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degrees of impact

foreword

introduction

communities, universities & unisa creative: brief reflections

What does it mean to reflect on a legacy that is still unfolding?

This publication, Degrees of Impact, arrives at a moment of both closure and continuity. In 2026, UniSA Creative will become part of a newly formed Adelaide University, an ambitious institutional merger that brings with it renewed promise, complexity, and transformation. As one chapter prepares to close, another begins. And in that liminal space between what has been and what is becoming, we pause to ask: what have we built together? What stories do we carry forward? What remains?

This retrospective does not claim to tell the definitive history of UniSA Creative. Instead, it embraces the power of partial memory: the memories that live in people, in projects, and in the pathways forged across time. In shaping this book, we have chosen to centre conversation as a methodology and oral history as a lens, not to archive the past as a static record, but to trace its movement through relationships, reflections, and resonances.

In Conversation

Universities are often measured by their structures — buildings, programs, reputations — but their essence is held in conversation. The studio critique. The team debrief after an installation. The debate in the staffroom, or the late-night coffee in a shared courtyard. These are the invisible architectures that shape a creative education. They leave no single trace, but they shape everything that follows.

Throughout this project, it became clear that the most enduring impacts of UniSA Creative were not only formal or institutional: they were felt interpersonally, relationally, and often informally. The stories gathered for this publication emerged from open calls, one-on-one interviews, group workshops, and quiet personal reflection. They often began mid-sentence. They wandered. They returned. They revealed that memory, like creativity, is iterative, collaborative, and alive.

Degrees of Impact leans into this. Rather than enforce chronology or completeness, we have chosen to frame this publication around three interpretive threads: People, Projects, and Pathways. These themes are not separate chapters, but overlapping modes through which to think about influence, legacy, and change.

People: Culture as Community

At the centre of UniSA Creative is its people. Educators, students, professional staff, researchers, technicians, collaborators. They are all contributors to a culture that was never static but always evolving. The university has long been known for its openness to experimentation and its commitment to critical inquiry, but perhaps what made it truly distinct was the way it enabled a sense of belonging among people who didn’t always fit the mould.

In this section, contributors reflect on the people who shaped them, the moments of mentorship that redirected a trajectory, the informal networks of support that sustained risk-taking and creative failure. Some stories are celebratory; others are quiet, even bittersweet. Together, they reveal a culture built not only on curriculum, but on care.

These are not hagiographies. They are acknowledgements of effort, influence, and presence. They remind us that the impact of education is rarely immediate. It shows itself years later, in a design studio or cultural institution across the world, in the way someone leads, listens, or makes.

Projects: Creative Practice as Evidence

If people shape culture, then projects make that culture visible. UniSA Creative has been the site of extraordinary projects including experimental exhibitions, socially-engaged installations, research-led collaborations, cross-disciplinary provocations, and pedagogical innovations that have often preceded their time. From the studios of North Terrace to global platforms, the projects emerging from UniSA Creative have helped define the public face of South Australian creativity.

This section highlights a selection of key projects, but not as trophies, instead as indicators of thought. Many of them reflect the long-standing interest in collaboration across industry, government, and community. Others push the boundaries of form, material, or technology. Together, they chart the ethos of making as a way of thinking, and thinking as a way of making meaning.

In a time when creative industries are increasingly measured by economic output or audience reach, this publication returns attention to how things are made: the iterative, the speculative, the unresolved. It reminds us that the value of creative work lies as much in its ambition as in its articulation.

Pathways: Tracing the Afterlife

Perhaps the most powerful (and often intangible) impact of a creative education lies in the pathways it sets in motion. These are the careers launched, practices formed, studios opened, awards won, communities built. But they are also the detours, departures, and quiet shifts that happen when a student realises they can think differently, speak differently, or imagine otherwise.

In this section, we hear from alumni and staff who reflect on the long arc of creative influence. For some, UniSA Creative was a launchpad. For others, a site of recalibration. Many speak to the way UniSA Creative equipped them not just with skills, but with a mindset: to remain open, critical, and engaged in a changing world.

What emerges is a rich account of the “afterlife” of creative education. This is not a linear path, but a constellation of stories, scattered across industries, disciplines, and geographies. These are the living legacies that continue to carry the spirit of UniSA Creative forward, long after graduation.

Degrees of Impact … all in a name

The title of this publication plays on the idea of formal education, but also on the degrees through which creativity exerts its influence. Some impacts are immediate and measurable. Others ripple out gradually, through networks of memory, mentorship, and movement. All are valuable.

In collating Degrees of Impact, our aim has not been to finalise or fix a legacy, but to offer a living archive: one shaped by conversation, held by community, and animated by care. As this volume goes to print, the work of UniSA Creative continues through the people who made it, the projects it inspired, and the pathways it helped chart.

This book is for them.

Dr Nathan James Crane Editor, Degrees of Impact

Creative university departments are shaped not only by their curriculum, buildings, or branding, but by the people who move through them: those who teach, those who learn, those who question, challenge, sustain, and evolve their purpose. This collection of nine dialogues traces the fingerprints of such individuals across time and discipline, capturing the personal reflections, institutional memories, pedagogical experiments, and cultural collaborations that have defined UniSA Creative.

Each dialogue has been carefully selected and framed under one of three editorial pillars: People, Projects, and Pathways. These themes are not discrete categories but fluid lenses, ways of understanding the multiplicity of impacts that a creative unit can make. Through them, we see how individual agency becomes institutional legacy, how modest experiments become generational turning points, and how education, at its best, is never static. What follows is not a history in the traditional sense, nor a chronological mapping of milestones. Rather, it is a reflective collage of lived experience, a portrait in many voices, rich with insights, tensions, affections, and provocations. These are not just stories about UniSA Creative, but stories through which UniSA Creative can be known.

To open the publication, a short, reflective essay by Christine Garnaut situates UniSA Creative within the long continuum of educational, cultural, and community-building traditions that define universities as engines of connection and change. Tracing the evolution of academic communities from their earliest forms to the founding of the University of South Australia in 1991 and, later, the establishment of UniSA Creative in 2020, Garnaut highlights the institution’s enduring commitment to people, practice, and purpose. Her reflection positions UniSA Creative as both a product of its lineage, from the South Australian School of Art and the South Australian Institute of Technology to today’s expansive creative disciplines, and a forward-looking collective that thrives on collaboration, responsiveness, and engagement with the world beyond the university. By framing the creative academic community as a living network of relationships, rooted in history yet dynamically evolving, Garnaut underscores how UniSA Creative continues the university’s founding ambition: to educate professionals, generate new knowledge, and make a meaningful difference to the communities it serves.

People

In an evocative, intergenerational exchange between Kay Lawrence and Veronika Kelly, which traces the legacies embedded in UniSA’s visual art programs, Lawrence reflects on her role in championing textiles as a legitimate art form, her long-standing commitment to social justice, and the importance of embedding critical theory within practice. Kelly, as both academic and alum, brings a sense of lived inheritance, how Lawrence’s philosophies and provocations continue to resonate in her own journey. The dialogue is not nostalgic but powerfully alive, reminding us that people carry the DNA of universities more vividly than any archive.

Also, in a richly layered discussion between Julie Nichols and Cut Dewi, we encounter an exchange that unfolds as both personal reflection and professional unpacking. Nichols’ deep institutional memory meets Dewi’s external lens as an experienced researcher, resulting in a reflective inquiry,

the emotional and cultural dimensions of fieldwork. This conversation lives in the realm of people, not just in the biographical sense, but in the relational space where practice and identity meet.

The final conversation of this section between Mary Knights and Anna Zagala revisits a formative decade in South Australia’s contemporary art history, tracing the evolution of the SASA Gallery into a nationally recognised site of experimentation, scholarship, and curatorial innovation. Reflecting on her tenure as curator, Knights offers a vivid portrait of an era defined by creative risk-taking, collaboration, and intellectual rigour, where exhibitions functioned as both artistic laboratories and research outputs. Through their recollections, a picture emerges of a community alive with possibility: artists, academics, and students working in concert to produce work that was daring, research-led, and deeply connected to national dialogues in art and design. The discussion foregrounds SASA’s distinctive contribution to the cultural fabric of UniSA and Adelaide, capturing the energy of a moment when institutional support, artistic ambition, and academic inquiry came together to shape a lasting legacy.

Projects

If there was ever a case study in sustained, meaningful collaboration between industry and education, it is the Channel 44 partnership explored in the dialogue between Catherine Campbell and Lauren Hillman. Over 640 episodes of Our Time were produced by UniSA students under humble conditions, generating not only television content but skills, confidence, and real-world readiness. Hillman’s reflections from the community broadcasting side and Campbell’s insights as an academic reveal the textured complexity of such a long-term partnership, its informal origins, formalisation, and cultural ripple effects. This is not a story of short-term wins, but of slow, steady impact: a creative project as community practice. Likewise, the dialogue between Julie Nichols and Travis Thomas opens a vital window into the evolving intersections of design, ecology, and Indigenous knowledge within architectural research. Their dialogue explores the emerging field of pyro-vernacular design, a framework grounded in the reciprocal relationship between fire, Country, and dwelling. For Thomas, fire is not an act of destruction but a sustained cultural dialogue: a method of caring for Country, regenerating species, and shaping liveable environments through deep ecological understanding. Nichols situates this knowledge within contemporary architectural discourse, asking how such traditional practices might be documented, translated, and reimagined within modern design education and practice.

Finally, in a conversation marked by speculation and shared interest, David Morris and Joti Weijer-Coghlan explore the provocations that shape their practices across design and building. What emerges is not just a celebration of experimentation, but a quiet insistence on how institutions must create space for risk, particularly in collaborative, cross-disciplinary settings. Their dialogue foregrounds the atmospheric, the durational, and the improvisational. As such, it sits powerfully within the projects theme, illuminating how forms of making that resist quantification are nevertheless central to the evolving identity of UniSA Creative.

Pathways

In their retrospective conversation, Jane Andrew and Benjamin Altieri trace the life of Match Studio, from an experimental feasibility study to a dynamic, cross-disciplinary platform for design-led impact. Andrew reflects on its origins in sustainable creative practice and policy research, while Altieri, once a student and now an academic, offers a generational perspective on how Match shaped his career. Together they chart a legacy of over 100 projects, from aged care to mental health, prisons to pandemic resilience, revealing a philosophy grounded not in outputs, but in ethos: collaboration, care, and transformation. What emerges is not simply a story of one studio, but a testament to the enduring value of relational learning and people-first pedagogies.

In this candid exchange, Damian Madigan and futurist Stephen Yarwood reflect on the evolving relationship between civic leadership, research, and the future of cities. Their conversation drifts between memory and method, touching on formative critiques, the influence of mentors, and the cultural climate of architectural thinking today. Through their shared experiences, they trace a quiet but profound lineage, one that privileges rigour, social responsibility, and a belief that architectural thinking must always be situated in its human and cultural context. This is a conversation about the transmission of values across generations, and the enduring relevance of universities in an evolving world.

Finally, the dialogue between Peter Walker and Brian Parkes offers a panoramic view of UniSA Creative’s relationship with JamFactory. Walker reflects on key collaborations, and the philosophical underpinnings of the partnership. Parkes, as an external but deeply embedded cultural leader, brings a perspective that is both appreciative and reflective, especially regarding the alignment between education and industry. This is a dialogue concerned with legacy and future-making, a meditation on what kind of institutions we are building, and for whom. It asks us to think not just about where we’ve come from, but what kind of conditions we are setting up for the next generation of creative leaders.

A Living Archive

Taken together, these nine dialogues form a small, but living archive. They remind us that the work of education is not simply to deliver knowledge, but to shape the atmospheres, questions, and conditions through which creativity can thrive.

These stories also challenge any attempt to fix a singular narrative about what UniSA Creative is or has been. Instead, they offer a chorus of perspectives, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant, but always generative. They reflect a university in motion, animated by people who care deeply about their disciplines, their students, and the world they’re designing for.

As readers, alumni, students, staff, or simply curious observers, we are invited not only to witness these dialogues but to enter into them, to ask our own questions, to locate our own stories of impact, and to see ourselves as part of an unfolding history.

In this spirit, Degrees of Impact is not a closing chapter. It is an opening…

but to shape atmospheres, questions, and conditions through which creativity can thrive.

the work of education is not simply to deliver knowledge, shape the atmospheres,andthrough

creativity

Communities, Universities & UniSA Creative: Brief Reflections

Christine Garnaut

Communities have people at their heart. They are people-driven and people-centred and they enable their members to develop and build relationships within and external to their group. Communities vary considerably in their origin, purpose, composition, modus operandi and achievements, as well as in the nature, scope and extent of their impact. While some communities remain static in their focus and set-up, others grow and change as they adjust to ‘the times’ and evolve in response to internal and external circumstances and influences. Variations aside, arguably, a community’s constituents share an innate ambition — to make a difference in their everyday environments and/or in their idiosyncratic spheres of influence.

Universities constitute a distinctive community within Australia’s higher education sector. Following the foundation of the University of Sydney in 1850, and prior to World War 1, five more universities were established in Australia. All were in capital cities. Essentially, the first tranche of higher education entities was considered ‘inward-looking and set apart from the everyday life of the wider community’.1 Today, vastly expanded in number, Australia’s universities are external-facing institutions recognised for making a difference in the daily lives of citizens through their teaching, research, consultancy and public-oriented activities. Significantly, too, they contribute to a global higher education enterprise with a lineage dating to 1088 when the University of Bologna was founded.

1. Christine Garnaut and Susan Holden, ‘Universities in Australia: Idea and Realpolitik’ in Andrew Saniga and Robert Freestone (eds), Campus: Building Modern Australian Universities, UWA Press, Crawley, 2023: 41.

a community’s constituents share an innate ambition — to make a difference in their everyday environments and/or in their idiosyncratic spheres of influence.

