The generous boys and the nice to meet you band: Students from migrant and refugee backgrounds as leaders in reshaping university values through creative arts-based programmes

As Australian institutions shift towards widening participation in higher education, recent research has strengthened the notion that institutions must challenge their own values to find ways of recognising and sharing the values of more diverse cohorts. This pilot study acknowledges the call for universities to move ‘away from the notion that it is the students who need to “adapt” to university’ and implements these recommendations through the design and testing of a creative programme intended to assist a specific cohort of students who had recently arrived in Australia as migrants or refugees with post-school transition. Using a combination of qualitative research methods including arts-based consultation workshops, semi-structured interviews, and participatory creative practice to collect data, the research aims to position the voices and aspirations of the students at the centre of the data collected. The ‘Room 17 Goes Large’ project not only aimed to improve the students’ confidence in post-school transition, it also sought to ascertain what kinds of support the cohort valued most, thus providing insights that may assist institutions in better adapting to such cohorts in the future. This research and subsequent article propose a model of practice and initial proof of concept.