ALARA member – the Melbourne Action Research Issues Association – celebrates its 30th anniversary
The Action Research Issues Association (ARIA), a long-time organisational member of ALARA, will celebrate its 30th anniversary on Saturday 28th April 2018 when members gather in the same city venue (Café Yamato) in which ARIA's inaugural incorporation meeting was held on the same date in 1988.
ARIA and its Action Research Issues Centre had their home on the 4th floor of Ross House – a building which houses around 60 community and self-help groups – for 17 years until 2003 when it moved to two different university settings and then an online existence. It had its origins in a joint Victorian Council of Social Services (VCOSS) and Melbourne Family Care Organisation (MFCO) project that produced in 1984 Australia’s best-selling social research book, Do It Yourself Social Research. Among ARIA’s many projects and consultancies, it also went on to publish Australia's best-selling introductory evaluation book in 1991, Everyday Evaluation on the Run. Both books, now published in their 3rd editions in Australia-Asia by Allen & Unwin and elsewhere internationally by Routledge, have never been out of print.
ARIA was, like Interchange in Queensland, one of Australia’s earliest publishers and distributors of action research literature.
From its decades of work with health, human and community-based groups and services, were developed the concepts of the critical reference group or critical inquiry group and multi-stakeholder dialogic participatory action research designs (Wadsworth 2010, 2011), and used this perspective and methodological approach in all its consultancy and project work. During its most active years between the 1980s and 2000s the Action Research Issues Centre was running up to 30 workshops a year that demystified research and evaluation and conveyed the cyclic/systemic nature of action-oriented values-driven human co-inquiry.
If you were part of ARIA's history and would like to send the Association a memory or message or just an hello, please email them at <aria.inc@gmail.com>.
April 2018