Smaller, specialised academic communities exist within each university. Originally such groups were discipline focused. However, like their parent institutions, over time, their composition, outlook and impact have broadened due to a range of scholarly, as well as internal pragmatic factors and external local, national and international influences. Launched in 2020, UniSA Creative is a specialised academic community. Although formalised relatively recently as an academic unit, it is a community that has evolved within the developing structure of its parent institution. It has roots in UniSA’s previous organisational framework of schools, faculties and divisions. Its roots extend, too, to the university’s antecedent institutions — the South Australian School of Art (now incorporated in UniSA Creative), the South Australian School of Mines and Industries, the South Australian Institute of Technology (SAIT) and the South Australian College of Advanced Education (SACAE).

The University of South Australia was inaugurated from 1 January 1991 following the amalgamation of the SAIT and the SACAE under the federal Hawke Labor Government’s Unified National System (UNS) (1988–96). UniSA’s foundational maxim was ‘Educating Professionals, Creating and Applying Knowledge, Engaging our Communities’. The maxim underscored not only the institution’s mission in relation to professional education and the creation and application of new knowledge but also its community focus and intent to connect with relevant professional, industry and academic communities, as well as with other groups in the community at large. Although the maxim for a fresh new institution, it was one that acknowledged the people, projects and pathways of its past.

Almost three decades after UniSA’s launch, UniSA Creative brought the university’s creative focused disciplines together into one all-embracing unit comprising: art, architecture, planning, design, journalism, communication and media, film, television, visual effects and the creative industries. Until then, under the university’s previous organisational structures, the disciplines had been assigned in smaller groupings; several of the disciplines had been partners in some of them. While the university encouraged cross-institutional collaboration from its outset, assembling its creative disciplines as a single entity opened up opportunities for fresh teaching and research-related internal and external dialogues, collaborations and partnerships. And, concurrently, existing connections could be continued or revitalised. UniSA Creative has built an authoritative, dynamic and responsive teaching, research education, research and community engagement environment. It is one that encourages, fosters, learns from and celebrates its internal and external connections and partners. The individual and collective contributions of all of the people associated with the unit’s teaching, research and higher degree by research programs and projects make for a rich and enriching experience for students and staff alike. Such an experience has multiple potential impacts not only on personal learning and development but also on how knowledge is imparted, acquired, absorbed, processed, shared more widely and applied in scholarly and practice-oriented environments, as well as community settings. In one way or another, the community that is UniSA Creative, and the antecedent communities that contributed to its shaping, make, and have made, a difference.

Christine Garnaut is an historian and Adjunct Associate Research Professor in Planning and Architectural History in UniSA Creative. Prior to retiring she held several research and research education leadership roles in the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design, the School of Art, Architecture and Design and the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences. She was the inaugural director of the Architecture Museum (2005-20).

kay lawrence

veronika kelly

Associate Professor Veronika Kelly and Emeritus Professor Kay Lawrence discuss their backgrounds in art and design education, highlighting their professional practices and roles within evolving university structures. They emphasise the integration of practice and research, particularly in visual arts and design. Both reflect on the importance of materiality, making, and conceptual thinking in creative disciplines, noting important shifts towards inclusivity and decolonising art and design education by incorporating diverse cultural perspectives. They underscore the significance of mentoring, fostering student confidence, and collaborative learning. Looking ahead, they advocate for the continued value of hands-on making and curiosity in art and design education alongside technological advances notably AI. Their conversation reveals a commitment to nurturing diverse voices and sustaining the human element in creative practices.

veronika kelly

Kay, I was reflecting on when I first met you. A lecturing role in design was advertised at the University of South Australia. You chaired the interview panel as then Head of School of the South Australian School of Art. Here we are two decades later. And now, we’re launching the new Adelaide University, and in fact, I started yesterday in the role of Dean-Elect of the new School of Art and Design.

kay lawrence

I remember, you had a professional practice as a designer before your academic career.

I did. I worked in broadcast television for a decade as a graphic designer mainly motion graphics and animation with the ABC, and then ran a business for a while. I began tutoring design about two years after I graduated, and remember really enjoying the opportunity to help guide others in exploring their ideas, and to reflect on my own design education and practice.

Kay, I know your professional practice has been significant over many years. As an avid sewer, I knew of your work in textiles before meeting you.

Well, I taught at predecessor institutions for UniSA, but I also freelanced for a decade.

I think the combination of teaching and professional practice shaped my approach to visual art education and scholarship. I came to the university at the time the research degrees program was developing. Working with John Barbour to set that up really focused my practice on research.

There hadn’t been many opportunities before that for artists in South Australia to develop a research-based practice.

Yes, that’s true. I think that one of your most distinctive contributions has been your ability to articulate your practice as research.

And you and John did a lot in terms of leading creative practice research for UniSA and for the School at the time.

Well, it was a wonderful opportunity, and it enabled me to develop a writing practice as well as my visual art practice.

Having both has been incredibly important because writing has clarified my understanding of the factors that drive artmaking. This is something I brought to my teaching getting students to be able to articulate and understand the meanings that underpin their work, as well as make it.

While intuition is integral to artmaking, being able to harness and articulate the ideas that drive practice has been a focus of my university teaching career.

When you talk about research, I think of the integration of practice, research and scholarship.

Over time, and in particular through my PhD, I grew to be much more interested in the way that historically, design has been shaped by some voices and structures where others have been left out.

And it was through connections with artists and other design educators, and working with Dr Kathleen Connellan as my PhD supervisor, that I became increasingly interested in thinking about design through what was absent.

Can you articulate that?

Well, much of design’s history has been shaped by eurocentric structures that tend to spotlight certain individuals so in many ways, it’s a story marked by silent voices.

As one response to that, a colleague and I are working on a monograph that explores the experiences of designers who identify as women and live and work in different parts of the world. Our aim is to bring their voices, stories, and contexts to the forefront.

At the same time, we’re very aware of the privilege we hold both as authors and as women in design and how that shapes the perspectives we bring to this work.

Now, of course there are important shifts in design practice and research internationally approaches that embrace pluriversality and ideas of design justice, on decolonising design different ways of knowing in relation to design.

There are parallel silences in the visual arts, in art practice and in education, especially in relation to women’s voices.

But over the last 50 years, there’s been more focus on women in the creative arts and opportunities for their work to be seen and the western-centric focus of the visual arts has opened up to the art practices of our region and Indigenous practices.

These are two areas I’ve been interested in relative to my own practice, especially in relation to textiles, which is viewed as women’s work and often disregarded because of that.

Something I’ve been interested in doing is focusing attention on the full breadth and creativity of both Indigenous textiles and Asian-based textiles, and understanding the European history of textiles practice in Australia.

It’s interesting that idea of textiles being women’s work. At the Bauhaus, Anni Albers was being steered towards textiles to study because other workshops weren’t open to women…

It’s a pervasive connection.

Because of its associations with women and craft, textiles were taken less seriously in the visual arts until second-wave feminism challenged the validity of such hierarchies. The development of cross disciplinary art practice during the last 30 years means more artists feel comfortable using a wide range of processes in their practice, including textiles; they use the medium best suited to the expression of their ideas. There’s been another huge shift since I started teaching at the university in 1990 in relation to the time students can spend in the studio. Face-to-face time has reduced almost by two-thirds, over that time which has implications for hand-making practices, especially time consuming practices like textiles.

That’s been a loss. It might be different in design, but with students spending more time earning a living as well as going to university, there’s less time for them to work collaboratively in the studio and learn from their peers.

I was thinking about it in terms of external drivers. We’ve seen in recent decades a continually changing relationship between higher education institutions and governments.

Our university is publicly funded, so we have a clear responsibility and accountability to that. Yet structural drivers contribute to perceptions of the value of certain fields of study such as where the jobs are.

Perceptions of our fields have always been a challenge, I think and an opportunity.

Oh, absolutely.

For example, we see design embraced internationally across diverse industries and organisations where design thinking and co-design signal and reflect design as a necessary means of approaching complexity and uncertainty.

So, it’s not only about thinking, as you said before, it is the making as well any form of co-design or design thinking includes a material activity. In design studio education, making is central to peer learning and collaboration, in that we all look at the work at what is being made together.

I think that’s been so important in the visual arts.

It’s through collegial and collaborative relationships that artists really develop. That does still happen in the university, but it also happens outside it. Developing relationships between academia and practices outside is important.

That was something I was very conscious about developing through my own teaching enabling students to connect their learning to communities and the profession outside the university.

Now that certain craft practices like textiles and ceramics are not taught in some universities anymore, its increasingly important that they are available online and in the community.

Oh, absolutely relationships between the academy and profession are vital.

It is also a different time in higher education the online learning environment provides ease of access to a range of communities, including practitioners, scholars and organisations globally. That wasn’t how information could be shared or accessed when we studied.

And of course AI gives us access to an extensive range of material that both supports and challenges what creative practice is, or could be, about. But the role and impact of AI on, and in, our disciplines continues to evolve.

At the same time, don’t we still need to touch things?

I think there’s a human need to make things. I think that’s why people love gardening and cooking, making things with your hands, working with the materials of the world fulfils a fundamental human need.

This can be nurtured outside the institutions as well as in. But one thing the university has really fostered in the visual arts is a focus on conceptual and critical thinking.

When I went to art school in 1960s, you just made things, you never thought about what they might mean.

And it’s something that, over my career, I’ve become really interested in How is meaning communicated through art?

How does this occur through practice? Is it a conscious process? Is it intuitive? The idea of working with the materials of the world to make, to communicate and express ideas.

“Working with the materials of the world” is such a lovely way of saying that, Kay.

Making is a give and take between an artist and their materials. It’s not that you are in control all the time, but you work with materials to shape things.

This reciprocal relationship between maker and material has had a profound influence on my thinking about making practices.

Considering its history, the South Australian School of Art has a longstanding focus on materiality. South Australia has been known for its range of materially-based practices, as well as conceptual work.

That’s what I hope will continue at the new institution that both can be fostered together.

The conceptual and the making.

I’m wondering what we think are the enduring legacies of our contributions to art and design education.

Well, Veronika, why don’t you start? But I did want to reiterate the importance of making and writing.

Yes. And writing as not separate, it’s very much part of it. In fact, these days I probably write more than make, really, and I love it.

Well, they’re both are just different facets of scholarship, aren’t they?

They are, they are. So, what do you think are the enduring legacies of your contributions to art education?

Well, mine would relate to the development of textiles practice in South Australia, both in the community and through art education, and especially through the research degrees program. It was in that context that I had the wonderful opportunity to work with some exceptional artists who were undertaking PhDs and deepening their practice. They have had a huge influence on contemporary art practice in the 2020s. So, that’s one thing I’ve been really pleased to have been involved with.

I have also played a role in engaging students with First Nations textile practice, since the 1990s, communicating their importance, not just to First Nations people, but to the wider Australian community as well. It’s really heartening to see how they have flourished and have grown in importance in galleries and institutions.

Absolutely.

So, enduring legacies … I feel deeply privileged for the career I’ve had in design education, and the richness of working with students over many years undergraduate, postgraduate and PhDs.

I mean, a creative education is transformative. What greater gift is there than a profession where you’re working with people to support and nurture their ideas? To explore together what they’re thinking about, their intentions, how they’re going to approach an issue or a situation in the best way possible for those involved and what “the best way” might mean. I think that as part of that I have had a positive impact on design education and the success of students and in turn design practice over the years.

To be in a studio learning environment and share in the creative expressions of others is just marvellous.

Absolutely.

My approach is to meet people where they’re at. In the first session, I’d start by asking students about their ambitions, expectations and challenges, what they hope to achieve, and explore that territory before diving into any design project. It sets the scene for discovering what is important to students in their learning, establishing ways of working together, and for building student confidence.

Because when you help a student build confidence, they develop a capacity and a greater sense of freedom to explore their ideas more fully and share them openly.

Absolutely.

That’s always been core to how I’ve approached textiles education, to help a student develop their own language. And, also, to understand what they really want to say. Sometimes they might feel anxious, or it doesn’t fit, the current style. Being open and non-judgmental is important but so is helping students develop a critical understanding of what they’re trying to say.

Yes, so important. Taking the time to reflect and not close it off. Sometimes it doesn’t happen immediately.

Yes, being open is crucial as a teacher, but also as a student and a participant, to be open to the way other people think and what their views are.

vk So true.

Imagining the future of art and design education 20 years from now, I really hope the value of making things by hand continues, because I think it is fundamental to humankind.

And, as you said before, I think that desire to make is core to who we are. The craft of art and design, the importance of exploration through materials.

A material world, absolutely.

And I think fostering curiosity and scepticism are both so important, and that’s what universities do.

vk I agree.

One thing the university offered me was a way to deeply understand the history and the theory of my own discipline. And that is fostered within research. I imagine that will continue. But we don’t want to lose sight of the particularities of our discipline areas.

When you talk about embracing the theory of your discipline, I also think of how in practice, when working with colleagues, with students, and the wider community, we’re really working with and learning from the diverse knowledges that individuals bring.

I think what you’re saying is we’re shaped by our own cultures, in a particular way of thinking and understanding.

And it’s only when you work closely with people from other cultural backgrounds that you realise how profoundly your thinking has been shaped by the context in which you live and work.

