About Australians Studying Abroad
Founded in 1977, Australians Studying Abroad programs visit numerous countries to explore a varied range of themes from contemporary art and literature to the evolution of regional or national cultures over many centuries. All tours share a belief that learning is as much an act of imagination and experience as a garnering of information, based on the assumption that an intimate relationship exists between geography, history and culture. ASA tours aim to give participants unique insights into different cultural traditions by travelling to the places where each tradition evolved, and tracing how climate, geography, demography and politics interact to create specific types of art and culture. The physical experience of different landscapes, environments and peoples with their myriad colours, sounds and scents is the first step to understanding different cultures. ASA tours ask their participants to go a step further and use the present in combination with artefacts from the past to imagine the march of history or the context of a particular literary or artistic genre. By travelling within specific countries or regions through varied urban and rural landscapes, many tours trace the routes of trade, demographic movement, and cultural exchange, thus giving tour participants the opportunity to become part of the drama themselves. Group leaders and lecturers accompany each tour to help participants to interpret the cities, monuments and landscapes through which they pass and the customs, rituals and performances they witness by means of a combination of evening lectures, gallery- and museum tours, performances and site visits. On many tours local guest lecturers provide additional insights into their region or a particular aspect of its culture.
ASA programs relate very particular experiences of places, many of them not available to other travellers, to a broad vision of the world, by exploring the layers of history and the stories each has to tell. By unravelling the full tale of a place from the specific to the broader context, ASA tours show you the trees and the wood.
ASA tours fit into 5 categories
• Tours with a broad cultural theme
• Cultural tours with a landscape design and garden focus
• Cultural tours with a literary focus
• ASA's new design tours – programs that explore a city's cutting edge design
• Short overseas courses for credit with partner universities
ASA's tours with a broad cultural theme spend from 10 days to 3 weeks in one or more countries. Some tours, like The Silk Route: from Xi'an to Tashkent make a long journey to explore a myriad interactions between religions, cultures and societies. Others survey many aspects of one particular region, city or country, exploring its past through the lens of the present.
ASA's cultural tours with a landscape design and garden focus are led by garden experts. The gardens we visit are placed within broad, educative contexts: of garden history, landscape architecture, garden design, botany, plantsmanship, agriculture, conservation, cultural and social history. These programs are enriched by visits to private gardens that are closed to the general public. Participants are given the opportunity to meet owners who are proud to show their garden, to interact with the local gardeners and meet world-renown landscape architects such as Eduardo Mencos (Spain), Juan Grimm (Chile) and Bernard Trainor (USA).
