Mrs Alison Page

About the speaker

Our speaker today is Mrs Alison Page.

Alison is a descendant of the Walbanga and Wadi Wadi people of the Yuin nation. She is an award-winning Designer and Creative Director of the National Aboriginal Design Agency. Until recently, she was the founding CEO of the Saltwater Freshwater Arts Alliance, which is an arts organization that brings together ten Aboriginal communities to host the annual Saltwater Freshwater Festival.

In 2013, Alison was named the Female Regional / Rural Entrepreneur Manager of the Year in the National Australia Bank Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards and was named by Crikey as one of the top ten women to watch.

For eight years, Alison was a regular panellist of the ABC program The New Inventors. She is a board member of Ninti One Ltd, the Indigenous Land Corporation and the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence. In 2011, Alison was appointed by the Prime Minister to the Expert Panel for the Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous People.

After graduating at UTS with a Bachelor of Design, she has worked with various urban and rural Aboriginal communities in the delivery of culturally appropriate architectural and design services in association with Merrima Design.

It gives me great pleasure to invite Mrs Alison Page to deliver the occasional address.

Speech

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that today’s ceremony is taking place on the Traditional lands of the Cadigal people and I would like to pay my respects to Elders past and present.

To the Presiding Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Faculty Dean and staff members but most importantly; the graduates, your families and friends. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on this very special day. It is an honour to stand before you all to congratulate you on the determination and ambition that you have shown to get here.

It was 17 years ago that I sat right there where you are now relieved that I had completed what I thought was the most challenging journey I had been on in my young life.

Like I am sure some of you have felt; there were times that I didn’t think I could do it. As if the study wasn’t hard enough, it was living and surviving in the city as a student that I found the hardest. There were times when the city life almost got the better of me and I wanted to pack my bags and head home. But I didn’t give up and neither did you. So, in the presence of your families who know what you have sacrificed, I want to pay respect to the courage and tenacity you have shown to make it to the end.

I sat where you are sitting now; excited at the possibilities of the future, yet blissfully unaware at just how fulfilling a career that design would offer me. So I want to congratulate you on choosing what I think is the best career you could have possibly chosen.   

I say this with confidence because, it doesn’t matter where you end up working; we have been taught unique ways of thinking and seeing that allow us to be the people in the room that imagine the impossible, suggest the absurd and question everything. 

You are the inventors and innovators that have seen in recent times the creation of the wheelchair that can stand and walk, clothes that release vitamins into the body and the creation of cities that are fed by urban farms. Quantum leaps in thinking, from people who have been taught to look at the world with the ways and means to improving it.

We designers love to identify what is unique so I would like to point out what is unique about you.

You are creative. You have learnt that the most mundane tasks can be transformed with a lateral approach and it is this that is at the heart of innovation. Having the confidence to throw out what isn’t working and to test out new ideas is what has advanced our societies so greatly.

You are a great communicator. Use what you have been taught to bring ideas to life. You have learnt that there are many languages beyond the written word and the ability to convey an idea through drawings and diagrams can bring a level of clarity and dynamism to any conversation and this will make you a valuable asset to any team. You can take this to the next level and create a vision of your own that you articulate with such clarity and passion so as to recruit others to subscribe to your vision. This is when you will become a true leader.

You are a problem solver. The business community has realised that there exists now a species of thinkers called designers that never say no. In fact, the bigger the challenge and greater the constraints, the more creative designers seem to get. Called design thinking, this area of design, which is having a massive impact in business and in international development, is probably the biggest growth area for our kind. This is about the appreciation of design as a process, not just a product.

You ask open questions. You have been taught to use enquiry and advocacy in such a way that can establish really what is going on. Master the art of listening without fear and with a truly open mind, not reacting or anticipating the answer. And you do this with empathy.

You bring people together. The notion of working in a studio alone and emerging with a brilliant idea to bestow upon the world in complete isolation is ridiculous

Great ideas come from partnerships, sometimes across continents and sometimes between villages and global companies.

Last year, I visited the UK and met with one of the world’s largest carpet companies. They are paying Filipino fisherman to collect ghost nets off the ocean floor to extract nylon and recycling it into carpet. This is an unlikely partnership between a community and the big end of town that is solving an environmental problem, fostering a social enterprise and designing a truly sustainable product for the western world.

This project is an example of how environmental, social and economic improvements can be achieved through design and partnering. It is using technology to foster collaboration and co-creation between people to solve problems.

One of the most profound things that I was told in my life was said to me by a teacher here at UTS. His name is Bob Morgan and he is a passionate Aboriginal Elder and educator. I asked him what the difference between western and Indigenous thinking was and he talked to me about baking bread.

He said that you can follow the recipe as you have been taught and make a perfectly good loaf of bread. This is the western way. However, it is the stories and jokes that you tell as you make it with others and the relationships that you forge that make it taste so good. This is the indigenous way. What he was saying was that having an open mind and a great attitude is just as, if not more important than technical ability. My mothers way of saying exactly the same thing is “it is your attitude, not you aptitude that will determine your altitude”.

So if you aren’t already, be conscious about what is in your heart and bring that part of yourself to every project you work on. Let down your guard and show your vulnerabilities. Not only will you will gain the respect of those around you, you will bring a new depth of meaning to the work that you do.

Understand the world in which we are living and grow and adapt with it. There is no industry today that isn’t re-evaluating itself to consider the environmental impact of what they are doing. As it is still a relatively new consideration, it will be many of you that will be charged with the responsibility of taking your industry through these necessary changes.  

Also emerging in many industries is the importance of social outcomes in projects and programs that we undertake. These are the hard to measure, intangible successes that we have throughout our career. It can be as simple as mentoring a student, engaging community groups in the delivery of projects or building a comfortable team environment.

My final piece of advice is to make careful and courageous decisions about where you go to work. It is important to feel pride in who you work for as your colleagues will become your mentors and you too will mentor those that follow. Make sure that the values of an organisation reflect your own so that you can be passionate about what you do.

I can’t tell you where you will be in 17 years-time but what I do know is that where you start now will probably be completely different to where you end up. People I studied with all those years ago are now in the film industry, in television, in business and practicing art. So get ready and hold on for the ride.

Even though your journey of learning has only just begun, the way that you have been taught to analyse the world is your greatest asset.  What makes you valuable to the world is that you don’t just think everything is ripe for reinvention, you act on it.

So this year, the University of Technology, Sydney, lets loose a new set of activists to improve our world.

So finally, to the graduates of 2014, it is time to feel great pride in yourself and to celebrate the journey so far. We wish you all the best and hope that your future brings much adventure and opportunity.

Thank you.