I think that’s one of the most valuable aspects of a collaborative practice.

julie nichols cut dewi

In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Julie Nichols and Professor Cut Dewi reflect on nearly a decade of collaboration between the University of South Australia and Universitas Syiah Kuala in Banda Aceh. Their discussion traces the evolution of the VERNADOC project from its origins in documenting vernacular architecture to its deeper exploration of spirituality, gender, and cultural meaning in Acehnese design traditions. Together, they consider how faith, ritual, and environment shape spatial practices, and how younger generations are reinterpreting heritage through new media like 3D modelling and TikTok. What emerges is a portrait of living tradition — where documentation, adaptation, and digital creativity ensure that vernacular knowledge continues to evolve without losing its soul.

julie nichols

My two areas of research now are the First Nations emphasis around in the Australian context designing buildings in relation to key knowledges and relationship with environment and what is known as Country, with a capital C. I would say, in the Indonesian context, our work is still in a First Nations capacity because all the communities we go into and document and undertake the architectural ethnographic methods are also very place-based and influenced by environment. I think what is interesting in the vernacular traditions are the spiritual and religious connections that determine the way the built environment is organised in different villages and across ethnic groups. So, my first question is focused on spirituality and place, and I wanted to ask you how do religious or spiritual practices influence the way homes, communal spaces, or landscapes are designed and used in your community? And if we want to say your community, shall we say, in and around Banda Aceh?

cut dewi

I think spirituality and place are intertwined in Aceh as we cannot see separation between the two. I think one aspect we can see in Aceh regarding home, there’s gendered space, separation between male and female inside the house. And if you talk about Aceh, it can be Aceh, Gayo, and other ethnic groups. In Acehnese especially when I say Acehnese it means ethnic Acehnese not the whole province. So, Acehnese house has gendered space between male and female, which doesn’t mean female in the back of the house, that female doesn’t have access or is low hierarchy, it’s only the privacy. This separation is so strongly associated with Islam. And the house orientation as well. That’s also facing Qibla, the direction of Mecca, so that people easily pray at home.

So, those are key influences of religion for houses, while for public buildings like the Islamic Meunasah [an Islamic educational building], the mosque, only males can live in the Meunasah. Males in their adolescence lived there in the past. But during conflict, I think around the ‘80s, the role of the Meunasah as a place for education of adolescent, especially male adolescents, has gradually gone because a lot of military operation.

And then in the landscape we can also see the mosque become central. Every eight villages has one congressional mosque where they perform the Friday prayer. Then the presence of public bath in the Meunasah is still playing a role. When we did fieldwork, we still can see women and some community members come to the Meunasah for taking water from the well, or for showering, and sometimes they bring in clothes for washing. So, we can see that’s part of how religion influence the community.

What other roles do the Meunasahes fulfill now that its former use for Islamic scholarship has changed?

In the past, beside religious education, they also learn about a skill for example, one of our interviewees spent his time in the Meunasah when he was young, and he said they did a bit of cooking together what’s it called in English? They call it melemak in our language it means you bring a bit of this and that and you cook together, and then preparing meal together. And then they also share job opportunities. Also, the Meunasah functioned in the past as village governance, where the head of the village had an office there.

Meunasah only mainly functions for praying place and also for some meeting activities or communal activities that need to take place inside. Like, for example, Posyandu, which is kind of like a village public health service done monthly for elderly and toddlers. They have vitamins injection or shot and then they also give nutritionist food.

So, Meunasah have adapted over time to different functions based on community need.

Yeah. But the sense of what remains there, the sense of commonality.

If we go now into the documentation and representation of these different buildings in the Acehnese context when documenting religious or sacred spaces, what aspects should be emphasised to respect their cultural meaning and architectural qualities?

When we document religious prayers, we are not allowed to do any activities. When I’m about to pray, we always have to stop and remove our equipment so that gives some space for people who want to perform praying. That’s an important thing to do if we are documenting sacred space. Secondly, some Acehnese community still believe about sacred objects like the cane used by imam in the past, as his privilege. Only imam can hold that stick during his talk. So that’s why not everyone can grab that stick and document that, we need to ask permission and then we need to have a good intention that’s what the marbot, the mosque guide, who notifies us you need to clean your heart before touching that. We have to respect what they believe. We cannot go in. We cannot take a picture. But we always ask if there is another way to document that. If they say, okay you can sketch instead of taking picture, we sketch. And also, the

Mihrab Nabawi mosque women can climb the mihrab if we don’t have our periods, you know? So that’s a kind of honesty and intention as well.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, we try not to argue and just listen and respect what they are saying. One of the key aspects in documenting is respecting the meanings people attach to such objects.

So, if we’re talking about our collaborative futures in your view, how can architectural students and researchers respectfully contribute to sustaining vernacular architecture and religiously significant places and practices in their design projects?

Because most of our research assistants are young and very progressive and they come with very creative minds, they said like oh Meunasah has a lot of ornamentation, and then this kind of ornamentation we can, for example, reproduce with the new not new use but transformation. And they believe that every generation has to have their own footprint.

To have an adaptation of the idea?

Yes, adaptation of the idea. In that way, I think we’re sustaining the vernacular knowledge. We take our students to vernacular architecture for them to understand the building. Some students have their own community called ‘photography heritage’ and then others call themselves ‘vernacular architecture group’, something like that. I can see initiative from my students and other young generations on conserving this knowledge, but they do that in their way. For example, photography and the vernacular architecture students do that through making a 3D model they do simple drawings and then they have free software to just generate, not high-quality 3D model but the simple one.

And they also use other forms of social media like TikTok to kind of make it cool.

Yeah, disseminate and promote what they do and also invite others. I’m very proud of them. I say you disseminate in your way for young generation to spread this spirit.

It always amazes me that the student I met when I presented to your class about the VERNADOC method said how she was the daughter of one of the lecturers, and when she was still in high school we were doing a project in Aceh, she was there with her father and it really inspired her to join the class. I was so happy.

Yeah, and then those students who join our VERNADOC, some of them now have their own community, Julie.

Oh, that’s so exciting. I think that’s so crucial to this work, that the younger generation take it in the direction they want to take it in because it’s for them, ultimately.

Yeah. One of my students came to me and said, I want to do research on vernacular architecture. I said, oh my God, that’s cool. What are you doing? You know, in Nias, he said, one of traditional houses is about to be fully gone because of an agreement of three religions not to use some symbols of animism in the house. I want to reconstruct the house. How are you going to do that? That’s why I come to you to discuss how to do that, he said. And then I said, you can do like collective memory, you can interview all people and then you can ask them to draw and compare to others existing archive. And then finally he reconstructed the house making the 3D model and he won a prize for his research.

Yeah, because Nias was really affected by the tsunami and there was a lot of loss of housing.

You’re right, yeah, and then my student did the research.

Oh that’s so exciting. Okay, these are my linking questions between the First Nations Australian experience and the First Nations Indonesian experience. Specifically, we’ve talked about knowledge systems and place in both your community and others knowledge of place and culture, whether through spirituality or sociocultural practices or everyday building guides. So, how do these knowledge systems shape design in ways that differ from, or speak back to, Western architectural approaches? Where’s the shift in it?

What made the difference?

Yes, how is it done differently to the Western systems of building and making. cd

I think the spirit is the key difference between here and in the West. We know after enlightenment and revolution, in our society this spirit remains even in the modernity. For example, if we talk only about tradition the Acehnese house, my PhD student did research on kitchens. She came with an idea to research about kitchens in Aceh, including the modern kitchen, and she found that amongst 100 or so designs the tradition remained. For example, Acehnese have two kitchens, minimum even some of them have three. So, one for basic cooking. Then the second one for cooking nasi goreng, something like that. The third one, that’s for wanting to cook complex Acehnese food influenced by a recipe. So, culinary recipe and method influence the kitchen. In that intangible way, the kitchen in a modern Acehnese house is different from the Western one. That’s something we cannot see at that glance but actually that inspired in the design. I would say religion and culture still inside modernity.

In South Asia we live more communally, even though now in Aceh, based on our research, we are in the transition between extended family and nuclear family. We encounter modernity but we also celebrate our communal life, that’s why some Acehnese tend to make their house adaptable if they don’t need big space they can close the house if they need. So that’s how culture and religion is behind the modernity, I would say.

This final question bridges or extends that thinking. The transmission and adaptation of ideas and vernacular practices in the Australian context with First Nations people is rooted in spiritual traditions, fire, stewardship, and relationship to Country. And as you’ve said, these sociocultural conditions and religious traditions in the Acehnese context often evolve while still holding that deep cultural meaning, even though modernity hasn’t displaced cultural meaning. So, in terms of how these practices are passed on and adapted or renewed for future generations, do you think design and documentation of past vernacular traditions assist that adaptation process if we record them? cd

Quite a tough question.

Well, let’s think about the context we were both in during July, where we were looking at documenting mosques and houses. Do you think recording those buildings is a way of passing on the cultural knowledge and cultural meanings for future generations? Or do you think it’s more likely they’re going to engage with other forms of media that are more relevant to them?

Yeah, I cannot remember precisely the argumentation.

Because I’m thinking about the TikTok thing with the students. Really, they were upset with me well, not upset, but they were disappointed that I didn’t want to do the TikTok. But I didn’t understand what was involved in it, not knowing much about TikTok. So, they’re transmitting this information about the building, about the occupancy of the space, about the researching of the space, and the way we were documenting it in a completely different format and storytelling than we were intending.

I guess my question then is is that still holding the cultural meaning in that method, of the younger people TikTok-ing? Does that still hold the cultural meaning of our VERNADOC methods of documentation?

Yeah, I think they still want to keep the tradition alive. But they also want to see that [type of building] still there in the landscape, but in different form, like a museum, for example. The young generation want to see that, but don’t ask them to live there, you know?

That’s what I’m thinking about this TikTok thing what they’re doing is a cultural practice, they’re recording their way of seeing the culture through their lens. They’re interpreting it with the media. I think that’s interesting because we always, you and I as true committed heritage advocates, worry that this knowledge will be lost. But actually, if we get the younger generation interested in this in whatever way they embrace it, this is really what’s most important.

Yeah, I agree. For example, my student is very keen to do Virtual Reality (VR), like 360° cameras. One day my students submitted the 360° video of the Meunasah , there were some birds singing and then bicycle pedaling sound, and I said where does the sound come from? I added that, she said, I wanted to bring this Meunasah to its time. So funny. And then I said, not VR, you need to record as it is.

Yeah. I mean, this is interesting because it’s that way of knowledge extension but also sharing and bridging different eras of thinking. If people aren’t interested in it in whatever way, it’s not going to be retained.

After this meeting I’ll send you the Instagram page of two of my students!

That would be great.

I want you to see how creatively they interpret what is very academic.

They’re turning vernacular architecture into pop culture.

Exactly! That’s what I’m saying.

I think we need to write about this after our project.

This is what I’m thinking. Yeah, so okay actually three groups of my student community one is more like a historical artist presenting or interpreting the historical facts into animation. The other one encourage visits to vernacular architecture and then make a 3D recording in their own way with a drone. Because for them, using a drone is cool. And they’re very bored when seeing me with pencil. The third one, who left, loved taking heritage buildings photos. So yeah, that can become a paper how the youth engage with heritage.

Okay, that’s our next approach. Thank you very much for your insight into vernacular in the Indonesian context. We’re already brainstorming our next project!

mary knights anna zagala

Between 2005 and 2015, the South Australian School of Art Gallery (SASA) emerged as a defining force in Adelaide’s contemporary art landscape, a site where experimentation, research, and collaboration converged. Under the curatorship of Mary Knights, the gallery became a dynamic laboratory for creative practice, nurturing new ideas through a program that brought together exhibition-making with scholarly inquiry, critical writing, and national partnerships. Rooted within UniSA’s vibrant art school and the cultural ecology of the City West precinct, SASA bridged academia and industry, transforming the gallery into a national platform for artists, designers, and researchers alike. This decade, as Mary and current curator Anna Zagala reflect, represented a rare alignment of opportunity, vision, and community, a period of profound creative energy that not only shaped a generation of practitioners but left an enduring mark on South Australia’s artistic and curatorial identity.

anna zagala

Hi Mary. What I’m struck by just doing the research in preparation for today, actually, is not just what a creative time it was, but how formative too. You developed and created something extremely special from the ground up. I’d just love to hear from you how you did that and how you reflect on it now.

mary knights

Absolutely. In 2005 I was invited by Kay Lawrence to work at the South Australian School of Art (SASA) as Director of the SASA Gallery at the University of South Australia. At that time the art school was incredibly vibrant. The disciplines taught there ranged from painting and drawing to art history, textiles, design, ceramics and sculpture. There were a lot of emerging and established contemporary artists and art students working in the studios and everyone was very passionate and committed. It was a real joy to work in that environment.

When I first started, the Kaurna building on Hindley Street had only been occupied by the art school for a year. To develop the new exhibition program for the SASA Gallery I worked closely with an Advisory Committee, initially chaired by Kay, and we scoped other Australian art school galleries and contemporary art spaces in Adelaide and beyond to develop the gallery vision, selection criteria and funding model.

One particularly inspiring gallery was the Plimsoll Gallery at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania (UTAS). The Tasmanian School of Art was one of the first art schools in Australia to offer post-graduate research programs and that commitment to research, excellence and experimentation informed the Plimsoll Gallery’s contemporary art exhibition and publication programs.

The vision that we developed for the SASA Gallery was to support a program of research-led, curated exhibitions that focused on innovation, experimentation and performance. With the support of the Division of Education, Art and Social Sciences, the SASA Gallery was positioned to be a leading contemporary art space and an active site of teaching and learning. We aimed to showcase the work of emerging and established South Australian artists, designers, writers and curators in a national and international context.

So one of the things that I’m really struck by is a kind of, well, a very brilliant approach to thinking through the component parts of what makes for a really compelling and vibrant and robust program. And so the way in which you drew together exhibitions, publications and this external scholars program.

