Co-designing and facilitating a workshop to develop a Gomeroi advisory group.

Background

We were engaged by the Department of Planning and Environment, NSW to continue the Reconnecting Watercourse Country work commenced in Co-designing and facilitating a workshop to develop a Gomeroi advisory group.

Opportunity for futures

The Murray Darling Basin is a hotly contested area, with over a century of mismanagement, disregard for First Nations peoples and knowledge and water theft colliding with the impacts of climate change to create a series of wicked problems impacting First Nations peoples (the Gwydir is within the lands of the Gomeroi Nation), the environment, landholders and locals. This is a significant project that engages and consults with the Gomeroi community to form an Advisory Group, the structure of this group, the processes the group adheres to and the approach for establishing the group, including the development of a transparent application process, ensuring ongoing input into the Reconnecting Watercourse Country project.

Our approach

The Gwydir First Nations Environmental Water group is being established to work with Government on environmental water management in the Gwydir. This group is supported by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office and NSW Environment and Heritage Group. We approached this project via our extensive experience developing and facilitating co-design projects, supporting the formation and continued functionality of advisory groups (and similar) and our extensive work with First Nations In relation to developing an advisory group, we developed a range of bespoke design tools to support conversation and the building of consensus over the course of a two-day workshop, this included spending time on Country and taking part in a big mapping process. Drawing on the collated and analysed workshop outcomes we summarised these for the Department for their consideration of next steps.