Naya Wa Yugali — NAISDA Dance College Campus Expansion

The Project

NAISDA Dance College is Australia's premier tertiary institution for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance and performing arts, based at Kariong on the Central Coast. After 45 years of growth, the college needed a purpose-built campus to support an expanded national programme, a vision named Naya Wa Yugali, meaning "We Dance" in Darkinjung language. Root Partnerships was engaged as infrastructure project manager, working alongside Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects to develop the concept design and business case for government funding.

The Challenge

NAISDA's existing facilities at Kariong simply couldn't support where the college needed to go. The ambition was to grow from three accredited courses to eight, add on-campus accommodation, cultural facilities, community performance spaces, and an Indigenous Performing Arts collection. This wasn't a renovation, it required an entirely new campus. And to secure the capital funding, we needed a business case rigorous enough to stand up to federal and state government scrutiny, articulating why this investment mattered culturally, socially, and economically.

My Approach

I managed the project from brief development through to the completed business case, coordinating Tonkin Zulaikha Greer as they developed a campus master plan centred around a unifying "Songline", connected buildings, outdoor performance spaces, dance studios, accommodation, and community facilities arranged around a central Bungoul Ground and amphitheatre. My role was to ensure the design vision and the business case reinforced each other: that the architecture told the story the funding submission needed to tell, and that the numbers behind it were credible. The business case addressed Closing the Gap targets, First Nations arts sector development, community access, and international creative exchange. We publicly launched the vision at a reception at Carriageworks in November 2018, attended by the Federal Minister for Communications and the Arts.

The Outcome

The business case was completed and publicly launched, presenting a compelling argument for government investment in a landmark piece of First Nations cultural infrastructure. The Naya Wa Yugali vision, a campus intrinsically connected to Country, capable of hosting national and international First Nations creative learning, was positioned as both a Closing the Gap initiative and a catalyst for global Indigenous creative partnerships.

Working on this project taught me that the best project management is invisible. It creates space for the client's vision to come through clearly, whether that audience is a funding body, a community, or a government minister. That principle of putting the client's story first is foundational to how I run Yaxley Studio.