The SASA Gallery’s External Scholars program involved inviting an eminent curator, critic, academic or artist to explore ideas and share their expertise with the curator of each exhibition, write an essay which was published in the exhibition catalogue, and speak at the exhibition opening. Through this program a wide range of guest scholars visited Adelaide and engaged with South Australian curators, artists and art students. It was very successful and many exceptional arts professionals participated including David Cross, Brenda Croft, Edward Colless, Elspeth Pitt, Colin Rhodes, Nikos Papastergiadis, Dianna Wood Conroy, Anne Brennan, Séan Kelly, Ian McLean, Ross Gibson, Adrian Martin and Domenico de Clario, to name a few.

az I think that there’s just something about identifying each of those elements, which is the input of external experts, thinkers, bringing fresh blood to Adelaide and maybe also the way that you commissioned texts as well. So there’s a sense that the writing deepens and enriches what’s happening on the gallery floor already and that there’s also a record of those projects that endures.

Yes, the SASA Gallery’s Publication and External Scholars Programs ran for ten years. In that time we published over 60 catalogues, one alongside almost every exhibition. They ranged in length from six to 36 pages and, as they were designed in-house and funded, we were able to give them to art students for free. They were also accessible on-line.

One of the intentions of the External Scholars Program was to strengthen national networks and facilitate a lively exchange of ideas between South Australian curators, emerging and established artists and scholars from other parts of Australia.

I was also struck by just looking at the program, what strong partnerships you brokered with institutions, festivals outside of UniSA that you’re always thinking about something outside the four walls of the university and whether it was the Adelaide Festival, just drawing on institutions such as, the South Australian Museum with Philip Jones. Always finding external partners that somehow would bring a different a flavour to what you were doing.

One of the great strengths about the location of the SASA Gallery was that, as well as being in the very heart of the art school, it was in the centre of the City West University precinct. It was very close to a wide range of art galleries, museums and cultural organisations including the Samstag Museum, the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF), the Jam Factory, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the South Australian Museum and the Adelaide Festival Centre.

This created a terrific opportunity for artistic collaborations and institutional partnerships that extended audience reach and resources. The example you mentioned was an exhibition of sculpture and installation by Sue Kneebone titled ‘Naturally Disturbed’ in which she explored cultural and environmental issues relating to settler society. We invited Philip Jones, Senior Curator at the South Australian Museum to be the external scholar. In addition to Philip’s scholarly contribution, the SA museum supported the exhibition by lending cultural artefacts for the exhibition.

Also, as Adelaide is a festival city, the SASA Gallery frequently partnered with the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, the Fringe Festival, SALA, Feast and the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Tarnanthi Festival. The festivals were a marvelous opportunity to celebrate the exceptional work of South Australian artists and have their work seen by interstate audiences.

Heartlines is an example of an exhibition developed alongside the 2010 Adelaide Festival of Art specifically to celebrate and showcase the work of artists working at SASA. It was a 24-hour exhibition staged in the SASA Gallery, Fenn Place, and the alleys around City West and included performance, ephemeral sculptural and video installation. 38 artists, all SASA staff and post-graduate students, playfully explored matters of the heart, transient emotions, things hidden and restrained, the beautiful and the terrible.

Yeah, I love how you’re saying that while, you know, SASA Gallery was an important component of it, it actually extended outside the walls of SASA Gallery and into that City West Precinct more broadly. And maybe that’s just a great demonstration of that sense of vitality that you’re describing.

Well, it was an amazing ten years, and only possible because of the fantastic SASA Gallery team of staff: Keith Giles, Ursula Halpin, Julian Tremayne and Peter Harris. There were many fabulous people who worked with us during those years including Louise Flaherty, and senior curatorial students, many of whom went on to work in the gallery and museum sector including Saskia Scott, Adele Siluzas, Madeline Reece and Sundari Carmodi. Also the SASA Gallery Advisory Committee members were really dedicated and supportive.

The SASA Gallery took a collaborative approach to developing exhibitions and because the curators, researchers and artists were great to work with, and the exhibition program was so dynamic, being part of the SASA Gallery team was a real joy. It was fast-paced and fun. And, you know, sometimes it’s hard to know where you’re your work ends and your passion begins.

I’d be really interested to hear from this vantage point. So it’s almost a decade since you left Adelaide and your role at the SASA Gallery. What do you think that decade taught you going forward? How did you take that to your next chapter?

I consider the 10 years working as Director of the SASA Gallery a career highlight. To run a contemporary art gallery embedded in the heart of an art school at that time in that place was incredible.

When I left after 10 years, it was to take up a new role as Senior Curator of Art at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). I was keen to curate research-led exhibitions in a major Australian gallery with a colonial collection and interesting history. Although I miss living and working in Adelaide, I value the enduring network of people I worked with and have been able to commission several South Australians to create new work in major exhibitions at TMAG.

When you look back on that decade at SASA and how supported by the institution and the entire program and staffing was, what a team effort that collective vision was!

It became a little bit more constrained when SASA merged with the School of Architecture and Design. In one way it was a great opportunity and we able to include more architecture and design exhibitions and staff into the program. But there seemed to be more financial constraints on the combined School of Art, Architecture and Design than there had been previously.

Of course, now looking back and thinking about 2006 to 2016, I feel like they were the glory days, just a particular moment where, even outside of the machinations of individual universities, that this is like pre-Brandis cuts to the small and medium-sized contemporary art sector. It’s pre-COVID. There’s a whole range of things that really radically reshaped the contemporary art sector. You know, probably to a lesser extent the design scene, but, yeah, for something as delicate as the visual arts ecosystem, it impacted it wholeheartedly. And that’s only continued, right, when you think about how much harder life is for artists these days?

Absolutely, I think that is true.

So you made some magic. You made some magic at a particular moment where the conditions, were possible you must have had a witchy sense of knowing this was the moment to strike, you know?

Yes. I think it was amazing because it was a relatively new contemporary art gallery in one of the best art schools in Australia. Adelaide had, and still has, a vibrant arts and cultural sector, and the cultural institutions such as the Art Gallery of South Australia and Adelaide Festival of Art were bringing a lot of international and national artists and visitors into the city. So for most of the time I was working in Adelaide it felt like being part of a supportive network and community of people who were passionate and doing great things.

Yeah, beautiful. Well, I might hit pause on record there because we have got a lot of conversation there. That’s a lot, Mary.

Well, it’s been a real pleasure for me. Thank you so much.

Academic Catherine Campbell and Channel 44’s General Manager, Lauren Hillman, reflect on the long-standing partnership between UniSA and local television station, Channel 44, a collaboration that has shaped generations of creative graduates through authentic, handson learning. Hillman traces the evolution from an informal student production, Our Time, into a deeply integrated internship and industry training model now embedded in the Filmmaker Studio. Together, they explore how real-world experience, mentorship, and authentic relationships bridge the gap between study and professional life. Their exchange celebrates a shared philosophy: that creativity flourishes when theory meets practice, and when students are empowered to learn by doing.

lauren hillman

catherine campbell

lauren hillman

Maybe I’ll begin with our relationship with UniSA. It started informally fifteen years ago, I think, when we began producing a local show called ‘Our Time’ with Malcolm Haslet. That show became our flagship, our longest-running program. Over 640 episodes, all produced by UniSA students, which is remarkable given the modest facilities at Magill campus. To sustain a show that long in South Australia is a huge credit to the University and the students who’ve kept it alive.

catherine campbell

Incredible.

Formalising the partnership was important. The University understood the value of creating real pathways into industry. When you graduate, that step into professional life is daunting if you don’t already have connections. I didn’t have that when I finished uni. Now we offer internships, twelve students per semester, and many of them go on to make their own shows. Some projects, like The ‘SA Sport Show’, also grew out of the partnership. What’s really exciting is that UniSA now has the Filmmaker Studio built directly into the curriculum. That means production isn’t just an extra opportunity, it’s an academic subject.

That’s a powerful model.

It’s something I talk about nationally when I meet with other community broadcasting stations. This partnership is layered, it’s not just production, it’s mentorship, internships, promotion, sponsorship. Channel 44 provides a platform to tell UniSA’s story while giving students genuine industry experience. RMIT in Melbourne has RMITV, but it’s not the same; it doesn’t have the same organic integration into teaching and learning.

Yes, and that layering matters.

Exactly. This year has been a pinnacle. We’re producing the largest feature we’ve ever attempted: a documentary on UniSA’s history. Not only are creative industries students involved, but also journalism students and others from across the University. They’ll walk away with a broadcast credit, which is extraordinary.

That’s fantastic.

It’s also about giving students a broad understanding of screen content. Media has changed enormously: from thirtysecond TikTok clips to full-length films. We tell students it’s fine to enjoy short-form content, but you also need a deep understanding of narrative to succeed. If you don’t consume it, you can’t make it.

Exactly. And that’s where university plays its role: exposing students to ideas and practices beyond their own immediate world, and equipping them with the analytical tools to navigate change. I love what you said about industry connection. When I first came to UniSA, people would call it “Super TAFE.” I studied English and Drama at Flinders, then Honours, then began a PhD before moving into acting at CPA, now AC Arts. What I discovered at UniSA was a blend of both worlds: academic rigour and practical immersion.

That resonates with me.

In my acting degree, everything was practical. At Flinders, it was almost entirely academic. UniSA sits between: embedding industry relevance into an academic framework. When I started teaching, some courses could have been more rigorous, but overall, what impressed me was the emphasis on embedding students in industry practice. The reassurance that what you’re learning connects directly to professional contexts is critical.

That’s exactly what we see through Filmmaker Studio. Students who are involved in productions or volunteering are switched on differently. They’re more engaged, more present, because they’re constantly learning on their feet.

It’s like teaching. Nobody would train teachers without putting them in classrooms. Yet in many degrees, practical work is undervalued. In creative industries, the practical is essential. It reveals strengths and career directions: the student who always organises others might discover they’re a natural producer; another might realise stage management suits them. This kind of discovery is invaluable.

And it’s why I always tell students: networking isn’t about champagne and awkward conversations. Networking is what we’re doing right now: building genuine relationships. When students join one of our internships, they’re already part of my network. That relationship matters more than any formal event.

Absolutely. And it opens doors. I’ve had students approach me for coaching, references, or introductions to companies, and I’m always happy to help because I’ve seen them work. Those authentic relationships are what last.

Yes. And transferable skills are another thing. When I graduated, I never imagined I’d be General Manager of a community TV station. I was a strong producer, good communicator, but I didn’t know business management. I learned it on the job, leaning on transferable skills from production. Students need to hear that. They may not end up exactly where they expect, but the skills will carry them.

That’s such an important lesson. You don’t need to tick every box on paper, you need to show you can do the job and lead people. That quality, more than any technical skill, makes someone employable.

Exactly. And when students discover, for example, whether they love or hate twelve-hour production days, that’s crucial. Better to learn during an attachment at Channel 44 than after committing to a career they’ll resent.

Yes. And it’s about low-risk environments where students can make mistakes, reflect, and adjust. That’s the gift of partnerships like this.

And the reality is creative industries aren’t nine-to-five. They demand flexibility, long hours, weekend work. Students need to know that early.

And they learn it by doing. In performing arts, students not only research and write essays but also create public performances every year. They work with the Cabaret Festival, State Theatre Company, professional directors, musicians people who may later hire them. That’s networking in action.

And that’s the whole point. These connections build careers.

Yes. And they allow us to vouch for students genuinely. Whether it’s recommending them for a job, mentoring them through a grant application, or helping them prepare an audition, it’s all possible because we’ve seen them work in real contexts.

Which is why our partnership is so valuable. It’s not abstract. It’s students in studios, on sets, on stage, doing the work.

And becoming employable, adaptable, and resilient.

Exactly.

I think that captures the heart of what makes this collaboration between Channel 44 and UniSA so powerful: it’s about preparing students for the real world, not just in theory but in practice, through mentorship, networks, and hands-on experiences.

lh Well said!

julie nichols travis thomas

In conversation, Nukunu Wampa Thura Corporation (NWTAC) Chair Travis Thomas and Senior Lecturer Dr Julie Nichols explore the deep interconnection between fire, country, and design within the emerging field of pyrovernacular conditions. Thomas describes how, for the Nukunu people, fire is not destruction but dialogue, an ecological and spiritual practice shaping how people live with and care for country. He explains that fire knowledge, passed through oral traditions, governs everything from species regeneration to safe dwelling design. Together they discuss how documenting and translating these practices into contemporary architecture can bridge traditional and Western knowledge systems, ensuring future generations design with country, not upon it, demonstrating the impact this kind of emergent research can have on a national and international stage.

julie nichols

We’re going to discuss just briefly a handful of questions around our new field of research into pyro vernacular conditions. The first question is obviously around fire and country from your perspective, how do cultural fire practices such as cool burns shape the way people live with and design for country?

travis thomas

With regards to the traditional approach to country, fire was a critical part in the use of country, the management of country, and the interaction of Nukunu with that country. Nukunu view themselves as part of country, and that country encompasses all things your spiritual aspects and your physical interaction with country, which could be the gathering of food, the shaping of country to enable hunting, shaping of country to enable stimulation of particular species at certain times of the year, and understanding the different delineations of the country in the types of species which are present in each area and the different types of country you have within the overall area of the landscape. Knowing the difference between species, for instance, between the higher ground and the lower ground, and what should be there at certain times of the year, and how the use of fire stimulates and creates those types of responses which are needed by Nukunu to have access to the right type of species and vegetation in particular parts of country at the right times of year. So, the understanding that you’re going to be living in country at a particular time of year, understanding what the key species are in that particular piece of country and then therefore, accordingly, how that’s evolved with fire.

