The Executive Director of a small university team stood with the Prime Minister on Wednesday, and was lauded for his impact.
Travis Lovett spearheaded the National Walk for Truth, covering 900 kilometres over five weeks in a march from Melbourne to Canberra, building momentum for a national truth-telling process to uncover and share the nation’s history.
It’s an unconventional approach for a university staff member to strap on running shoes and shorts and engage with community in a sustained advocacy campaign – but Travis Lovett didn’t sign up as the Executive Director of Melbourne Uni’s Centre for Truth Telling and Dialogue to try to blend into academia. And his results, engaging communities all along the route and ending with a meeting with the Prime Minister, have insights for the sector to share.
Behind the scenes, there was a strong and direct connection between his university role and treading across the asphalt.
Victoria University, La Trobe, RMIT and ANU all worked with the University of Melbourne to support the logistics of the walk – building a collaboration that Mr Lovett aims to build and continue long after the sneakers are back in the cupboard.
In addition, key facts used to inform and engage the crowd along the way were researched and shared in a very direct program of knowledge transfer.
Mr Lovett said the walk had helped bring people together at a critical time.
“That word together is so powerful, in a society shifting towards division, there is so much more appreciation of synergies between us; people are struggling mentally, physically and financially and they are the worst three threats
“Let’s deal with facts and evidence, rather than feelings. People are feeling disempowered and so empathy is becoming less common.
“Universities have an important role, to research data and evidence and share truth. That’s what truth telling is about, but we don’t do that for our own nation yet. We need to embrace the opportunity around curriculum reform, changing the tools so that schools can teach the true history of Australia.
“We have put the university on the map in a different way, myself as ED of the Centre of Truth-Telling and Dialogue standing there with the PM of the country yesterday. This is the power of the role that universities can play.
“We have the capacity within universities to deal with those really complex areas of truth telling, by backing them up with evidence.”