WILYA JANTA IS AN INNOVATIVE ABORIGINAL NOT-FOR-PROFIT CULTURAL CONSULTANCY THAT IS TRULY LED BY COMMUNITY LEADERS AND ELDERS AND SUPPORTED BY PARTNERS THEY HAVE CHOSEN TO WORK WITH.

Wilya Janta is an innovative Aboriginal not-for-profit cultural consultancy that promotes community agency in the design and construction of housing in Indigenous communities.

Information

Seeking to re-invent the remote housing design and construction lifecycle, Wilya Janta puts the tenant at the centre of the design process with the core aim of building culturally appropriate homes.

Every direction that we go in is directed by our board, our founders and our members, as dictated by our constitution. Wilya Janta is moving in the direction that Wumpurrarni set. Our team takes instruction and then, like warlukun (starting a fire), we all blow together to make sure that these ideas flame to life.

We have developed a process of iterative design to ensure community and culture remain at the centre whilst optimising thermal performance and construction costs. Through this process we are developing relationships with industry partners nationally who have the capacity to innovate better, more affordable and scalable methods that can then be more broadly replicated.

Given the almost complete deficit in evaluation of remote housing in the NT we are also partnering with academic and research partners to ensure that learnings at all stages are incorporated into iterative improvements in design and construction as Wilya Janta catches fire and spreads.

The pilot homes that we are building in Tennant Creek have been designed by their future residents using processes developed through the journey, supported at each step by our architectural team at OFFICE in collaboration with Prof. Paul Memmott who has worked in Jurnkkurakurr for 50 years, coupled with the expertise in remote housing brought by Troppo.

The imminent construction of these two "Explain Homes" will be the first ever display homes designed by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people, and will celebrate Wilya Janta’s first housing collaboration. The pilot will demonstrate and ensure these core cultural design principles. The results will be beautiful, functional, culturally safe, thermally efficient, off-grid, climate resilient housing that maintains a connection between the built environment, the community, and the natural surroundings.

With the success of the demonstration homes, Wilya Janta will engage in larger-scale housing initiatives and government funders, replicating its consultative process to facilitate community vision of affordable, well-designed housing.

Team

Norm was born in the back of a Kingswood in 1973 out the front of Tennant Creek Hospital. He is a Warumungu Elder, having been through ceremony on both his mothers’ and fathers’ side. His totems are jalitjilpa (white cockatoo) and the two butterfly women. Norm has an extensive background in community advocacy, with previous employment at Urapuntja Health Service as mechanic and an ambulance driver.

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Norman Frank Jupurrurla

Founder, Warumungu Elder, Cultural Leader

Simon has a background in engineering, has worked as a specialist physician mostly in remote NT for the past two decades, and has been culturally mentored by his mate Norm since 2006. He has a strong background in innovation, research and evaluation within the remote Wumpurrarni context that he has lived and worked.

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Simon Quilty

CEO

Patricia was born and raised in the mission days at Banka Banka Station 100km north of Tennant. She is now team leader at the Women’s Centre Piliyintinji-ki Stronger Families at Anyinginyi Aboriginal Health Service and has had seminal leadership roles in multiple community organisations in Tennant Creek.

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Patricia Frank Nurururla

Co-founder, Warumungu Elder

Jimmy is considered the cultural spokesman of Tennant Creek. He has deep and rich culture passed on to him by his father, and his creative and intellectual gifts go well beyond the arts which he practises as a member of the Tennant Creek Brio. Jimmy is a very strong culture man serving his community in a number of committee roles for the CLC, NTAIC and other organisations.

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Jimmy Frank Jupurrurla

Warumungu Leader and Emerging Elder, Chair of Wilya Janta

Nathan is a plumber with decades of remote construction partnership in Central Australia. Through his multiple community leadership roles, Nathan has worked to develop construction employment opportunities for young Aboriginal people. He is very well known and regarded throughout remote communities as someone who gets essential services going, a real connector between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

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Nathan McAuliffe

Independent Board Member, Wilya Janta

Gabe has extensive experience in business and innovation. He has completed a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA in Sustainability, and has 8 years experience in a lead role as the Business Manager for Purple House. Gabe grew up in Alice Springs and has a strong track record in working to help Aboriginal businesses to thrive.

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Gabriel Waterford

Business Manager, Wilya Janta

Serena is an Alyawarra woman who was raised with deep culture on the edges of cattle stations around Ampilatawatja. She has strong matriarchal roles in her community of Tennant Creek and holds strong knowledge of how families can thrive in hot, arid environments.