The use of fire has been so long and unbroken on country by Nukunu that the species have evolved with the interaction of that fire. You have species which are germinated by fire, as an example, the seeds requiring a particular type of fire intensity for those species to germinate. Some are germinated by smoke. These are examples of that human interaction, of having Nukunu as part of the country. When they’re living in it, they’re understanding how the country responds to fire and understanding when they need to put fire in at the right time. Having the right intensity of fire at the right location in country at the right time so that they’re generating the correct response from those species to enable them to live in that space. This helps to prevent things like catastrophicstyle bushfires, which we have now where the country hasn’t been treated with fire appropriately for a time. Also, understanding the species that you’re stimulating and will germinate in a particular location to get the desired effect in that location are you trying to get a particular grass to grow to bring kangaroos in, for example, and have the area open so it’s not too thick so you can hunt in there? Are you burning to protect a particular cultural area or site? Are you burning to enable access for passage through to areas? Are

you burning for ceremonial and spiritual purposes? There are other uses and purposes, but this gives a small insight into the sort of myriad approach to fire as a practical application for how you’re living in a space and how you’re selecting where you live, knowing the type of species composition and the terrain composition as in slopes, for example, and how your use of fire to impact and shape that terrain helps to create a safe space and livable space.

The understanding of how all of those aspects affects livability and survivability in those spaces has been demonstrated for many, many years. Moving into more contemporary times, the changing of fire regimes and difficulty in being able to practice fire culture for Nukunu is a direct result of colonisation and associated interruption with, and difficulty in, carrying out traditional practices. So, in the modern space we’re existing in and interacting with, we try to continue that tradition around the use of fire which is so integral to ourselves and all the other First Nations around the country in the interactions with their own living spaces.

And obviously, then, going further into things such as the spiritual dynamic of it the ritual around fire, connection of self to place and to country, the use of fire in ceremony and rituals and connection to a point in time or a moment, the interaction in that ritual to create that sense of connection and self to the individual and to the piece of country and to the particular story or song or ceremony or outcome that’s required. jn

Okay, great. Picking up on the point about the contemporary situation and how documentation of these sorts of practices is not traditionally recorded it’s more traditional to pass down by oral transmission the way these cultural practices are done. So, therefore, when we draw or record fire-related practices, what should we, as in Nukunu as well as UniSA, prioritise? And what sort of aspects of this knowledge should remain with community only and not be documented?

Yeah, that goes into the different approach to fire from Nukunu in regard to its different uses. So, where you have areas such as the ceremonial or ritualistic use of fire around secret, sacred ceremonies or activities that’s where that type of knowledge may be kept internal to Nukunu and the same with other First Nations. It’s a knowledge system which is not for sharing with everyone, it’s only for appropriate people culturally to have that knowledge or be given and participate in those types of rituals or activities at the given point in time.

Then there’s moving beyond that into the passing on of traditional knowledge. As you mentioned, that’s done more on country with song and voice and a verbal knowledge system being transferred, and undertaking activities, talking about the knowledge, sharing that knowledge on country with the right people at the right time. So, when it goes into areas like that, where it’s gone out of the secret or sacred, those things can be documented and can be shared. These parameters around fire when you go into the broader practical use of fire it’s an activity that would be a regular daily activity in many instances, so it’s not looked at necessarily as having to be shut out from the general public in that sense. Whilst there’s always culture involved in all activities for First Nations, because of that holistic approach, it’s also something that can be shared from a Nukunu perspective.

And having mechanisms to record it in that modern context could actually assist Nukunu in demonstrating the knowledge in contemporary systems of sharing. So, the ability to use audiovisual, the ability to undertake documentation in an empirical sense to better show what we understand, or what we pass on verbally and through traditional knowledge systems in a Western knowledge system approach to be able to then share that through things such as academia and being able to then display that knowledge to assist us in advocating for what we’re saying around the appropriate approach to the management of country, and being able to then use those mediums and data sets to demonstrate what we know and what we’re aware of, particularly for instances where you may wish to apply for government assistance or grants, or have to interact with other agencies.

So, in terms of this question around future pathways for this information how do you see this pyro vernacular knowledge influencing contemporary architecture or community-led design in the future?

I think it’s, as I said, critical in that sense of a melding between the two worlds. When we’re looking at modern construction, it’s that data and those methods and the pyro vernacular that are necessary to be able to incorporate our knowledge of how we would live traditionally in a space, be it the type of species which we’ve engineered in that area, looking at materials, looking at spacing, looking at site selection, looking at how we influence the country around that particular living space or that site that’s chosen. And that could be including the construction of the site. So, where country has been cleared for purposes, there’s no reason why we can’t use that knowledge of what species we may have engineered in our country, in our living spaces, to be able to plant those species, to be able to create that same type of acceptable living space, which would have been there in

a more traditional sense. And things like understanding the spacing between trees, which obviously affects and interacts with fire and the behaviour of fire in terrain and weather. Having that knowledge applied to the traditional use of space has always been there, but the pyro vernacular enables that to now be transitioned into a modern architectural approach to country. jn

This is what I think is really exciting about this work that we’re doing it’s this coming back to the relational aspect, really emphasising the relational aspect of country to the built environment and how, as you were saying, that nexus between traditional knowledge and contemporary knowledge systems. How do you think that this approach differs from, you know, non-aboriginal architectural approaches like… let’s call them ‘western’ architectural approaches. What do you see as distinctively different from, you know, legislative practices of building? How do you see it as different, this pyro vernacular approach? tt

I think it comes down to the approach from a point of view of that all-encompassing, holistic knowledge system and belief system of Nukunu seeing themselves as being part of country, everything being interrelated, and an eternal sense of time and a sense of space also where you have the physical world we’re in and, behind it, the non-physical, spiritual and dreaming world that you’re there and that all those things are simultaneously there and you’re interacting and looking after country. So, in that sense, the country informs you and our interactions with the country are designed to be able to create that right environment where you can exist successfully in country. It’s kind of letting the country teach you and show you, and it’s that ongoing interaction with the country from that lived experience and knowledge of saying, if we do this, which is the thing that country needs, and look after these species, then the country will be in the right condition to look after us. Taking that into the approach for living space where we’re not looking at, okay, how do we change the country? It’s about saying, how do we work with the country and the environment to be able to exist successfully there?

jn Absolutely.

So rather than, I suppose, approaching from the point of view where you’re to completely change the environment you’re in, it’s about saying we know how the country was, how the country should be, and trying to get it as close as possible to that, where we knew that this has been a successful way of interacting with country for thousands of years and that the country and all the species have evolved with this interaction

and it’s healthy for it if you continue to interact with it in this way. And it’s looking at, wherever possible, how can we introduce that into that modern design to meld those modern living and work standards in spaces with the knowledge that we knew enabled people to live successfully in those spaces and healthily for many thousands of years previously.

This way we’re going about synthesising these vernacular practices, if you want to call them that, the pyro vernacular practices, whether they’re rooted in the fire stewardship or the spiritual traditions, all related to country these are evolving out of this deep cultural connection to place, but also, as you’ve mentioned, bridging time and space with the dreaming. How do you think we can collectively pass this sort of approach on for future generations through the, I guess, design process or through the documentation processes? How can we engage future generations with this work?

Well, that’s part of the actual process of the work in that it’s creating a documentation of knowledge systems in a way that’s making use of available technology that’s currently at our fingertips. So, it’s essentially taking traditional knowledge and saying, how do we maintain this knowledge which we know is crucial? And we have that already culturally. We know what we need to be doing. We know how we need to be teaching people on country. But beyond that it’s also saying, how do we then take that ability to interact with the modern world and actually incorporate that knowledge, rather than looking at something that has to be entirely separate and kept away? It’s saying, how do we improve our current lifestyle and use of space where we need things like buildings and all those aspects? How do we improve it in a sense of making it align as closely as possible with those traditional points of awareness and incorporating that into things such as design and use of country around the built construct and built environment? And how you get those things to align as close as possible to how we would design and create a living space traditionally, be it a shelter site, the construction of the shelters, the spacing and the terrain selection, and then how you influence the surrounding country through use of things such as the fire to create those suitable living and working spaces?

Fantastic. Well, thanks so much, Trav, for your insight into these big questions. I think in the naming of this particular project, the Degrees of Impact, I think we are working towards impact here.

tt Definitely!

In this conversation, Adjunct Senior Lecturer David Morris and Academic Joti Weijers-Coghlan trace the origins of UniSA’s celebrated Design Construct program, an experiment that began with a dream to unite design and construction through hands-on experience. Morris recalls its modest beginnings at Kanmantoo, where innovation met necessity, and students built their own facilities from the ground up. Together, they reflect on the program’s evolution from elective to institution, its spirit of adventure in remote work, and its rare continuity across decades. The exchange captures the enduring ethos of UniSA: curiosity, resilience, and the pursuit of learning through making: where design becomes lived experience.

david morris

joti weijers-coghlan

david morris

I joined the SA Institute of Technology as a design and construction lecturer with a dream to run a program intended to give students a greater sense of the construction side. In my group of fourth year students was Nick Opie, who was equally passionate about driving a practice that was well rooted in an understanding of how things were constructed. After Nick graduated he and I decided that we’d start this program, and we looked for a project to do. I was looking through some drawing files and found that the university owned the old Kanmantu mine. I proposed with Nick that we build facilities there which would be teaching and research facilities. And the first thing that we had to do, of course, on that site was to build toilets and showers, so, you know, basic services.

joti weijers-coghlan

And you did a master plan, didn’t you, which included classrooms and other things as part of that proposal?

If we were going to develop that site, we needed a workshop, a big workshop. So that was designed. The idea was that if we had toilets, showers, and a workshop, then we could go ahead with building classrooms and teaching facilities, conference facilities, meeting facilities.

We only got as far as prefabrication of the toilets and showers. There was a detailed model made of the workshop, and we did develop this idea of a floating concrete floor which we were achieving by using high profile roof decking. So from the very beginning, it was always looking at some sort of innovation. I suppose really stimulated by people like [Glenn] Murcutt who were bending corrugated steel, trying to minimise the amount of structure needed to hold something up. And that’s where it started.

jwc

How did you create space for the project in the curriculum? Is that where the electives were born or did you embed that in a studio?

No, it was very much the same as it is now. It had to work as a peripheral program to the core program. There were a lot of reasons for that, as they still are, and that is there’s this very conventional view that core curriculum is not to be tampered with and that peripheral electives are just for broadening students’ education. So, it started out as electives. One huge benefit in it being an elective program is that students elect to do it. They choose to do it rather than having to do it. So there’s a level of enthusiasm and commitment to student participation that there might not be if it was compulsory.

jwc

I guess with that elective status comes freedom as well that you’re not having to address any specific competencies. There’s flexibility with those electives to run them in basically any way you need.

That’s right. But it’s been consistently recognised by all accreditation panels that have come to examine the architecture program at UniSA, which it became in 1991, I think. There’s always been positive feedback and support for the program from these professionals.

jwc

And it keeps cropping up in reports on education in Australia that these things are valuable experiences to give students.

Well, another thing that doesn’t get enough recognition is that this is a student program that when the projects that are finished are submitted for the Australian Institute of Architecture awards, are very often, I think in fact in all cases that we’ve made submissions have won awards of one sort or another.

jwc

So there was an elective in the curriculum that you could take and use as the vehicle to do the work for the projects?

Yeah. And there were other patterns about it. I mean, going out to Kanmantoo was really the first of what was, nearly always, a remote project. That was probably a personal preference of mine, to be working out in remote locations rather than urban locations. It was freer. Students could camp. We could be resourceful in working in remote places.

On one occasion we had 40 students and four staff for a two-week period. It was a huge logistic undertaking, and the students rose to the occasion. So, the remote side of things was always a component of that, you know, get in a bus, load up the trailers and get out into the middle of nowhere and build something. And that presented all sorts of construction challenges. What resources have you got out there? And what do you have to take with you to make it work? There are a whole lot of challenges that wouldn’t exist in a city or urban environment. These turned out, on the whole, to be recognised as being very valuable by the students.

jwc

Yeah, to go off grid and do remote building projects is not something to be underestimated is it?

Well over that period of time we’ve equipped ourselves with the most magnificent workshop and with all of the tooling within it, plus a big truck and a hi-ab (crane) to assist in those remote projects.

jwc

This is probably one of the things that sets UniSA’s designbuild apart in Australia and almost globally. To be selfsufficient and to do relatively large-scale work in the places that we have is something that’s pretty incomparable, I think, with other design-build offerings. Other programs don’t have the equipment to prefabricate the scale that we do. A lot of it is built on site or, I think, materials delivered to site because they don’t have the transportation and prefabrication capacity.

Projects like the Wheal Hughes Mine project and the Patjarr project, and Mimili, were all prefabricated in the existing workshop. And we would be trying to work in a workshop which was pretty cluttered with benches and other things for relatively small industrial design projects, with students walking through with big roof girders and huge panels of ply and steel.

jwc

I remember having to rearrange, move saws around to get 12-metre beams through the workshop in Dorrit Black for the Mount Franklin roof framing.

It was really difficult to find space and that’s when in 2013, after the program won the National Teaching Award, that I was in a great position to lobby, with Mads’ [Gaardboe] help, the University to provide a purpose-built design and construct prefabrication facility and to appoint an additional member of staff, which was you. And you joined up in about 2015.

jwc

Yeah, mid-2015.

And things really started rocking and rolling then.

jwc

On the point of continuation, you kept it going for 30 years despite the challenges. It’s valued as a student experience, but it doesn’t have the research income that other areas have. It makes either consultancy or research income through projects. And its history of publications doesn’t do justice to the volume of work done. Was there ever a time you thought it was going to collapse or not carry on?

