APS Bendi Lango Art Exhibition – Supporting Indigenous Psychology Education

One of the explicit objectives of the longstanding Strategic Plans of the APS has been to increase the number of indigenous psychologists. Another has been to support indigenous psychology students. We need to have a cutting edge approach to achieving these ends, and consultation with Wurundjeri elder, Joy Murphy, has led her to naming our solution Bendi Lango - Cutting Edge.

The APS acknowledges the hardship faced by many Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and continues to promote the need for Aboriginal psychologists to work in remote communities and indigenous urban centres. At present the number of qualified indigenous psychologists is grossly under-represented, with only a handful of fully professionally trained indigenous psychologists.

The Bendi Lango Art Exhibition Foundation was established in 2006 in order to address this imbalance by offering bursaries to alleviate some of the financial concerns students might experience in seeking to complete a tertiary postgraduate professional degree in psychology. The 2006 art exhibition was successful in raising funds to sponsor one indigenous psychology student to pursue post-graduate studies in psychology, commencing this year.

The APS Bendi Lango Art exhibition is a project that emulates the highly successful venture of the Shalom College, the Jewish residential college of the University of NSW. The sale of prized artworks by some of the biggest names in Aboriginal art will again be utilised to raise scholarship funds for indigenous psychology students to participate in universities across Australia. The sale of artworks from the exhibition provides the necessary funds to achieve the project's aim to offer bursaries for indigenous psychology students, to assist them with living expenses as they complete their degrees.