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Serena Morton Nabanunga

Our Partners

Wilya Janta works closely with the local community of Tennant Creek, and an expanded network of organisations, industry and academic experts.

Aboriginal Housing Northern Territory
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The Northern Territory’s peak body for Aboriginal Housing was established in 2015 by community leaders who wanted to regain control over housing.

A/Prof. Louise Crabtree-Hayes
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Professor Louise Crabtree-Hayes is a professorial research fellow in Western Sydney University’s Institute for Culture and Society. Louise has a background in science and human geography and is Australia’s leading expert on community land trusts and housing co-operatives. Her work spans sustainability, resilience, property, and collaborative governance, and is based on a longstanding desire for human and non-human life to thrive.

A/Prof. Veronica Matthews
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(Quandamooka) is a Senior Research Fellow at the University Centre for Rural Health, University of Sydney. Her work focuses on supporting community-led research to strengthen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander holistic health care systems and blends her passions of healthy Country and healthy mob, working alongside many diverse First Nations communities to embed First Nations knowledges and processes into multisectoral research. She co-leads the Centre for Research Excellence in Strengthening Systems for Indigenous Health Care Equity and the Indigenous Knowledges theme of the Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) Network, both national collaborations of service providers, policymakers and researchers.

Emergent Group
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Experience in thermal design, materials, logistics and engineering solutions that empower community agency in housing design, cost effectiveness and environmental responsibility.

Julalikari Council Aboriginal Corporation
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With its roots in community agency since 1974, Julalikari’s central tenet is to alleviate poverty and improve the wellbeing of Aboriginal people in the Barkly region.

King, Wood and Mallesons
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Providing pro-bono legal advice on corporate and governance related matters and working in partnership with Clayton Utz in Darwin on innovative tenure solutions for the first pilot project.

OFFICE
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OFFICE is a not-for-profit multidisciplinary design and research practice based in Melbourne. Their projects span the intersections of built form, research, discourse and education. As a registered charity, the studio’s operations, processes and outputs are bound by a constitution to make projects for the public good.

Original Power
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An organisation that works with remote communities on sustainable renewable energy solutions, Original Power already has a strong track record of working alongside Wilya Janta community elders and is considered kinship to our community.

Prof. Paul Memmott
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Professor of Anthropology and Architecture, University of Queensland, internationally regarded in his field with deep roots in the Tennant Creek community and a world leader in the space between Indigenous culture and housing design.

Trident Plumbing
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Extensive plumbing and construction experience in remote NT, proven track record in community engagement in construction projects with strong connections across Central Australian communities.

Troppo Architects
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Architects with decades of experience designing and building in remote communities, with strong industry connections to make housing happen.

Steensen Varming
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A global engineering consultancy specialising in building services and sustainability, a Danish firm which was founded in 1933 and came to Australia with Jorn Utzon in 1957 to engineer the construction of the Sydney Opera House.

Dusseldorp Forum
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Dusseldorp Forum is a family foundation focused on improving education, health, and social outcomes for children, their families, and communities across Australia. They provide funding and support to community-led initiatives demonstrating positive, long-term change for young people.

Ian Potter Foundation
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The Ian Potter Foundation is a major Australian philanthropic foundation that supports and promotes excellence and innovation. The Ian Potter Foundation's philanthropy is guided by their funding principles which underscore a set of specific objectives for each of the program areas.

Contact us

General enquiries
hello@wilyajanta.org

Philanthropic support
Simon Quilty
sq@wilyajanta.org

Wilya Janta Consulting

We consult on cultural design and deep community engagement, and how to evaluate the broad impacts of housing projects. Our consultants include Warumungu people with deep cultural and ecological understanding of living well in hot climates, people with uninterrupted traditional perspectives on how to apply such knowledge to the design of housing. They are the first in the Barkly to have driven the design of their homes, and through this are developing a comprehensive understanding from a cultural perspective of agency in design and construction processes. They are ideally placed to work between housing funders, providers and Indigenous communities anywhere in Australia to ensure that community engagement and consultation stays true, to make sure that these vital steps add real and tangible outcomes to homes that work better for families, community and culture.

Reach out to our team if you have a community engagement / design / evaluation challenge that you think we might be able to assist with. If you're not completely sure you've got it right, you could do with our help!