Well, in some ways I had to scrounge up help [laughter]. I mean, after Nick passed away, Jason came on board on a part-time basis. Michael Phillips volunteered his time when he was doing his Master of Architecture. Something I have to be very, very grateful for is that Mads, who came from practice and whose Danish heritage, I guess, put a lot of value on this program, was always supportive during his time as head of school. After we won the 2013 National Teaching Award, I was able to lobby to support the building of the prefabrication facility out at Mawson Lakes. I suppose it took off then, and especially when you came, it really took off. We did our branding, Oh, and then, we went to Vanuatu. So, we were doing international work, running three study tours to Vanuatu a year for about three years. That Vanuatu project was of great interest to the Vice-Chancellor. We gave him a T-shirt, you might remember. But in that period before the award it was a pretty hard slog because I was doing it all by myself. 2013, yeah.

But anyway, it’s one of those things that just adds to a huge workload because you’re administering the design and construction of real buildings that have to meet all the usual performance criteria. Which I guess requires a diverse range of skills and enthusiasm. Yeah, the people who are qualified to work in a program like this are pretty broadly skilled. They have to be teachers, architects, builders. They have to be good business managers in a way. And where do you get all of those qualities?

jwc

You know Sam Mockbee’s quote, he says, basically, you’ve got to pack your bags, kiss your wife goodbye and go to war for two weeks. That’s what he used to say about teaching design and build.

Is that right? That would be a good sort of reference for the history of this program.

jwc

And I guess that’s why you see design and build quite closely tied to people. It’s hard to share that load between a lot of people. You had other people helping you, but it still kind of rested on one person.

Well, when we were doing it together, it was definitely two people, you know? That was an excellent collaboration. So, I wouldn’t say that it was one person necessarily. It is now because you’re the only one there.

jwc

I guess the continuation of something like this relies on consistency, on someone’s consistent effort to do it. Design Construct isn’t a research centre that staff can step in and out of. You don’t see the ball can just be handed it to someone else for five years and then someone else because it’s very much like a profession within teaching that you dedicate yourself to and it’s almost hard to get out of it once you take it on.

Yeah, well, it’s a practice, isn’t it? That’s what makes it so rigorous. It’s having to meet those standards, meaning it can compete in professional awards. That’s what’s amazing too, and doesn’t get really trumpeted enough. I mean, these students are competing with professional architects, and they’re getting a gong. It’s not because they’re students, it’s because they actually meet the requirements of the category. And yet, if you don’t sing its praises and promote it, no one else is going to do it for you.

jwc

It makes for great promotion of the program that is continually referred to as one of the unique opportunities that UniSA offers.

Yeah, it’s a point of difference between other programs. And in that sense, it is quite unique.

jwc

I think what is really unique to what UniSA does is the scale of the projects. They’re big projects and they go for many years. They’re remote and through that has come expertise and facilities that allow remote work.

The other thing we haven’t mentioned, which really shouldn’t be ignored, is the engagement with Aboriginal communities. It’s really hard to measure the success of that for both the students and the communities. Exposure to experiences that no one would be likely to have in any other circumstance, going into communities for which you need a permit to work through a consultation process initially and then through a building process. We had it at Patjarr, we had it at Mimili. They’re priceless experiences. As I said to the students just before we drove into Patjarr, “I haven’t been to an Aboriginal community before. We’re all in this together, you know. This is all new.” And, of course, what we encountered quite reasonably was that no-one except the children spoke English. So you really are in the rawness of an Aboriginal community returned to their traditional lands through the Homelands Movement, in the most amazing wilderness that they know and understand. It was just the most amazing privilege.

jwc

Was that something you were looking for?

Well, Patjarr was just one project that came through Tanya Dennis, a student who became the architect for Warburton. She invited Michael Tawa, from the University of New South Wales, and me to bring students to Warburton to investigate potential projects. The two university groups divided up into smaller groups and my group went out to Patjarr, which is north of Warburton, to do an art gallery and visitor centre for pilots. That experience exposed me to conditions Aboriginal families were living in. I questioned how culturally appropriate these huts were, but I didn’t know enough about the culture or the circumstances to be qualified in making a judgement. But I was qualified to make a judgement about how technically inappropriate they were. Their orientation was wrong, the lack of insulation, the lack of cross ventilation, the lack of shading. All those things, on a purely technical level, were horrendously inappropriate. That led Jenny and I to do research on appropriate consultation, because if we were going to and I wanted to be involved in another Aboriginal project, if we were going to address some of those shortcomings, we had to know a lot more about appropriate consultation and probably quite a lot about the history of socalled housing for Aboriginal communities.

After that research I pursued the Department of Families and Communities and managed to land funding for two houses at that time which, believe it or not, was only about $500,000 or $600,000. We were driven to do something better than the standard of housing that was being provided. And we certainly did that. But I often now think that shelter would have been more successful as just a roof, an outdoor kitchen, and a slab for swags and a shower. That’s a big cross-cultural problem that still isn’t solved.

You can see why there is difficulty in setting up programs like this. Of 22 schools in Australia and New Zealand offering architecture degrees, only two do this kind of work consistently. Three, if you go back 15 years. UniSA and UTAS have done it for 30 years and Uni of Melbourne about 15 years. But nothing else that’s been consistent. I think these conversations get into why it can so difficult to keep something like this going. You need space in the curriculum, physical space to do the building, staff with the skills and energy, and trust within the university. Maintaining it for decades is pretty special, and I guess we’re trying to capture those people and things that have played a part in making this what it is. Personally, looking to the future to try and keep it going, those things are worth reflecting on because of the ongoing challenges, especially as things become rationalised and digitised and the cost of hands-on, face-toface learning becomes relatively higher.

benjamin altieri

In this reflective conversation, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Jane Andrew and Academic Benjamin Altieri revisit the origins, evolution, and enduring ethos of Match Studio, a pioneering model for interdisciplinary, work-integrated learning at UniSA. Born from Andrew’s passion for enabling sustainable creative practice, Match grew from a feasibility study into a dynamic, people-driven ecosystem linking students, academics, and industry through real-world projects. Together they recall milestone collaborations, from Arts and Health to the Maggie Beer initiative and the Match Tournament, while tracing how its philosophy of “designed to make a difference” shaped generations of practitioners. Their dialogue reveals Match as both legacy and living methodology: adaptive, human, and quietly transformative.

jane andrew

benjamin altieri

We’ve only had cursory conversations about how Match started. When did you start working?

jane andrew

I started in 2008 or 2009 as a sessional staff member. I was asked by Greg Donovan to write the courses and teach business practice and professional management for artists and designers. I was invited on the basis of my previous role as executive director at Craft South. One of the core elements they had was professional development. I was particularly focussed on and passionate about enabling our members and artists and designers to develop sustainable practises they could generate income from. That evolved into the course that you did.

At that time, I was studying my PhD because, working in the proper arts sector, I had started to get a flat head. Advocating for creative disciplines and the contribution they made to the state, to the economy, and the potential contribution they could make to other industries. We haven’t got an agency for design or anything like that through the government. It was one of the things Don Dunstan was an advocate for, and it just seemed to make so much sense.

That’s what inspired me to do the PhD and I was really lucky to do that through the University of Adelaide. I was having an academic discussion through the lens of policy and the political economy in regional innovation systems. Looking at how creative disciplines contribute to the system, and other industries within the economy.

Just after I started my PhD I was asked to work at Arts SA and I managed the public art program for a year and a half, two years maybe.

Then I had this opportunity, again, through Greg Donovan, from the School of Art, Architecture, and Design, to investigate establishing a consultancy, where students could participate in what came to be known as ‘work integrated learning’. It was a proxy for student placement because design professions… it’s really hard to get placements.

ba It still is!

So, I did a feasibility study on what it would take. How would it work? It was a bit of an action-based learning project.

I think that was 2010. The reason we used the name Match Studio was, when I was at Craft South, there was a collaborations committee involving art and design organisations, and one of the contributors I can’t remember his name now we were debating about what would we call this thing, this event. And he said, well, let’s run a tournament. People like competing.

So, Match as in a match, a game, and a match and striking. I did ask permission from the organisations whether it might be appropriate for us to use Match Studio with a bit of a nod to collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and bright sparks and creative ideas. So that’s where that came from.

It was a collective effort. You know, there were landscape architects, architects, interior architects, interior designers, artists. It was really multidisciplinary.

But, yeah, it wouldn’t have happened if not for a few likeminded and willing colleagues like David Blaiklock, Doreen Donovan, Andrew Wallace, Jane Lawrence, Hannah White and others who were willing to work on some projects.

The genesis of Bowden and the design and the look and feel of that was in part inspired by a project through Interior Architecture and Graphic Design students. We did some projects with the old RAH, a wave showing project. We did Brooklyn Hall.

And, also, the Catherine Helen Spence building, the student lounge downstairs. We also worked with agencies like ECH and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital Foundation in the RCL Program.

That was when the new RAH was being designed and there was a real interest in Arts and Health. So that was quite pivotal the relationship we had with the Women’s and Children’s Hospital Foundation and the Arts and Health Program, and people like Trish Hanson and Jill Newman. We ended up signing an MIU with Arts and Health as a nod towards the need to integrate a more user-centric approach to spatial design that supports health and wellbeing, rather than the medicalisation of things and spaces.

So that stimulated a developing network of people. I took on a sort of proxy introduction agency through Match Studio. It eventuated that the Art and Design of Health and Wellbeing research clusters were being sponsored or funded through the university’s research development team and, unfortunately, their attention moved elsewhere and they stopped funding. That didn’t stop Match Studio’s engagement with those health and well-being projects, but it shifted the momentum and focus from that research to more industry and researcher engagement.

ba I think that was when I dropped into the picture, around 2018.

The Maggie Beer project?

ba Yes, that was my first project. I actually did two at that time. Because we had Visualising Mental Health which I think was two, maybe three years in.

That would happen because we were doing some work with Ageing Well and Health and Wellbeing and Mental Health.

I used to call Match a ‘coalition of the willing’, which used to irritate some people, but you had to be able to understand what the ethos and the rationale were. And it’s not just design. It’s a lot of situations where you’re dealing with ambiguity or just a lack of a clear path to follow. And getting people who aren’t comfortable in that space to trust in the process. It doesn’t always click. It is ultimately about people.

Yeah. It works or doesn’t because of the people. But often, in my experience, bringing people into that environment, they often start to grasp that this is how it takes form or even has a little less ambiguity.

ja Exactly.

ba It’s always satisfying for students and project partners at the end to go, ‘oh, I actually got something quite amazing out of this’. Whether it was the actual idea, or how they approach problems or practice.

ja Yeah.

ba The tagline ‘Designed to make a difference’ did that similarly come out of that early stage?

No, it was about observations around the nature of research. Making a difference not just by applying research, but engaging people from lots of different professions and disciplines not just academics who often don’t work with different disciplines and maybe have habituated responses to solving problems. So the ‘Designed to make a difference’ was kind of, well, let’s make a difference.

The other thing is that students and people learn more and value learning when their learning has actually done something. It’s been productive. It goes back to the intention of Match Studio to be a pseudo-consultancy, that students learn through professional practice.

ba So yeah, going back to when I jumped into things. Those two projects were the first exposure I had as a university student to what it’s like to have a client.

ja Okay.

I’ll never forget when Doreen (Donovan) briefed us on the premise for the studios. I was just sh*tting myself at the thought of having a client involved in the process. But it surprised me how naturally I took to that process, and the Maggie Beer project was the first time I had taken a stronger leadership position in a project.

That project taught me how to engage in this sort of practice, and to apply theory and these principles. It surprised me, what I learned from that but also, there was an opportunity to present the project outcome, because Maggie was really happy. So that was another important moment for me to realise this is going somewhere, it’s having impact.

ja Fantastic.

That was the catalyst. Then I finished my undergraduate, and I remembered before I’d graduated that you’d mentioned that if I wanted to have a chat, drop in anytime. And I obviously was interested in trying to keep the Maggie Beer project going. But you suggested I do a Master’s.

I didn’t coerce you. [laughing]

Well, I didn’t take a lot of convincing. Then I started working with other students who were doing either a Graduate Diploma or a Master’s. These projects, and my Master’s, really solidified that this was the work I wanted to do, and still is exactly the work I want to do. I didn’t think I was going to be a teacher by any means.

ja I, neither.

It just kind of happened, with a couple of workshops here and there. But I was also lucky that when I finished my Master’s you were ready to pick up the Match Tournament again.

We piloted the Match Tournament a year or two before, because of the EU Erasmus funding and that wouldn’t have happened without the support of [Professor] Sue Luckman. Aaron [Davis] was really pivotal in that as well.

There were always lots of good projects and things that happened, but the profile shifted a bit. People misunderstood what we were about there were some frustrating, challenging conversations where people perhaps saw what Match was doing as a threat and didn’t understand, which is fair enough. The intention of Match was never to distract or detract or compete.

It happens sometimes, unfortunately, in an environment where there’s funding and limited resources.

Yeah. So you mention funding we’ve never wanted to be the Category 1 sort of space because there’s so much extra pressure. Being a student-focussed experience, you don’t want situations where you’ve committed to certain outcomes.

Yes, absolutely. I still think about some of the projects I got to work on. We had some really good variety going people coming in and out and students using the space to work on projects and extend their practice and their networks. It was just lovely.

On that note, do any projects stand out as the most exciting or most impactful?

I actually have too many favourites. They were all different. SAPOL [South Australia Police] was one of the most enduring ones. It was with a social media company and looking at combatting violent extremism. That went for many years and so did the Visualising Mental Health. That used to bring me to tears, for two reasons around the importance of supporting mental health in the community, which is a subject true to my heart. But also tears from frustration, because there were so many good ideas we just could not get to the prototyping stage.

