Looking to inspire your students to engage with real-world social issues?Every night 22,000 Australian teenagers are experiencing homelessness. That was the shocking revelation of the 2008 feature documentary The Oasis, which shook Australia with its gritty insight into the lives of wayward teens at a chaotic inner-city youth refuge. Ten years and six Prime Ministers later, with social inequality and homelessness worse than ever, Life After the Oasis revisits the original participants, who show how their lives have changed since those fraught times. Cool Australia has designed a suite of Year 9 & 10 English, Mathematics, Civics and Citizenship and HPE lessons to support students to safely and meaningfully engage with Life After The Oasis. The film producers have generously made both The Oasis and Life After the Oasis freely available to schools. The Oasis is currently available for viewing and once Life After The Oasis has aired on SBS Australia, teachers will be able to access via Cool Australia lessons. |
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Teacher Preparation: Working across the curriculum & forward planningIt is essential that teachers watch the Life After the Oasis documentary in full before showing it to students. There are many themes, concepts and events in the film that teachers need to be aware of and reflect upon so that they can provide sufficient safety and support for students. Find out more about the film. Life After the Oasis is yet to be classified, but it contains confronting content including strong language, drug use and adult themes. Although these lessons can be taught in isolation, a cross-curriculum approach drawing on all the different units will achieve the best results. You may also wish to include a study of the first documentary, The Oasis, with its English and HPE curriculum-aligned lessons, to help students develop a deeper understanding of the topic and issues. Click here to find out more about The Oasis.
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Life After The Oasis can be viewed |
Life After The Oasis: Years 9 & 10
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Designed to explore youth homelessness, both as lived experience and as portrayed in media and popular culture. Teach students about text structures, literary devices and language use in the context of a contemporary social issue. |
Civics & Citizenship – Years 9 & 10 Designed to explore social and policy changes since the 2008 documentary film The Oasis was released. Teach students about the role of government, institutions and citizens in improving society. |
Designed to explore the social issues associated with lived homelessness, including mental health, addiction and trauma. Teach students about identifying and developing the skills needed for personal and community health and wellbeing. |
Designed to explore the Australian Census data relating to homelessness and how the media represents statistics. Teach students about mathematical modelling in the context of a real-world issue. |
Homelessness: What are the statistics?
On any given night in Australia, 1 in 200 people are experiencing homelessness. This alarming statistic raises many questions about homelessness in Australia and what is being done by government and non-government institutions to combat the problem. Homelessness is not just the result of there being too few houses available. It is often a result of a number of complex issues and situations: a shortage of affordable housing can be one factor, but so are things like domestic violence, unemployment, mental illness, family breakdown, financial hardship, leaving state care or prison and drug and alcohol abuse. |
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Hear from Paul on homelessness then and now |
More about the film
Life After The Oasis is a 75-minute documentary that explores the issues, interventions and mindsets associated with lived youth homelessness in Australia. The film revisits people from the original 2008 documentary The Oasis and explores how opportunities and experiences have shaped their lives over the last ten years.
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Watch a trailer of the film |
Didn’t see the first film?
Life After The Oasis uses footage from the original film and provides context and background to show the participants 10 years later. It is not necessary to watch The Oasis to understand Life After The Oasis. However, we encourage teachers to revisit the original film as part of their broader unit of study. Curriculum resources for the original Oasis film include English and Health and Physical Education Units, both aligned to Years 9 & 10. To access the English Oasis lessons, click here. To access the HPE Oasis lessons, click here. Warning: The Oasis contains frequent coarse language, drug use and drug references.
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Accessing The OasisThe Oasis can be viewed
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