Service, public safety business agencies, professional services firms and many other national law firms. By exploring evidence based research in a diplomatic way, participants can respond to the content and feel safe to ask challenging questions that may have been too uncomfortable to broach in the past. We call these the fringe conversations because what JB Consultancy aims to do, is bring audiences out of their comfort zones to test what they know, feel or think about Indigenous culture, history and actions moving forward. Audiences often uncover unconscious bias and gain an understanding about how this potentially acts as a blocker in their professional practice.
JB Consultancy can facilitate workshops in Indigenous contexts, as well as, for any other generalist topic or situation. To demonstrate the breadth and scope of our facilitated services, we can guide conversations for a range of audiences and forums, such as the NDIS, early years, cultural inclusion, professional development, organisational strategy and more. This service is based on groups being able to analyse and understand clearly, the objectives of the workshop and are supported to achieve these. We look at the constructive development of verbal and non-verbal engagement based on significant strategic mapping and pre-workshop planning. Workshop Facilitation has been requested by government, retail, early years, education and private sectors.
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