The project in 2017-2019 at Adelaide Women’s Prison, specifically working with the Living Skills Unit, was a really impactful one, partly because I worked with social work students to develop a program proposal to integrate opportunities for creative industries and disciplines to be taught in prisons to enable people’s skills development, enterprise development, and legal enterprise development. The outcome from that was really quite wonderful, and the women we were working with got a lot out of it. The students as well. So, they’re all memorable projects.

Yeah, you know, 15 years of projects!

I think it was over 100 [projects].

Okay! I’ve always wanted to count them.

Some were bigger than others, obviously.

I’ve always wanted to delve deeper into the storeroom archive. I know at one point we were considering a monograph to tell a bit more of the story. Maybe it’s more a memoir now, because of how it’s going.

I would happily come in and go through some of those things. I think it’d be really lovely.

My favourite project is the Tournament because of how much it taught me, and also how far reaching it is. That first year I was involved we got hundreds of students across different disciplines and campuses to look at a challenge which what was it? Community resilience?

ja Yeah.

ba Addressing loneliness, wasn’t it?

Community conversations. It was just around COVID.

Yeah, how communities respond and lead in the light of things like pandemics. Some of what students came up with was mindblowing because it wasn’t what you’d expect.

We were in one of the spaces in the library to begin with.

Yeah, that’s right. We were expecting 90 students, which is a crazy number, but we ended up with, I think, 20-ish or so.

From all over the place design, psychology, environmental science.

Yeah, it was amazing. And for me, Match was the embodiment of that learning experience, trying to address wicked problems in some way.

Through Match Studio and Match Tournament we could refine pedagogical approaches as well and integrate more explicitly some of the underpinning methodologies and theories. Explicitly having students from lots of disciplines, we really needed to give them surety of a direction and a method. We’re going to use these tools, they might be different to the ones you know. But they enable us to collaborate.

Yeah. One of the biggest challenges was to have these great ideas, sometimes get them to a point to take them further and, even with the Tournament, have those ideas not quite go anywhere. But there may be a means to evolve them in another way to see out the last few courses for UniSA.

It will be interesting to see if the desire to foster interdisciplinary student learning returns, the reality of which is incredibly hard within the kind of administrative and programmatic approaches of large institutions. Unless it’s actually embedded and made explicit in programs.

The question I have for you, and I sort of know the answer to this: from your perspective, would you do it all again?

If I’d known then what I know now I’d approach it slightly differently. But things shift. I don’t think I have the energy to do it again. It was really exhausting. It was a lot of plates in the air and a lot of responsibility to students, clients, colleagues at the same time as having to justify your position a lot.

It was rewarding and I learned so much. But I am happy to step back and let it evolve. It is hard to let go because you feel you’ve got unfinished business, and there were projects and people I wanted to keep working with. But I knew it wasn’t the right thing for me and my family. Was that the answer that you were looking for?

Oh, yeah. And of course, you haven’t stopped mentoring, supporting colleagues, working on interesting stuff.

Yeah, that’s really satisfying. It’s coaching, you know, applying the same skills and methodologies.

Was there anything you wanted to ask me at all?

Yeah, I don’t want to turn it into a self-congratulatory kind of thing. Where do you want to take it?

Oh, boy. Knowing that Match spun out of your PhD and being in a somewhat similar position now and thinking of my own PhD maybe that’s a vehicle. It takes form later, you know? But I definitely think Match fulfilled its mission. Its practises, its philosophy, they’re not going anywhere because the people who engaged with it carry them.

Exactly. I see those researchers and all those former students and go, ‘wow’. If it hibernates and comes back as something else, I think it will be around. As you said earlier, it’s part of the mission of Adelaide University.

I’d love to build something similar that embodies it. People want experiences, especially with AI and other things making it harder to enter the workforce in ways they previously thought. You know, it’s opportunities like Match and other work integrated learning that have made it to be a great topic.

Yep. At the end of the day, it’s all about people.

In this candid exchange, Associate Professor Damian Madigan and Stephen Yarwood explore the evolving relationship between civic leadership, research, and the future of cities. Yarwood reflects on his time as Lord Mayor of Adelaide and his shift to futurism, emphasising the need for bold, evidence-based storytelling to inspire change. Together they consider the university’s role as a mediator bridging academic independence, public trust, and policy influence and the importance of research in reframing how people understand urban challenges. Their conversation moves from planning and politics to artificial intelligence, arguing that the next 20 years will redefine how citizens live, build, and think about the city itself.

damian

stephen yarwood

madigan

damian madigan

So, we’re starting off talking about how we see the relationship between civic leadership, research, and policy implementation.

stephen yarwood

I think there is an interesting challenge between them. One of the reasons I ran for Lord Mayor is that there tends to be a tension between professionals and elected members. I would say my true success as Lord Mayor was morale went up four years in a row, and people achieved great things when motivated. I think there’s a constant need for good research opportunities and good policy development, but then training and development around civic leadership is important. I think there’s also a role for universities to play in articulating transformational change that encourages people to accept change is needed.

Yeah. I think the role of universities what I’ve found is, the number of times I’ve been able to say in a situation, particularly if we need to try to bring things to an even playing field is to be able to say, as a university academic, I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m not trying to control something at a governmental level. I’m just interested in knowledge and good ways forward. Universities can be that mediator. And in your work now you are that independent voice who can hear all voices in the room and be that party who brings them together.

Yeah. There are two sayings I like. One is that cities aren’t about left and right, they’re about wrong and right. The other element is that research is an incredibly important connection between policy and leadership. One good example would be bicycle lanes. Elected members are listening to businesses who think that one less car park outside will destroy them. And there’ll be constant push-back on integrated transport. Yet research will talk about people spending more time and money, more people going past their businesses.

Demonstrating the science of why something can be different is, I think, incredibly important, because everyone who lives in a city thinks they know how to run them. But the science of cities isn’t rocket science. It’s more complicated. So being able to articulate that to leaders is an incredibly important thing. And policy experts don’t have the time to do that.

Another interesting aspect is that, as researchers, we are always thinking about representing everyone, whereas elected members and this isn’t their fault they will be representing, let’s say, 25,000 people in their electorate, but they will be necessarily influenced by the loudest voices.

I think having people on the ground who are hearing those issues, having them working with people who aren’t beholden to constituents, you can get that good mix of grassroots information and also broader thinking that is trying to apply to everyone. So, representing everyone equally, if that’s possible to do.

Look, it’s absolutely critical. This is where I’m both passionate and frustrated because everyone just wants what they want. And now I’m the storyteller. It’s a really big part of getting people to go ‘oh, I didn’t think of it that way’. It’s that notion of when you’re in a traffic jam, you’re not in the traffic jam, you are the traffic jam.

So there’s a really important role in having the science and having the facts, and I feel like we still need to push that back into it. I feel not to criticise either the university or you we need to be more bold, more confident, and believe in what we’re doing because the profession gets diluted when academics and experts aren’t pushing.

So, how do you see the role of the university in shaping your approaches to urban thinking and the institution’s influence continuing in the broader field?

Well, I think that ability to be independent, wanting knowledge to be out there, and being seen as a trusted pair of hands. I have encountered people who’ve been naturally suspicious of academics. The classic ‘ivory tower’ thing. But if you’re able to communicate reasons why you think things should change the way you’d like them to, people do come around. There’s nothing like evidence, whether it’s hard metrics or a well described argument, that brings people into the tent. I always try to get them to a position of, not necessarily agreeing with everything I’m saying, but at least getting to a point where they can say ‘well, he’s not wrong’. And then that opens the conversation. I think the university is a fantastic vehicle for that type of thinking and approach.

Yeah, I really concur. Before I talk about the future, I have to admit I’m quite happy to reflect on my experiences. I did a planning degree and a graduate diploma at the University of South Australia. It played a key role in my career. In particular, there were a few lecturers for me. Stephen Hamlet and Peter Eliart, and Donna Ferretti who was one of the smartest and most dynamic planners I’ve ever come across. She was the first of many women who became influential in my life in terms of my understanding of urbanism and how cities work.

Then to be taken under the wing a little bit by future vice chancellors working with David Lloyd, speaking at graduation ceremonies, and just playing that role, knowing that I was kind of appreciated. It played a huge role in my life.

In terms of the future, I hope the university will play a proactive role in inspiring the students, because I think in a world where artificial general intelligence is more important than AI, we’re going to need non-linear polymath systems. I think there will be big transformational changes over the next 10 to 15 years. And I really hope that planners can get back to what they used to do, which is that long-term transformational utopian thinking.

Again, that’s where the university is arguably the best place to have those challenging conversations. It’s great hearing your student experience and it made me reflect on my experience as an academic staff member. UniSA has always been incredibly bullish in connecting academics with industry and making sure that research has end users. I’ve felt supported in going out and doing that. Yesterday I had a lovely meeting over coffee with someone from our research support team who asked if there was anything they could do to help me engage more with industry or maintain the partnerships I have. I think it’s a fantastic place to work where you get that sort of outwardlooking and proactive approach to research.

Yeah, that’s fantastic. So, in terms of the pressing challenges for urban and city planning the job of a futurist and a planner is to be optimistic, but I am very pessimistic about the trajectory we’ve had. We Australians are one of the most obese countries in the world. We put out more carbon emissions per capita. We lose $20 billion of economic productivity from sitting in traffic jams. We’re very good at digging things out of the ground and selling them at low value. And there are a lot of challenges around loneliness and health and wellbeing in terms of our urban fabric, our urban form and the operating system of cities and how citizens physically get out of bed and do things differently in the morning. I’ve been very pessimistic, but, yeah, we have the biggest houses in the world, we have some of the worst

public transport systems in the world. Whilst our liveability is very high, a rich, wealthy city is not one where everyone drives to work. It’s where everyone uses public transport and is highly productive.

So I do feel we need to transition from building our urban fabric around vehicles and get back to a human-centric approach. I think we’re doing that. I live in Bowden. I think that we’re starting to look at transport-oriented development more, but Adelaide’s probably the last cab off the rank. When you look at what Perth has done, Brisbane in particular, Sydney and Melbourne way ahead of us, Hobart and Canberra are probably still struggling, but even Canberra’s now got a tram system. And Gold Coast has got a tram system. So I think we’re moving in the right direction. But I think that climate change, and fairness, and the issues that outer suburbs face in terms of vulnerability and domestic violence these are all connected. I don’t know where to start, let alone where to finish.

I think a lot of what you’ve said could fall under what we often refer to as changing the preconceptions that people have. And it’s absolutely necessary. When we were having a chat before, you mentioned that when you look into the future, you’ve got to stop people being stuck in their current reality. I do the same thing looking back because the work I’m doing is trying to get more housing in heritage and character areas. So, when people are hung up that there are too many cars in their street and people aren’t parking in their garages, the answer is bigger garages and more off-street parking. I point out that when those houses were set up it was horse and carriage. When cars did come in, it might have been one car for every however many houses. We’re trying to force-feed our current comfort levels into a model that was never designed for that.

So, looking at our lives today, the most pressing challenges are really that ability to talk broadly about the past, the present, and the future, and to bring people on board so they understand that their current comfort levels cannot be maintained, whether anyone wants them to or not.

For Adelaide and cities more broadly in the next 20 years, my instinctive response is that things will look largely the same as they are now, but hopefully with some changes. I’d be interested to know how, as a futurist, you see 20 years. Is that a very short time-frame or … what can you do in 20 years?

So, the premise I work on now is that we are going to see significant change that the next era in the history of humanity is within 20 years. I would say built form might not be radically different, and it is my hope that we keep the heritage fabric that the main streets of the world stay the same, and we keep the great architecture we have. But I would say that the

operating system of citizens will be fundamentally different. This notion that we get out of bed and do things in a way that is completely different to how someone in London 200 years ago did we will be doing the same.

I think there’ll be a fundamental change in relationship for future citizens with water, with waste, with transport, with the physical home, with their communities, to the share economy, to where you get your food, how you manage your energy systems, and how you manage your own personal health. There are a range of things that will change when machines start doing more of our work. You know, the word on the street is that we will have humanoid robots smarter than humans in about five to seven years. And this sounds a bit out there, but Nvidia is the most valuable company on the planet setting up AI and humanoid robot infrastructure now.

I also feel like AI is probably going to change our architecture. The actual physical form. When you’re codesigning with machines and architects have ideas that might not necessarily work, they’re going to start to change their architecture. They’re going to start to re-engineer their designs based on sustainable materials, on more effective floor plans, on cost-effective supply chain. I think it’s going to change how citizens experience built form.

We are basically facing artificial general intelligence somewhere between six months and three or four years, and for artificial super intelligence we’re probably actually looking around 10 years. That’s when machines not only become smarter than us but can invent machines that are smarter than them. So, the next 20 years, I think, will be transformative.

I’m really glad you framed it all that way because it makes you think, well, the 20-year-olds today, when they’re 40, things are going to be really different for them. And when the babies born today are 20 they are going to experience something very different, particularly around technology, than today’s 20-year-olds. I was thinking there’s a two-speed economy, really, with cities isn’t there? Because in my world, dealing with older suburbs and trying to show people it’s okay to get more housing in there without wrecking the place, and hopefully improving it that moves very slowly. It takes a long time to get the argument right and the demonstration projects on paper correct. And then get it into policy, and then build housing. Whereas you’re talking about things changing faster than we can control them and having real impact on our cities. I think that’s going to be really interesting.

Coming back to the question, what urban futures do you imagine for Adelaide and cities more broadly? It’s going to be that weird two-paced system of going like the clappers and moving at a glacial pace.

