Many careful hands working to make something beautiful, thoughtful and nourishing. Woven brings together a holistic understandingof the needs of Country. This is a team of people genuinely invested in listening and learning from Country, led by river systems, parrot pathways and air currents. Across many yarns and inspiring site-visits the team has come to an intimate understanding of this Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, largely thanks to the care of Uncle Shane Nelson whose guidance through both the NGA gardens and the broader mountains, rivers and basins has been intrinsic to our final proposal.

Woven is situated within an understanding thatall parts are interconnected: story, song, sky, water, plants, animals, birds, people, culture, art and all. This garden design has been formed by the understanding that all parts inform the other, and we invite visitors into that space of curiosity, learning and delight.

A good weaving responds to the hands, fibres and stories of those who make it, and this project has involved many careful hands working to make something beautiful, thoughtful and nourishing. The garden has been created to delight the senses: pathways that travel over and through with interconnection and surprise; whispering plants and hidden songs of Country; the scents of fresh water and blooming flowers who have always known this place; a gathering site in the new pavilion; with space to dwell amongst the magnificent artwork from the NGA collection.

Like any good weaving, our designs are intended to be strong in function yet supple enough to adapt with new input. Overarching themes and principles sit at the heart of what we're offering, but specific locations and elements are flexible and open to shifting as more information arises.

In the process of conceiving this design the Woven team have created a joyous work dynamic that is curious, inclusive, inspired, playful and respectful. This creative team has formed a powerful bond that is evidenced in the care for place and one another that runs throughout the proposal. We believe that this garden, much like the NGA it encircles, will be a place of international renown, while deeply embedded in Country. Working closely with Ngunnawal and Ngambri communities, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who call Kamberri (Canberra) home, this project has the potential to create new and deep bonds between people, sky, water, Country, art, landscape and culture for generations to come.

Collective Dreaming Statement
    words by Jazz Money

Heliotope, in collaboration with SBLA [landscape architecture] and Sandpit [user experience] were shortlisted by Hobart City Council to re-centre the nipaluna | Hobart waterfront with a Tasmanian Aboriginal context.

We were privileged to spend time with Tony Brown [Senior Curator of Indigenous Cultures at Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery TMAG] to understand pre- and post-European settlement experiences. Through our research we mapped the location of the waterfront across the millennia First Peoples have inhabited this place; as well as a zoomed in study of the shifts that have occurred over the last 250 years; and projected sea level rises.

Our scheme proposed a series of tactics around peeling back the layers of settlement to reveal and re-instate Country. Our central gesture was to re-instate a floating version of what was once known as Hunter Island the natural docking point for the first ships that came into the river, now subsumed by the concrete docks on the site. This island would be densely planted with endemic species, and perceptual shifts across time would occur as it changes location around the waterfront, one day appearing next to a docked yacht; another day out in the river.