Amy Clarke

This study investigated the impacts of integrating AI-generated podcasts into counselling education, examining both student and faculty experiences through a qualitatively-driven mixed-methods design. Early review of recent survey responses indicate that while faculty reported significant benefits, including drastic time savings and a positive shift in their role from content creator to curator, the student response was overwhelmingly negative. A qualitative analysis of survey data from eight students and three educators revealed a potential critical disconnect.
Faculty responses suggest that the AI tool improved the efficiency and quality of the pedagogical learning materials. Conversely, student responses suggest that they found the AI-generated voices to be “alienating” and “fake,” thereby hindering their comprehension and engagement. These early qualitative findings appear to corroborate with quantitative institutional data, which showed a marked decline in students’ overall satisfaction and their satisfaction with learning experiences and materials after the introduction of the podcasts. Implications of these findings will be discussed.

Open air museums (or living history museums, or outdoor museums) originated in the late nineteenth century out of the fear that folk architecture and traditional crafts were being lost to modernisation. These museums, which were typically created by transporting historic buildings and equipment from around a region or nation, were seen as a solution to this threat. The popularity of this museum type has not waned, and there are now a few thousand museums of this kind globally. Many received buildings donated by private individuals, as well as from local authorities needing to relocate structures to make way for new infrastructure or development. Though sometimes anachronous and spatially inaccurate, there is value in such buildings being grouped together, as it allows people to experience a region’s geography and history in one place. As with traditional museums, there is an assumption that the structures and artefacts at open air museums are ‘safe’, and will remain accessible to the public in perpetuity. 

This paper questions this assumption by looking to numerous global examples of open air museums that have either closed indefinitely or been dismantled and demolished, beginning with the Abbey Folk Museum (England, closed 1930s) and extending through to sites closed in the past decade. This paper reflects on the responsibilities of museum curators, and the (perhaps unreasonable) expectations of donors and the visiting public. The small-scale, volunteer-driven and not-for- profit nature of many of these institutions is highlighted, as are their precarious operating budgets. Finally, the future of structures held by defunct or at-risk museums is considered: should ‘authentic’ heritage structures relocated to these sites be treated differently than their reconstructed/replica structures? In raising these questions, this paper calls for a rethink of the open air museum model, and argues it was perhaps never the ‘solution’ it seemed to be. 

The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh have long been a popular destination, but the sense of uncontrollable inundation by visitors is a phenomenon of recent decades. While many have claimed the tourist boom is positive and to be further encouraged, residents have decried the loss of their city’s soul. The debate about ‘over-tourism’ in Edinburgh has become a common topic in the local press: the pro-tourism side argues that the city is a living, evolving entity that cannot be locked in a museum case, while the anti-tourism campaigners allege that Edinburgh is quickly falling victim to ‘Disneyfication’.

This threat of a loss of ‘authenticity’ is particularly important in the context of Edinburgh’s historic built landscape, as the Old and New Towns precincts have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. They were listed because of the global significance of ‘a remarkable blend of the two urban phenomena: the organic medieval growth and 18th and 19th century town planning’ (UNESCO, 1995). Indeed, Edinburgh’s distinct townscape and architectural appearance is a significant factor in its tourism success: millions visit each year to see Edinburgh Castle, the medieval and 18th century tenements of the Royal Mile, and the Classical Revival New Town. The conservation of existing structures and the introduction of new architecture is, in theory, strictly controlled to maintain heritage values. In practice, however, there have been numerous examples of developments that have challenged Edinburgh’s architectural status quo. This paper will explore two recent examples of contemporary architecture in hotel developments within Edinburgh’s historic centre that have attracted a range of reactions from the public and press. In doing so, the increasingly irreconcilable needs and outcomes of tourism, community management, urban planning, architectural design, and heritage conservation will be highlighted.

School sports houses have been a feature of the Australian school system for over a century, spreading from private boarding colleges and universities in the 1910s-1920s into the public system (both primary and secondary) to become nearly universal in the present day. While some schools implemented ‘houses’ as a way to encourage cohort bonding and to facilitate pastoral care, this approach—sorting students of all year levels into rival houses and using a points system to encourage competition—has also created an atmosphere of tribalism that now permeates the Australian schooling experience.

Since their inception, school sports houses in Australia have typically been named after prominent historical figures (local, national, sporting, religious and cultural), geographic features, native flora and fauna, mythical figures from the Ancient world, indigenous places and words, and the four elements (earth, water, air, fire). Many schools allocate a colour to each house, and since the 1970s it has become increasingly common to see the use of mascots (typically animals, but sometimes weaponry, meteorology or more abstract ideas like ‘courage’ and ‘determination’). Most Australians born in the post-war era have experienced sports houses themselves, or have seen this tribalism through the eyes of their children and grandchildren. It is a national and increasingly inter-generational phenomenon, and yet at its core the house system relies upon and encourages a kind of hyperlocalism that is triggered by specific combinations of names and figures, colours, and mascots.

This paper examines the cultural history of school sports houses in Australia (and particularly Queensland), and reflects on local, regional and national patterns of socio-cultural identity as expressed through what is essentially a modern form of heraldry. Data collected from over 450 Queensland public and private high schools reveals geographic and generational trends in house name selection and associated identity narratives and values. This research builds upon existing discourses regarding sporting and cultural identities in Australian history, and in doing so highlights the way local communities come to embody or adopt aspects of broader historical narratives through school sports. While of limited significance in isolation, these local performances of identity can be understood as parts of an Australia-wide network that has expanded with and reacted to socio-cultural developments over time. This allows new facets of debates concerning postcolonialism and sovereignty, globalism, environmentalism, gender, race, and Australia’s preoccupation with sporting ‘heroes’ to emerge.

