This my Country, I’m Painting Here: The role of social practice art and participatory design in building resilience and place-making in the Warmun Aboriginal Community, Kimberley, Western Australia

This paper reports on the design, implementation and evaluation of a socially inclusive and locally driven public arts program enacted in the Warmun Aboriginal Community, East Kimberley, Western Australia. The broader research is focused on how situated art practices informed by participatory design processes and Indigenous knowledge systems can transform the experience of place in remote Indigenous communities. Here, ‘design’ is about making sense of things and ‘participation’ means collaboration; caring, attending to and listening, and co-creation to negotiate complex problems and promote healing and emancipation. This paper closes with a critical reflection on how these design and consultation processes have disrupted my own inclusive design practice (as a non-Indigenous design researcher), and where relationships between designers and users, and social transformation have been reimagined.