‘I can put my culture on my t-shirt’: The value of design and enterprise in Ntaria

Abstract

In the Aboriginal community of Ntaria, visual communication is utilized to enhance storytelling, kinship relationships, and cultural knowledge. This research investigates how digital design tools could generate new forms of representation and connection while leading to the creation of employment pathways for young adults. Detailed in this paper is how Ntaria Design, a student-led enterprise was cultivated through a design and enterprise education program run at Ntaria School, part of a three-year participatory action study. From a Western Arrarnta perspective, the value of design, and the resulting development of a design-based enterprise was mediated by Country, culture, and community. This in turn necessitated new ways of teaching, learning, and engaging in research together on-Country. The establishment of Ntaria Design illuminates how design education can build entrepreneurial capacity while enabling Aboriginal youth to engage in commercial pathways on their own terms, and according to their own life-worlds.

Keywords:

• Indigenous knowledge
• design education
• on-Country design
• digital design tools
• design-based enterprise
• life-worlds

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In this paper the term ‘Country’ learns from and follows the way it is described by Aboriginal people, like Elder Uncle Charles Moran, who described how it embraces the seasons, stories and creation spirits, while defining relationships, kinship responsibilities, and the unity of people, place, and knowledge (Moran, Harrington, and Sheehan 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Northern Territory Government office of Youth Affairs, Youth Engagement Grant [2017/18]; Stronger Communities for Children, Indigenous Advancement Strategy’s Children and Schooling Programme, Australian Government, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet [019].

Notes on contributors

Nicola St John

Dr. Nicola St John is a communication design lecturer at RMIT University. Nicola’s research is largely community-based, partnering with Indigenous art-centres, creative industries, and Aboriginal community schools in participatory research projects to foster social and cultural well-being, digital design skills, intercultural collaboration, and youth entrepreneurship. The overarching aim of her research seeks to increase Indigenous access, participation, and representation in design-based industries.