BLAK Environment

Join us for an afternoon of workshops and conversation exploring the question: “What would the built BLAK environment look like if we allow First Nations design knowledge to lead, rather than supplement, the design process? Coordinated by Bradley Kerr (Quandamooka), Director of Winsor Kerr Architects and featuring Marni Reti (Palawa and Ngāti Wai) and Matt Muir, Monash University among others.

BLAK Environment is a collective of First Nations architects, designers and educators working to form a national conversation about where design could head if we began, not ended, with Country. Their work celebrates the cyclical nature of projects that learn from, and give back to, communities and Country, centering reciprocity, kinship and truth-telling as design tools.

At TarraWarra Museum of Art, BLAK Environment will present a workshop and conversation that repositions the role of Co-Design within Australian practice. Too often, Co-Design becomes a bureaucratic step, think consultation without redistribution. BLAK Environment seeks to demonstrate another way, grounded in the continuous cultural practice of designing with respect for Country.

Alongside the conversations, participants will be invited into workshops centred around a series of carved, etched or patinated objects, where the co-design model is inverted and participation becomes an act of expression, carving and material understanding. These objects will sit within an endemic landscape that acts as a playful instrument, with visitors invited to engage with plants as musical instruments. The workshops sit alongside conversations exploring how power, authorship and opportunity might flow differently through the act of making.

By inverting the conventional co-design relationship, BLAK Environment reimagines architecture and policy as acts of care and cultural continuity. It asks how we might replace extraction with exchange and invites audiences to experience design as a living relationship between people, place and Country.

The immersive and participatory event will take place alongside a walk on Country and a one-hour speaker session featuring Marni Reti, Matt Muir, Simone Bliss and others.

All Ages.

Return bus tickets available.
Departing 12.30pm Federation Square
Departing 5.00pm TarraWarra Museum of Art

This event is generously supported by The Aranday Foundation and Michael Kantor