In recent years, digital heritage has emerged as an important new field of research and practice, with an implicit ambition to record, conserve and even reconstruct culturally significant sites and artefacts threatened by war, climate change, natural disasters, development and neglect. Digital heritage initiatives have been enthusiastically promoted and adopted by government bodies, institutions and philanthropic organisations from around the world. Despite its allure, the application and utility of preserving, managing and reproducing built heritage via digital technology remains largely untested, and carries with it risks that may ultimately undermine the practice altogether. Drawing from recent examples such as the Institute of Digital Archaeology (IDA)'s replica Palmyra Arch, and Factum Arte's facsimile of Tutankhamen's Tomb, this paper identifies some of the particular challenges raised by the physical replication of heritage using digital technologies. Issues such as the quality of reproduction, the motivations for such projects, and unintended outcomes (e.g. neglect, complacency) are considered, as are more philosophical questions such as the revision of history. As such, the paper takes on a critical and provocative future vision of digital heritage technology and its use in replication, by highlighting some of the threats such practices may pose to the very cultural heritage it aims to protect.

Super-sized structures that mimic or quote smaller 'real world' things have been a feature of our landscape for many centuries. Largely as a result of the introduction of the motorcar, a new phase of structures with amplified proportions swept North America from the 1920s: roadside cafes, service stations and hotels utilised what David Gebhard labelled "programatic architecture" to capture the attention of passing motorists. This trend first appeared in Australia in the 1960s and pe ked in popularity in the 1980s. Numerous "Big Thing"' (to use the common Australian label) have been constructed in the past decade, such as the Big Golden Gumboot in Tully, QLD (2003), and thus the trend continues. Recent years have also seen the emergence of a 'Big' dilemma for local and State authorities, as Australia's earliest Big Things start to decay, go bankrupt, or attract criticism for the outdated versions of Australian history and identity that they seemingly promote (as with the Big Prawn in allina [NSW]), the Big Lobster in Kingston [SA] and the Big Captain Cook in Cairns [QLD]). These roadside attractions have become significant landmarks with many layers of social, aesthetic and cultural importance at local and national levels, and their heritage value has begun to be acknowledged. In 2009 the Big Pineapple (Nambour, QLD) was inscribed on the Queensland Heritage Register, and as other landmarks have come under threat of closure or demolition, debate about the future of these structures has uickly followed. This paper will historicise Australia's Big Things and consider the emerging heritage dilemma, and in doing so will reflect on the changing socio-political landscape that these architectural features occupy.

There are countless examples of explorers and prospectors being duped by the gleam of fool's gold, or pyrite: a mineral that has a remarkably golden sheen but on closer inspection is revealed to be something altogether different. Pyrite has its own uses and can be found in close proximity to real gold deposits, but it lacks the prestige that has long been bestowed on its metallic namesake. A similar phenomenon can be observed in urban environments, where seemingly 'normal' neoclassical terraces, castellated towers, 1950s bungalows and even strangely rigid palm-trees pepper the landscape, blending in to their surroundings through cunning acts of architectural camouflage. These carefully crafted façades can sometimes echo their surroundings so effectively that passers-by fail to notice the subtle differences that hint that these structures are not, in fact, what they seem. Appearing on the surface to be one thing whilst operating as something different, one might regard these as architectural 'fool's gold': terraces obscuring subway vents, bungalows masking electrical substations, castellated forms hiding pumping towers and telecommunications masts that take the form of palms, pine trees and church crosses. This paper uses the phenomenon of architectural camouflage, drawing on examples from North America, Europe and Australia, to challenge existing attitudes about authenticity in architectural design and heritage practice. Are these 'fake' forms essentially worthless, serving only to highlight a predominantly Western distaste for ugly infrastructure? Or are they of value for a different reason, serving as an indicator of contemporary fondness for 'hyperreality', whereby a convincing 'fake' of one form is preferable to the gritty reality of another?

Nova Scotia is marketed as a region of Canada that cherishes its Scottish heritage. Settled in the seventeenth century by the Scots, French and later British, the province subsequently became a favoured destination for Scottish migrants in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the turn of the twentieth century large parts of Nova Scotia remained 'Scottish' in terms of population ethnicity and spoken language (Gaelic), and even recent census data indicates this trend continues, though somewhat diminished. 'Scottishness' is both a commodity and a past-time in Nova Scotia, attracting tourists and providing a point of reference for those that remain in the community year-round. This paper will consider the translation of architectural expressions of 'Scottishness' from Scotland to Nova Scotia. In particular this paper will describe two key processes that have been undertaken in order to locate 'Scottishness' in the province's built environment: the redefinition and identification of 'Scottish' architectural elements in otherwise non-Scottish historic buildings, and the appropriation of 'Scottish' architectural traditions with no historical precedent in Nova Scotia for modern constructions. This approach will demonstrate that Nova Scotia's architectural 'Scottishness' is a translation of cultural tropes and isolated architectural elements that have been redefined in the twentieth century in order to more closely align the built identity of the province with the performed identity. In addressing this phenomenon this paper will consider whether Scottishness can be translated and understood through architecture in the diaspora, or whether attempting to do so will only achieve new and divergent meanings.