Country & Connection
What is Country?
Country represents the lands, waterways and seas. The term contains complex ideas about law, place, custom, language, spiritual belief, cultural practice, material sustenance, family and identity (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies).
Understanding Place and Country is pivotal to understanding First Nations creative expression and design practices.
“We do not simply discover knowledge, because knowledge reveals itself and has its own agency, as does creative material practices including design. Blak Design has its own agency…this agency transpires from Place, from Country. It is in and from Place that it Becomes conceptualised and materialised”
Cultural Conservation
We acknowledge the significance of art and design as story, history and identity. Creative expression serves as a constant connection to country, culture and knowledge.
Cultural integrity is cemented at the very core of Solid Lines.
We have developed an Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property policy document to guide ways of working, and to protect the cultural heritage of our artists. Solid Lines is committed to ensuring the stories and histories of our artists are safely respected when working with clients unfamiliar with First Nations cultural and intellectual property.
We are primarily focused on facilitating safe and supportive commercial relationships for First Nations artists.
You can access our comprehensive Indigneous Cultural and Intellectual Property Policy here:
Processes & Pathways
Solid Lines is guided by four core values:
Transparency: To ensure Solid Lines is led by First Nations people. For open and honest dialogue and two-way knowledge sharing between First Nations artists and clients, particularly in relation to business and cultural practices.
Integrity: To ensure the development of Solid Lines has clear set intentions from the outset and is held accountable for those throughout the development process.
Recognising diversity: To recognise the diversity of First Nations creative expressions and acknowledge First Nations art as an active and evolving practice.
Community at the heart: To ensure reciprocal obligations to invest, nurture, and give back to community.
Building Pathways
Solid Lines merges cultural integrity and commercial values through a capacity building pathway. We are, and will continue to develop this openly and honestly alongside our artists.
Community engagement — through capacity building, education and training – is the most effective and authentic method of increasing First Nations representation and carving employment pathways within the Australian commercial art and design industry.
Solid Lines embodies a commitment to community. We are working to create the following:
- A mentoring pathway will be built into the commissions and profit structure of Solid Lines to provide opportunities for emerging First Nations artists to gain greater understanding, access and participation in commercial spaces
- A practice of shared knowledge through professional experience will be developed among current and emerging First Nations artists to improve the current levels of representation within the industry
- A focus area for mentoring will be the development and delivery of education and training for First Nations creatives who do not have ready access to capacity building in the design and commercial art industries, particularly for creatives living in rural and remote areas
Our Commitment
The Jacky Winter Group Statement of Commitment to the First Nations of Australia was developed as a strategic document to raise the status and visibility of First Nations creatives.
The innovative process of developing this document encouraged internal reflection and change, officially embedding processes of respect and acknowledgement of First Nations sovereignty into the everyday business of Jacky Winter.
The complete and comprehensive Statement of Commitment can be viewed here:
