Art in the Streets of Warmun

Warmun Arts Centre, Swinburne Centre for Design Innovation, Tom Civil, Warmun Council and Youth Justice Program, Gija Rangers, Ngalangangpum School and Purnululu Independent School

In February 2011, the Aboriginal township of Warmun in Western Australia was devastated by a flash flood that wiped out much of the community infrastructure and homes. The rebuild was a traumatic time for many residents who were required to move off their traditional lands into temporary accommodation.

Known locally as ‘Art in the Streets of Warmun’, this project evolved through deliberate and negotiated consultation with the Warmun Art Centre (Alana Hunt and Anna Crane), Gija Elders, Warmun Council and members of the Gija community, focused on how the township could negotiate the legacies of the flood and rebuild through the reclamation and activation of public spaces. Working with the local school and arts teacher Cimony Vanderpol, mechanisms to ensure the long-term management of the public art spaces have been incorporated into school curriculum focused on developing Gija student leadership capacity and education outcomes.

I believe that the decolonising mindset and our attempts to honour it through our collective actions – shifting power relations, promoting cultural revitalisation and development plans, provided a space for Gija people to shape and assert their own identities whilst realising forms of collective agency, encouraging reciprocity and respectful relations led to subsequent community-led collaborations. 

This project contributes to understandings of the complex, political and locally nuanced discussions around placemaking connected to place-related meanings in First Nations community development, as there was indeed no ‘place’ to be made here, but rather enacted, reinforced and made visible.