Sydney Water\u2019s Innovation Festival, to be held on 18-20 October, is about caring for country, customers, community and people.<\/p>\n
Veronica Murphy, First Nation\u2019s Inclusion Specialist at Sydney Water said that it was important to Sydney Water to host a Festival that was inclusive and innovative.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is impossible to do without acknowledging the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first engineers in this Country. In line with Sydney Water\u2019s Reconciliation Action Plan, the Festival will foster opportunities for deep listening with the aim of learning from and amplifying the voices of Aboriginal peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Alex Cech, Chief Technology Officer at Isle Utilities Asia Pacific, the Delivery Partner of the Festival, further stated that there is an incredible opportunity to blend Aboriginal traditional knowledge with western science to find innovative ways to better manage our waterways and protect the environment. Time and again in western civilisation we see that the answers we are seeking are already there, we just haven\u2019t been observant or listened well enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt it fitting to incorporate Indigenous elements into the Sydney Water Innovation Festival logo and commissioned aboriginal designer Nikita Ridgeway, the Founder and Director of Boss Lady Design and Communications to incorporate First Nation elements into the design.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nikita Ridgeway said \u201cwhen I first spoke with Alex Cech, I was trying to get an understanding of the storyline behind the Festival and the Festival organisers wanted to include more about the First Nation\u2019s perspective of water, given that Sydney has a very rich history of Aboriginal culture from the Tank Stream and the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to reflect this history, in retrospect, in the design, but while the original logo design that was given to me was very modern, detailed, beautiful, bright and colourful, I wanted to give something that was going to balance and compliment that with simple logos and a simple statement that would represent water and community, because while the Festival is based around water itself and a conversation over land and water, it\u2019s also a chance to bring together community as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done that in the reflection in the logo artwork.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the original artwork there was a symbol of fireworks and I integrated these with an Indigenous design to represent community. It has a good balance of both cultures where fireworks represent a celebration of people coming together; it\u2019s a celebration of communities actually coming together too. The design has both a modern aspect and a traditional aspect.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the bottom of the logo I have created symbols that represent water holes. This represents the connection between water and areas and is a representation of the water journey between Sydney Water and everybody coming in to attend the Festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the top of the logo I have a symbol for water, rivers and waterways.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to go too overtly overboard with Indigenous designs, because while the original logo artwork was very busy, having a balance was key. Having a First Nation\u2019s perspective, while it was very simplified, tells a bigger story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe adaptation of traditional artwork to a modern convention is open to the interpretations of many, many people. Each of those symbols, while they are community symbols available in the artwork, leads to a conversation as to \u2018why is community important?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunity is vitally important to Aboriginal people because it forms the basis for which we care for one-another; it\u2019s the basis in which we continue culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cWater and land are important; they are vital to our community because, one, they sustain us as human beings but they also sustain our cultural capacity as well, because without connection to land we don\u2019t have connection to culture and we don\u2019t have connection to self.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiscussions around land and water are vitally important to Aboriginal people. It is also that connection to \u2018song line\u2019 and \u2018song line\u2019 is a connection to \u2018the dreaming\u2019; that\u2019s the basis of Indigenous personal identity as well. This is why we are so glad to have a First Nation\u2019s lens and voice in events like the Sydney Water Innovation Festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndigenous people use water to practice culture, to go fishing, for ceremony. It\u2019s difficult to explain the connection that an Indigenous person has to land. It\u2019s a spiritual connection and while in the past in Australia history we haven\u2019t had the ability to have a voice, it\u2019s great that we now do and that we are able to share that lived experience of why land is so important to us; why access to water is so important \u2013 it\u2019s the accessibility; the ability to work and adapting culture to modern ways of working in life and society, while we still get to practice Indigenous culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are still able to work within the bounds of working with land in a modern convention. Working with Sydney Water and working with large festivals like this to talk about these types of topics is a significant step forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cSydney Harbour has a wealth of history of interaction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and you have the Tank Stream (the colony\u2019s original water source). All of the buildings have been built around Sydney Harbour, but very few Sydneysiders realise that the Tank Stream runs right underneath the city. Many Aboriginal people used to congregate at the Tank Stream and around the Harbour and the Tank Stream has a rich history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt think that it\u2019s really good to acknowledge the past and where we\u2019ve been and what we\u2019ve been through and to acknowledge where we are and where we\u2019re going in the future with regards to water.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople always gravitate towards water; it\u2019s soothing; it\u2019s beautiful and it\u2019s a place in Sydney where it is internationally known to bring people together.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also great to get people to talk about the First Nation\u2019s perspective and how Sydneysiders and Australians are bringing people together at Circular Quay for the Festival to talk about water what is internationally known; our space of water is what we are identified with \u2013 Sydney Harbour.<\/p>\n
\u201cAboriginal culture has had to adapt to a modern society and it just goes to show our strength and resilience as people to still keep sharing culture but also being able to adapt to our current environment and that every non-Indigenous person attending the Festival has open ears to listen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a great journey as a designer to have been a part of this project and for me it has been great to have been able to lend my skill and my knowledge to something like the Innovation Festival around water which is something I have never had the honour of working with before.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad that my design has complimented the logo very well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sydney Water\u2019s Innovation Festival, to be held on 18-20 October, is about caring for country, customers, community and people.<\/p>\n Veronica Murphy, First Nation\u2019s Inclusion Specialist at Sydney Water said that it was important to Sydney Water to host a Festival that was inclusive and innovative.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n