Message from the President of the NFF Board
The National Folk Festival Board is delighted to be lodging our first Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). This is a Reflect RAP and will lay the foundations for our Reconciliation journey and prepare the National Folk Festival for future initiatives. While the Festival has long placed importance on including First Peoples artists as part of our programming, it is important that we expand the partnership we have with First Peoples Communities and hold ourselves accountable to a clearly articulated commitment through this RAP. This is our first such plan and we will continue to develop this plan in consultation with the Traditional Owners on whose Lands our annual Festival is held.
We will also continue to liaise with communities from across Australia who are participating in the Festival and working with us. As you will see in this document there are some very practical steps the National Folk Festival can take in boosting our commitment to reconciliation, including working to ensure our Board has the right membership diversity, looking at our corporate policies, and ensuring our reporting very transparently reflects progress against our RAP. We sincerely welcome this opportunity to be part of Australia’s broader reconciliation journey.
David Gilks, March 2023
Reconciliation Australia welcomes The National Folk Festival to the Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) program with the formal endorsement of its inaugural Reflect RAP. The festival joins a network of more than 2,200 corporate, government, and not-for-profit organisations that have made a formal commitment to reconciliation through the RAP program.
Since 2006, RAPs have provided a framework for organisations to leverage their structures and diverse spheres of influence to support the national reconciliation movement. The program’s potential for impact is greater than ever, with close to 3 million people now working or studying in an organisation with a RAP.
— Reflect, Innovate, Stretch and Elevate — allow RAP partners to continuously develop and strengthen reconciliation commitments in new ways. This Reflect RAP will lay the foundations, priming the workplace for future RAPs and reconciliation initiatives. The RAP program’s strength is its framework of relationships, respect, and opportunities, allowing an organisation to strategically set its reconciliation commitments in line with its own business objectives, for the most effective outcomes. These outcomes contribute towards the five dimensions of reconciliation: race relations; equality and equity; institutional integrity; unity; and historical acceptance.
It is critical to not only uphold all five dimensions of reconciliation, but also increase awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories, knowledge, and leadership across all sectors of Australian society. This Reflect RAP enables the National Folk Festival to deepen its understanding of its sphere of influence and the unique contribution it can make to lead progress across the five dimensions. Getting these first steps right will ensure the sustainability of future RAPs and reconciliation initiatives, and provide a meaningful impact on Australia’s reconciliation journey.
Congratulations to the National Folk Festival, welcome to the RAP program, and I look forward to following your reconciliation journey in the years to come.
Karen Mundine | Chief Executive Officer | Reconciliation Australia
Message from Reconciliation Australia
National Folk Festival Reconciliation Action Plan
Our cover photo is of Alinta Barlow, a First Australian and proud Ngunnawal woman.
Alinta performed My Island Home in the Ngunnawal language at the Opening Concert of the 2022 National Folk Festival and was a featured artist in our 2023 Festival.
The aspirations in this RAP have been referenced in our strategic vision for the National Folk Festival and will be hardwired into our governance. Over the next 12 months, we will seek to appoint a First Peoples Board member. We will seek to better engage with Ngunnawal/Ngambri Elders and their Communities to ensure we understand how best to deliver on our commitments. We will also consult with Ngunnawal/Ngambri Elders and their Communities around the concept of establishing an informal First Peoples advisory group for the National Folk Festival. Before we draft our next plan, we will evaluate what has worked and ask for feedback. Where necessary we will work with specialist advisers to ensure training or guidance is provided as required.
We are committed to delivering the outcomes outlined in our Reflect RAP and the Festival Board will be accountable to track delivery against our actions. We will strive to align these commitments into the festival’s business planning and strategic vision and hardwire them into our programming and our mentoring. The Festival Board will ensure the organisation is accountable for these commitments and will report against them in our Annual General Meeting each year.
The Festival will look to strengthen its ambition to support First Peoples’ performance as central to Australia’s evolving folk tradition as it transitions to bring in new, younger audiences who have strong expectations about reflecting all Australian experience in our performative ambitions.
The Festival recognises the importance of maintaining and updating our RAP outcomes each year from here on. We will establish a RAP Working Group and will follow in the wake of a growing number of Australian cultural organisations that have registered RAPs since 2006. Through our RAP we believe we are providing a blueprint for future National Folk Festival Boards, Artistic Directors, and Managing Directors to maximise their community and other network bases to actively support the national reconciliation movement.
This is the National Folk Festival’s first RAP.
As a Reflect RAP, it is our opportunity to state our intent. We acknowledge this is just the beginning of our journey and we aim to meet, and hope to exceed, community expectations in wanting to see an even more diverse and inclusive festival. We have always had a strong commitment to First Peoples’ cultural experience and performance in our festival and now, for the first time, we have articulated our aspirations to deepen our relationships with First Peoples within and beyond the festival program.