Co-designing a Five-Year First Nations Strategy
Background
Relative Creative is engaged by Sunwater to develop a Five-Year First Nations Strategy that supports long-term organisational commitment, accountability and action. The strategy responds to Sunwater’s responsibilities as a major Queensland water infrastructure organisation operating across First Nations Country’s, and builds on existing roadmaps, policies and commitments, including alignment with Closing the Gap targets. While their First Nations commitment statement is a point of pride in the organisation they identified that there were gaps in being able to implement the commitments strategically.
Previously, Relative Creative have co-designed a Roadmap for implementation and this has helped drive conversations forward. However, instead of a Reconciliation Action Plan, Sunwater have decided to take corporate accountability and actively develop a full-suite First Nations Strategy, led by their First Nations strategy team. The work we do to help them get there is grounded in strategic design and futures thinking embedded within decolonial praxis. It draws on extensive experience co-creating Reconciliation Action Plans, First Nations frameworks and organisational strategies across government, industry and community contexts, underpinned by academic practice and national and international experience.
Opportunity for futures
Sunwater owns and operates at a number of sites across regional Queensland. At all of these sites Sunwater is seeking to develop strong and mutually beneficial relationships with Traditional Owners and other First Nations residents. Concurrently, Sunwater recognises its role as an employee in creating a culturally responsive workplace. They have an opportunity to lead by example and demonstrate critical best-practice in what a First Nations Strategy from a peak infrastructure body can be.
This project creates an opportunity to move beyond compliance-led approaches toward a future-focused, strengths-based First Nations strategy and embed meaningful relationships with First Nations peoples across its operations. The five-year horizon enables the organisation to articulate clear strategic pillars, actions and accountabilities while remaining adaptive to emerging priorities, policy shifts and lived experience. The process supports leadership alignment, organisational learning and the development of measurable outcomes that are transparent and durable over time.
Approach
We used a structured yet creative process combining research, participatory workshops and futures-led design methods. An initial research and preparation phase reviewed Sunwater’s existing roadmap, relevant policies, exemplar strategies and external benchmarks. Insights were then synthesised into a full-day, executive-level workshop designed to move from divergent ideas to converged rough start of Strategy. Workshop 1 focused on unpacking aspirations, goals and emerging strategies using mapping process. A summary outcomes document captured insights and directions.
An organisation-wide questionnaire gathered quantitative input on priorities and aspirations, also informed the draft strategy. Workshop 2 refined strategic pillars, actions and KPIs. Following this, we are finalising the design and development of the First Nations Strategy for internal and external use.
