First Nations Performing Arts Workforce Development Framework 2025-2030

BlakDance is proud to stand alongside our sister organisations in launching the First Nations Performing Arts Workforce Development Framework 2025–2030.

DOWNLOAD FRAMEWORK HERE

Together, our companies represent a range of First Peoples’ Performing Arts disciplines, art forms and expertise. Offering a First Nations-led vision for real change – for us, by us. 

From these unique viewpoints the Framework addresses the current and enduring challenges surrounding First Peoples performing artists and artsworkers, from training and employment, to retention and self-determined leadership. 

Legacy, Lineage and Action

We follow in the footsteps of our contemporary innovators, political agitators and movement-makers, from the establishment of professional Blak theatre and dance in the 1970s, to the founding of NAISDA Dance College in 1976 and AIDT in 1989.

The 2005 Creating Pathways forum was a turning point, uniting artists to call for training, touring, mentorship, and self-representation.

Led by founding Artistic Director Marilyn Miller, BlakDance emerged from this momentum.

“We are all in our places of work, our homelands, our calling - eagerly awaiting the outcomes of the forum and hoping that we really have created pathways.”

- Marilyn Miller, Founder of BlakDance

A New Era of Workforce Development

The Framework outlines a 10-year First Nations-led strategy to transform how we recruit, train, and retain a culturally strong and sustainable First Nations performing arts workforce.

  • A pathway to reach 100% First Peoples employment across First Nations Performing Arts Collective organisations (currently 53.4%)

  • A scalable, embedded workforce model coordinated by First Nations organisations

  • Strategies for training, on-the-job learning, retention, wellbeing and cultural safety

  • Alignment with Revive’s “First Nations First” principle, Closing the Gap Target 8, and the 2024 Productivity Commission’s call for community-led solutions

Our Call to the Sector

The Framework is a call to action for long-term investment, cultural safety, and 100% First Peoples representation in our sector.

This is about legacy. Sovereignty, and a future where our stories, voices, and labour are valued and sustained.

We are now advocating for federal investment in a business case to bring this model to life.

MORE INFO

To learn more about the consultation process and development of this report, visit the First Nations Workforce Development Roundtable page here

The development of this report has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.