Stories as Old as Time: Parrtjima Wins Good Design Gold
There are projects that challenge you technically. And then there are projects that ask something deeper, inviting you into stories told for tens of thousands of years, to help carry them forward in ways that honour their timelessness.
Parrtjima – A Festival in Light is that kind of work.
This week, our work on Parrtjima was recognised as an Australian Good Design Award Gold Winner in the Built Environment category. The jury called it “a stunning installation that amplifies Indigenous voices in a unique and contemporary manner” and “a new benchmark for community engagement, co-design, and cultural impact.”
But the real recognition came earlier: in the moments we witnessed visitors and artists moved to tears, in the trust placed in us by the Parrtjima Festival Reference Group and curator Rhoda Roberts AO, in the 20,000 people who walked through illuminated stories on Country.
The World’s First Aboriginal Light Festival
Parrtjima is the world’s first Aboriginal light festival. Set against the 300-million-year-old MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia, the free 10-night festival translates the work of First Nations artists into large-scale, immersive light installations, showcasing the oldest continuous culture on earth through contemporary technology.
The 2025 festival, curated by Rhoda Roberts AO under the theme Timelessness, brought together over 120 Indigenous artists and performers. As Design Directors alongside Event Directors We Are Gather, we translated Roberts’ curatorial vision into spatial reality through experience master planning, sculptural light installation design, and immersive storytelling across six major installations.
Every element was shaped through deep consultation with the Parrtjima Festival Reference Group and local Arrernte communities.
Design Shaped by Community
Transforming Light and Country by artist and Traditional Owner Lyall Giles was a standout innovation. His painting Warmurrungu maps the desert terrain of Tjukurla, a Dreaming story of ancestral emus travelling to a ceremonial ochre site and transforming into trees.
We translated this into a three-dimensional storyscape. A sculptural network embedded with 3,200 hand-tied pixel lights created a living topography visitors could walk through. Surrounding interactive drums triggered light animations in rhythm with ancestral emu calls, syncing sound and movement in real time.
The decision to hand-tie those 3,200 lights wasn’t arbitrary. Machine fabricators would have spaced them equally. But that’s not how Lyall paints. His dots are organic, intuitive, alive. So we hand-tied each one to honour the original artwork’s rhythm and energy.
The Gateway was a large-scale community art project involving Aboriginal Art Centres. Artists from Alice Springs’ Antalya, Irlpme, and Mparntwe estate groups painted towering poles with traditional markings, expressing deep connections to homelands, skin groups, and Country. Glowing with phosphorescent light and spelling out the Arrernte greeting WERTE, it welcomed visitors to Country.
Three Generations of Station Women was a cinematic installation by Illustrator and animator Molly Hunt and sound designer Mark Coles Smith , which celebrated the resilience and power of Aboriginal stockwomen across generations, telling the story of how these women hold families and communities together through wisdom, strength, and love.
Large Scale Impact
Parrtjima 2025 drew over 20,000 attendees, delivering the second-highest turnout in the festival’s 10-year history. The festival injected significant economic value into Alice Springs while providing a national platform for First Nations voices across art, music, story, and ceremony.
Designed for longevity, modular installations are built for re-use in future festivals or touring, extending their cultural and commercial life.
The jury noted the project’s “significant impact of community engagement and co-design to boost tourism, businesses, and cultural pride”, calling it “impactful and accessible”.
What Design Can Do
This year’s Australian Good Design Awards theme, Design for Better, celebrates design’s power to drive positive change for people and planet. To earn Gold in the Built Environment category means the work went well beyond the criteria for good design and demonstrated outstanding quality, innovation, and impact.
This is what happens when design honours culture and centres collaboration. When narrative becomes immersive. When ancient stories breathe through contemporary technology.
As we transition from Grumpy Sailor to Grumpy Studios, this is the work we’re building toward. Experiences of scale that move people. Collaborations that honour the communities and stories at their heart. Work that matters.
Gratitude
To Rhoda Roberts AO, the Parrtjima Festival Reference Group, Northern Territory Government, Tourism and Events NT, We Are Gather, the custodians of Desert Park, and every First Nations artist and performer featured: thank you. Your work made this project glow so brilliantly.
The Gold Winners competed for Best in Class accolades at the 2025 Australian Good Design Awards Ceremony last Friday 17 October at ICC Sydney.
View the full list of 2025 Australian Good Design Award Winners at www.good-design.org
Learn more about Parrtjima at parrtjima.com.au