During NAIDOC Week 2016, 13 Indigenous Charles Sturt University (CSU) students who are the first in their families to attend university will collaborate on a unique storytelling project.

Working with Desert Pea Media, a not-for-profit production company co-founded by CSU alumnus Mr Toby Finlayson, the students will begin producing high quality audio and visual content that will tell their unique stories of what it is like to be an Indigenous first-in-family student at CSU.

Mr Finlayson said Desert Pea Media's objective as an organisation is to reinvigorate traditional storytelling culture through the contemporary mediums of music, song, film and performance.

"Desert Pea works with young people and communities, often in remote and isolated areas, to create change through collaborative storytelling," Mr Finlayson said.

"In this instance we are putting our professional production skills to work in collaboration with a number of exceptional university students and local Elders from the Bathurst community to create some content that tells their stories through their own words and hopefully helps to create some social change."

CSU First Degree is a project which conducts research into the first-in-family student experience and builds evidence-based resources to help these students succeed in all aspects of their university journey. It has invited the 20 Indigenous CSU students to participate in the Desert Pea Media project as a way of capturing their experiences. CSU First Degree is funded by the federal government's Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP).

Ms Kara King, First Gen Project Officer at CSU said, "These students have come to Bathurst for this project from across Australia. They are a diverse group who are all studying different courses at Charles Sturt University, some as undergraduates, others as postgraduates and some are research students.

"The students also study with the University in many different ways; some study on campus while others study online from remote locations. Among the 13 students there is a range of ages represented, as some are recent school leavers and others are mature age students," Mr King said, "So we are confident they will each bring a unique and exciting viewpoint on their experience of being Indigenous and attending university, and we look forward to Desert Pea Media helping to capturing that."

The CSU First Degree and Desert Pea Media project is happening at CSU in Bathurst throughout the week starting Monday 4 July. The end product of the project will be launched officially following completion of professional post-production in September 2016.