The old Toyota Corona driving next to a Chinese car that can do 0 to 100 in two and a half seconds.

With no one driving it.

Yeah, absolutely. So, these are some of the challenges that will face our profession in the incredibly near future. And I don’t believe we should be looking at AI. I think we should be looking at artificial general intelligence. Talking about AI is like talking about rolling out horse and cart in a city when the Model T Ford’s coming out. And we really fundamentally need to do things differently because our children are not going to be able to afford anything.

Yeah, that’s a scary thing. But to end on a positive, I’m up for the challenge and I reckon you are too.

Yeah, look, and I consider it a real privilege. I’m incredibly proud of my education and really proud to be a part of the planning community, even if I’m a controversial outlier in it. I’m also grateful to the University of South Australia, even just for reaching out and doing this. I still pinch myself. It’s really lovely to be a part of its history and if nothing else to be tickled to have made a new friend.

Likewise, absolutely. And, as an employee, it sounds like I’m reading from a corporate sheet here, but I’m so lucky to have spent 20 years at UniSA in the architecture program, just working away at the problem and being supported. It’s been a brilliant run. I’m really looking forward to what happens next.

brian parkes

UniSA Academic Peter Walker and JamFactory’s CEO, Brian Parkes, chart a living partnership between JamFactory and UniSA: a bridge from study to practice where the associate training program scaffolds early careers and embraces nonlinear creative paths. They describe a cyclical exchange (graduates become associates, associates return as teachers) with Adelaide Modern exemplifying student–industry co-making. Biennial exhibitions, weekly talks, and shared facilities (notably glass) dissolve boundaries, while short courses revive hand skills alongside new technologies. Through linkage research and everyday mentorship, the partnership opens doors, lowers barriers, and strengthens real-world pathways. Their refrain is practical and optimistic make, connect, iterate and carry this collaboration boldly into the new university.

peter walker

The JamFactory always held an important role nationally and even internationally within the craft and design movement. I remember from my own days in art school that you learn and concentrate on what you can in the years of your degree. That next step to being a professional practicing designer or craftsperson, which is so crucial, is really where the JamFactory holds its head high. Students and graduates can learn how to place their initial training into practice.

brian parkes

I think the associate training program is probably the most important thing that we do, and over the years it has provided that perfect intermediary step. At the end of an undergraduate degree or in those first few years of trying to make it all work, a lot of people fall over. What JamFactory does through its program is provide a scaffolding around people as they find their feet. One of the nice things about the program is it’s not singular or linear it supports a great breadth of types of practice. Whether someone wants to be a famous artist or an entrepreneur or have a teaching-based business or whatever, it doesn’t matter. We can provide that infrastructure around them so they can take it to the next level.

Your point on it not being linear is interesting because the relationship of the JamFactory and the university is cyclic. I think it’s interesting that recent graduates will gravitate there and train, but there’s also this really nice link with associates and even past studio directors who then come back into the university environment.

Yeah. In recent times people like Christian Hall and Tom Moore and others who worked at JamFactory then did PhDs. And then the opposite is true, where a significant number of our current staff are alumni of UniSA. Our Creative Directors, Daniel (To) and Emma (Aiston). Sophie Guiney, our Marketing Director, and Lucy Potter, who’s our Sales Director. Current Studio Heads Jordan Gower and Kristel Britcher and Danielle Rickaby. I don’t know where we’d be without the University of South Australia’s graduates.

There’s a broad mix of education background too, isn’t there? Because I think people from Interior Architecture and Sustainable Design and Product Design and Contemporary Art have all merged in some way with the JamFactory.

That speaks to the non-linear thing. It’s creative practice through material disciplines so that might be an architect, a contemporary artist, a product developer. It’s a really interesting range of things, and whether it’s the staff or the associates or visiting designers-in-residence or whatever, it’s in the frisson between them that the magic occurs.

One of the projects we’ve done together that encapsulates what you just spoke about is the Adelaide Modern project. We had people from both organizations involved from curatorial premise right through, but we also had students and current professional practitioners and people from the university. It was quite a remarkable drawing together of all those.

That’s one of my favourite projects as well. It was curatorially driven by Andrew Wallace at UniSA and Margaret Hancock Davis at JamFactory, and the idea was to look at it through three different lenses the history of mid-century modernist furniture, product design, mostly furniture, from the Adelaide basin. There are some great historical stories that Andrew was well across.

We had leading figures respond, many of them graduates from UniSA or alumni from JamFactory. 10 objects were selected, and then 10 designer-maker responses to those objects. And I think there were 10 more speculative projects driven by the students and the associates, and these three runways of objects spoke to each other. It was a really special project.

Yeah, it was. That philosophy of what creative education and creative thinking can do is such a powerful element of both institutions. To have the students and associates able to dream these future visions, but also have the support and the skill structure to actually be able to articulate that in an object that is the JamFactory’s primary skill, I think.

I completely agree. The other really interesting element for me in a project like that and this is where the idea of an industry partnership between university and industry is so interesting is the opportunity for many of those students to meet successful practitioners. The opportunity through industry partnerships to make connections is a powerful thing.

I think also, prior to that exhibition, there had been a cycle that, every couple of years, there was an exhibition related to university activities in the JamFactory. And the Interior Architecture program had at least one.

A couple at least. One of them celebrated an anniversary of some significance, and I remember this beautiful wall of names showing every graduate from the Interior Architecture program since inception. But we’ve had, I suppose, a formal partnership a signed MOU agreement for what must now be 12 years or something, and part of that agreement is commitment to a collaborative exhibition every two years. Interior architecture ran the first few. Then I think we had slightly broader engagement with that exhibition you mentioned, the house and homes.

Yeah, that Gab [Bissetto] and Andrew Welch created.

That’s right. That was another iteration of it. And full acknowledgement of Jo Cys in this. She has been a strong personal champion for the partnership and exhibitions. Craig Batty has picked up that baton and is equally passionate. But that’s where we got to talking about the opportunity to really celebrate and acknowledge some of the faculty through these individual exhibitions. Yours was the first in that series, and that seemed fitting with your long relationship with JamFactory. And of course, Gab Bissetto, the second one.

It’s such an important biennial event that not only gives the faculty a wonderful opportunity to focus on their own work, but also strengthens the educational content from a student’s point of view understanding how their faculty members can operate within the professional world the JamFactory provides entry into.

Contextually, if staff are having exhibitions within the institution, it’s different to having an exhibition in an outfacing venue. There’s a sort of ‘real worldness’ to it. Not that the university isn’t real world, but there’s a different kind of engagement it solicits. You and I have talked about the opportunity for development of new curricula for the merged university, and that this ongoing series of projects can provide a backdrop for really good teaching and learning outcomes.

Yes, definitely. Something I’ve really enjoyed over recent years within the Masters program is that we’ve engaged with JamFactory exhibitions and had yourself as a curator, and also Margaret Hancock Davis and Caitlin Eyre, talk to the students. So, they get a sense of the work, but also background knowledge into the curatorial premise. And that is such a rare gift for the students.

It is, and it’s also a great opportunity for our curatorial staff. When you’re talking about art and design to audiences, you have to be mindful of who the audience is. If you’re talking to the general public, you’re finding hooks, finding ways in. If you’re talking to Master’s students, you can dive deeper into the how and why. They’re actually some of the nicest talks to do.

Yeah, that’s good to hear because we love it and hopefully it can keep going into the future. It would be fantastic.

It’s really the thing that we as curators get excited about. Often, many of the audiences we deal with are not as excited about those things, but that cohort gets it.

It’s making me think about the series of regular Wednesday talks you’ve developed over the last number of years that are now ensconced on the university campus. That’s a really powerful connection, I think.

In some ways it reflects the UTAS Art Forum program we both enjoyed as students back in the day. We do four terms of six talks a term and get an average of about you know 60 or 70 people at each talk. Because it happens within the university, you’re getting interesting opportunities for staff and students to connect with JamFactory associates and staff and the visiting artists and designers that we bring.

I think education is shifting in general, where that sort of personal engagement, physical engagement is part of it, but there’s also the online experience and people being able to access information. I’m not sure if you’re still recording those, but the series recorded in the Mercury Cinema proved to be a wonderful resource for students. If you can’t make it to the talk, you can go back and still get this recording, see the film. That’s a really nice thing as well.

One of the nice things is that some students who’ve graduated come to JamFactory through engagement from things like the talks. I remember Rashmi [Subudhi], for instance, came to several of the talks and became confident enough to get to know more people as a way of, I guess, positioning herself more strongly for her application.

It breaks down the sense of intimidation some students may have. The JamFactory’s profile is strong, and they may be thinking ‘am I actually at the level where I could do this?’

That’s a good point. If you can create opportunities at social events to break it down to a much more human-to-human thing, suddenly you’ve just opened the door a little bit for somebody. And that can be enough for people who are driven.

Yeah. It goes the other way as well, doesn’t it? When you have people in the professional world who then consider something like a higher degree by research. It can also be a very intimidating process.

Absolutely.

Thinking, ‘my goodness, am I capable? Can I do this?’ So, again, that personal link.

You’re absolutely right. There are other areas where the links are very strong, and I think it should be mentioned that UniSA is one of the few universities in the country that still maintains facilities to enable working with glass. That’s a very important thing for us, with glass perhaps our best known or most visible program. I acknowledge the work Gab has done to safeguard those elements within evolving programs over the years within the university, and I think the JamFactory’s co-location has probably helped ensure the longevity of those facilities and programs because there’s this immediate industry connection. People can see what pathways and success looks like next door.

Am I right in thinking some artists-in-residence who have come into the JamFactory have also taught at the university during their residency, and vice versa?

Yeah, we’ve had visiting people do things in both institutions, and we regularly have students from the university come and do either work-integrated learning placements or casual employment for us. So, there’s a sort of semi-permeable membrane, if you like. There have been dozens over the last few years.

Yeah. That’s great.

Glass was worth a special mention, but it’s that breadth, you know. There are so many different layers of engagement, and having the partnership just allows these different links to happen. We’ve been doing more in the built environment, and view our role as trying to grow opportunities and employment for people out of the material disciplines. Much of the work we’re doing is supported by interior designers and architects in Adelaide who are alumni of UniSA and have a familiarity with JamFactory. This has helped establish confidence to work with us on big commercial projects, creating opportunities for employment and other income generation for a whole bunch of people.

Considering the evolution of society in general, but also technologies and interests and education in the JamFactory’s earlier days, students came out of the ’70s and ’80s tertiary systems that focused on making and developing hand skills, and that’s changed over the last, say, 30 years. Now there’s greater emphasis on technologies and conceptual development.

I think this shift both in what people want from a university education and the JamFactory’s training has been incremental, but it’s kept evolving. And I’ve been interested to see the JamFactory developing the short courses of hand skills which have proven very successful, I imagine, because you keep running them.

Yeah, it has been a delightfully successful program. It’s nice to have students from UniSA and elsewhere who want to further refine a particular craft skill in a way that’s difficult in the context of an undergraduate degree program.

That kind of relationship I think is really lovely, and it does reflect those evolutionary changes you’ve talked about. Maybe there’s something in that for the future I understand it’s difficult in the context of a modern university to have the largesse we might have enjoyed as students, where you could have four people in a class getting, effectively, masterapprentice-type tutoring. That’s just not viable in a modern context. But for some practices, material understanding is going to unlock creative potential.

Yes, for sure. That’s reminded me of a student’s project recently, probably in the last couple of years, a Sustainable Design Master’s student who was looking at the ecology of exhibiting across Adelaide. It was fascinating because she was looking into the carbon footprint and sustainable life cycle of what can be an incredibly wasteful exhibition support process. And she not only worked closely with the JamFactory, but she linked this in with the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Museum of Discovery.

Yeah, I absolutely agree.

This segues into the opportunities around linked research. We’ve enjoyed being part of ARC linkage projects and particularly the one with Guy Culliman’s transformative repair space where our networks and public facing facilities have enabled particular kinds of non-traditional research outcomes, and great public engagement opportunities around collaborative research. With Professor Susan Luckman, we’ve tried to get some other things off the ground.

We haven’t quite got there, but we will, I’m sure. The industry partnership linkage grant space is a rich industry with so many different cultural and economic levers, whether it’s the sustainability of exhibitions or some other factor, the opportunities to look at real-world activity through a research lens to improve practice in some way or interrogate ways of thinking that’s gold.

At various points throughout my tenure I’ve enjoyed great engagement with the faculty and the school. It’s allowed me to be aware of the issues and strategic priorities of the various iterations of the schools, and helped us identify potential links in all kinds of modest and more profound ways. As someone working in a leadership role in this industry, I’ve certainly valued having direct and personal engagement with senior staff at the university. I think that speaks to the quality of the partnership.

Yes. I’m thinking about the research base too, which for artists and crafts people and designers is such a critical factor. The fact that here is a centre that immerses you in primary source research right next to another centre that looks at research in a very broad lens from primary and secondary. I think the strength between the two institutions being able to cross one to the other for that is invaluable. I’m pretty excited about how it’s going to keep moving forward at the new university.

Contributors

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Acknowledgement

This publication has been made possible through the generous support of the UniSA Creative Executive Team.

The views and opinions expressed in the interviews are solely those of the individual contributors and do not reflect the University’s official position or policies and/or are not intended to represent the University of South Australia.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or copyright holder.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Published December 2025

ISBN: 978-0-646-73019-6

Degrees of Impact is a collection of dialogues that reveal moments of creative leadership, teaching evolution, and cultural influence.

Spanning people, projects, and pathways, these conversations capture the pivotal moments, philosophies, and provocations that have shaped UniSA Creative, offering insight, reflection, and inspiration for the next generation of those who wish to create impact in their own way.