Episode Details

When I describe BIGhART to folks in the U.S. they

accuse me of making it up.

What if telling a story could rewrite history, heal generational trauma, and reclaim a community’s stolen legacy?

In a world where the voices of marginalized communities are often silenced or distorted, this episode explores how the arts—through projects like BIGhART and the Ngapartji Ngapartji and Namatjira initiatives—can become powerful instruments of cultural justice, truth-telling, and transformation. If you’ve ever wondered how creativity can confront systems of power and elevate unheard voices, this story offers living proof.

In this episode we:

1. Discover how a small arts organization in Australia sparked a global movement for Indigenous rights, language preservation, and youth empowerment.
2. Learn how performance, storytelling, and community-led creativity dismantled colonial narratives and reclaimed stolen intellectual property.
3. Be inspired by Scott Rankin’s vision of sacred, process-centered artistry that goes beyond performance to become a force for healing, justice, and deep social change.

BIO

Scott co-founded Big hART with friend John Bakes in 1992. As CEO and Creative Director, Scott leads the overarching vision for all Big hART projects – from pilot through to legacy. A leader and teacher in the field of social and cultural innovation, Scott provides daily mentorship and knowledge transfer to all Big hART staff so that they can in turn lead our projects with confidence.

An award winning writer and director in his own right, Scott’s works have been included many times in major arts festivals. His reputation is built on a quarter of a century of work, creating, funding and directing large-scale projects in diverse communities with high needs, in isolated settings.

Big hART is Scott’s passionate contribution to the arts and society.

Notable Mentions

BIGhART: Authentic, high-quality art made with communities.

Big hART brings virtuosic artists into communities to collaborate and create authentic stories which illuminate local injustice. We present these stories to mainstream audiences to help raise awareness. This builds public support for change and helps to protect vulnerable people.

Everyone, everywhere has the right to thrive.

Big hART works with communities experiencing high levels of need. Rather than focusing on the problem, our unique non-welfare projects build on community assets, strengthening vulnerable individuals, and creating long term attitudinal shifts. Our hope is for all communities to flourish.

Positive, generational change begins as a cultural shift.

Big hART designs and delivers transformative projects to address complex social issues. Our cultural approaches are evaluated and acknowledged as best practice. Decision makers seeking better solutions can use our award winning projects to help develop new and better policy. We aim to drive generational change.

Ngapartji Ngapartji: Big hART designed the Ngapartji Ngapartji project to raise awareness of Indigenous language loss, and the lack of an national Indigenous languages policy. In order to create visibility around these issues, we launched a language and culture teaching portal, offered audiences the chance to learn Pitjantjatjara through a small teaching show, created short teaching films, as well as music and CDs with a Pitjantjatjara choir. We made a high profile documentary,