Leleiga Taito reads her work at a recent Creative Writing Student Writers Read event at Massey Wellington campus.
Congratulations to Expressive Arts student Leleiga Taito who has just been announced as the winner of a $5000 scholarship to research safety communication on Mt Ruapehu in 2015.
Leleiga is currently finishing her final year of the Bachelor of Communication (Public Relations and Expressive Arts), and will start postgraduate studies (BC Honours) in 2015. Her Honours research project (supervised by the School of English & Media Studies and co-funded by GNS and Massey University through the Joint Centre for Disaster Research) will be a real-world life-saving project that looks at how to improve safety awareness for mountain users, particularly about the risks of lahars and avalanches.
Leleiga will have the opportunity not only to investigate practical safety communication challenges in depth, but also to develop creative multi-media solutions to the communication challenge. She has past experience of similar projects during her Bachelor of Communication (BC) studies, and will now extend these skills in-depth with her Honours research.
Leleiga’s prior study achievements include creative writing, digital media production, media releases, strategic communication plans, and service learning for community organisations. For example, she created an awareness campaign for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation in her second year of the BC. She says “Through my research I discovered that breast cancer education and prevention messages were not reaching Samoan women. I conducted a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods to establish why women in this culture were not receiving these messages. After compiling the information that was gathered I then made suggestions on what appropriate communication strategies could be put in place. I also implemented tactics, where I created four pieces of collateral to encourage Samoan women to have mammograms. One of the communication materials was a web video with Winnie Laban sharing her experiences with breast cancer.” You can see Leleiga’s excellent breast cancer awareness video assignment, with compelling personal interview testimony from Winnie Laban, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzoX3Nd97so&feature=youtu.be
During her Honours year Leleiga will, under the supervision of her research report supervisor (Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley from the School of English and Media Studies) prepare a comprehensive qualitative investigation of mountain user culture and the communication norms and needs that exist around safety issues. She will have the opportunity to research in the field, living at Mt Ruapehu to gather data during the ski season. Part of her reporting for the research project may also take the form of a creative output (such as a short documentary film) that could in itself provide a useful way to respond to the research challenge by building awareness of relevant safety issues and responses.
Associate Professor Tilley said Leleiga’s success was indicative of the value of the public relations/expressive arts combination in a communication degree. “Most real-world research problems or workplace communication challenges are multi-faceted, and need both a scientific and a creative response to generate understanding and solutions. I think we are really seeing, with the success of our Bachelor of Communication students who all have both a business and a humanities preparation, just how valuable this is for the next steps after a three-year degree, whether that step is further study or the workplace.”
Associate Professor Tilley said study of Expressive Arts (which can include diverse combinations of different digital media production, creative writing and theatre papers) was proving particularly useful for students. “We live in a multi-modal world. Seldom is any public communication these days just a written brochure or poster. Inevitably there are multi-media and social media dimensions. And the work that students do in learning scripting, dialogue, filming, directing, lighting, editing and a whole range of production, post-production and performance-related skills in Expressive Arts sets them up really well for this kind of work after graduation.”
Leleiga’s scholarship includes $5000 for fees and stipend, plus additional coverage of direct costs of her research including accommodation and other research expenses covered at Mt Ruapehu. Other BC students have also been involved in the wider research project – click here for a previous story about the project and click here for a link to a Radio New Zealand story about the project.