Troy Casey and Amanda Hayman On First Nations Enterprise Creating Equitable Outcomes For Community
Troy is a proud Aboriginal man from Kamilaroi Country, north-west New South Wales and Amanda Hayman grew up in Logan city and has cultural connections to Kalkadoon and Wakka Wakka Country.
Together they run Blaklash Creative, a 100% Aboriginal owned creative agency specialising in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and Aboriginal Art Co., a not-for-profit organisation committed to creating social impacts for artists and their communities through the promotion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. Finally, they two years ago became the co-owners of Magpie Goose, a proudly Aboriginal owned and led social enterprise, combining fashion and social impact to create unique wearable garments designed to make a statement.
Troy and Amanda discuss how First Nations led enterprises naturally generate social impact and creating equitable income sources for Indigenous artists all across Australia.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Tom Allen] - To start off, could you both share a bit about your background and what led to your passion in First Nations business and social enterprise?
[Amanda Hayman] - I've always had an interest in visual arts, so I studied that at university. Then I went into a creative arts career, and I ended up in a state government institution for a fair few years. I then decided to take the leap of faith and create Blaklash and Troy joined me on that pathway very soon afterwards.
[Troy Casey] – We always delivered projects in collaboration with community in our previous roles. I worked for the government, I've worked for other not-for-profit organisations, and when Amanda and I met, I was working at an Aboriginal creative agency, Carbon Creative. We just kept getting asked to do projects outside of our normal jobs, and around the time of the Commonwealth Games, we won a few contracts and delivered a series of projects. That was the launching pad for us, but everything we do is always around creating economic opportunities for community, whether it's through arts, events, activations, or across the multiple businesses we run.
As Co-Founders at both Blaklash and Aboriginal Art Co., what projects and work are you involved in with both of these organisations?
[Troy Casey] - Blaklash has recently changed over the last couple of years. We've had Blaklash now for six years, and recently it changed its trajectory from curating predominantly events, exhibitions inside gallery spaces and public programming into a heavier focus on the built environment and First Nations placemaking.
Now, we're working on a series of major infrastructure projects across the city, including big developments happening like Waterfront Brisbane, Cross River Rail, and also major developments that are happening as part of the Olympic Games at the Gabba. A lot of that stemmed from art curation into public art, and then, from there, there's been this natural trajectory into actually thinking about placemaking more broadly. That has led us into specialising with all things built environment from a master planning level all the way down to fabricating an installation of public artworks as well. It's certainly a sector that's growing dramatically because of the need and desire for First Nations narratives and stories to be embedded in the built environment, which again, allows us to create more opportunities for community to be involved in those projects. Until recently, we've been excluded from those places historically, and now to actually think through a lens of developing major developments across the city and infrastructure projects with that as a focus is a really amazing change.
[Amanda Hayman] - When it was just Troy and I at BlakLash, we had a very small office space that we shared down the back of a shop we collaborate with in West End on Vulture Street. The shop is called Open House, and it's still going strong, but we curate the Indigenous products throughout that space. There's a range of merchandise homewares, body products and a lot of fashion as well.
That was successful, even though we were just using it as a venue at the beginning. We actually found we were supporting so many businesses through that shop that we thought it might be a really good experience to develop our own not-for-profit art gallery.
That's what we did. We used that model to push forward for an art gallery, and now we're on Grey Street in Brisbane, just at the top of Fish Lane across from the Queensland Museum. We've put an art gallery and store there, and we supply artwork from all over the country. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, independent artists and art centres are all our suppliers for the shop.
[Troy Casey] - At the moment as well, we run an artist residency project. Inside our space, we have a small studio. We recently had a range of submissions come through for a series of artist residencies. That really speaks to the way we want to do business, we want to be able to support emerging artists as much as established artists in this space, and the residency project and outcomes are developed into an exhibition every couple of months. It's another exciting little program that we're running out of Aboriginal Art Co. as well.
You became Co-owners of fashion brand Magpie Goose, the first non-Indigenous company to transition to Indigenous ownership in Australia. What have been your biggest challenges on this Magpie Goose journey, and what lessons have you learned as a result?
[Troy Casey] - The 1st of March 2021 was the official announcement of the transition, and time flies!
One of the things all of your listeners and the social enterprise community understands is social enterprise is hard work; it's certainly not an easy way to go about things.
But what it makes you do is realise the impact you create is the most significant part of the work you do. That for us felt like an easy transition in terms of our businesses are already social enterprises by technicality. Whilst we don't call them that, Magpie had a really great following and an amazing brand. Given our skillset, it was a bit of an obvious collaboration. If Maggie and Laura were certainly going to think of anyone, we're really excited it was us. It's been hard, we're not going to lie, and I think we've always communicated this very clearly. Magpie Goose is in fashion, which is particularly a tough industry. When you do things ethically with the least environmental impact in Australia, the products tend to have big dollar symbols next to them!
[Amanda Hayman] - There are also licensing fees, and those add up.
[Troy Casey] - They add up really quickly, but that's the beauty of the product. We're really excited by the brand and the growth of the brand still. We are really excited to see the next couple of collections coming up. We've been able to work with really exciting arts centres and emerging artists to just continue that impact. After this next collection, we'll be pushing over $700,000 worth of royalty payments to artists. It's a big impact and it helps these communities and artists in very remote places.
What is your current take on the state of First Nations business in Australia and where do you see opportunities to improve our communities?
[Troy Casey] - It's such an interesting conversation. Whenever you speak to Aboriginal businesses, you'll stumble into this yarn. I always mention there are statistics around aboriginal business being one hundred times more likely to employ aboriginal people. All our businesses are a perfect example and testament to that statistic.
But I think the way our culture is and the way we are as a community is always reliant on a horizontal hierarchy and sharing; sharing is such an integral value to being Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, which isn't too dissimilar in business.
There's a different mentality of, "oh, I won this contract. How can I share the money that is involved in that contract and/or allow other people to gain skills and insights so that they can start their own businesses?" We're always trying to give a hand up to our community, and I think that for us is so critical to the work we do. It's interesting as well, because we don't start businesses as a charity either. It's not us looking to help our community in inverted commas, it's about supporting, growing and sharing. One of the interesting things as well is if you create a commercial enterprise, if it's successful, do you need to feel bad because you're making money as well? You get pulled in two directions as well because of that.
[Amanda Hayman] - I totally agree with that. Part of our responsibility is sharing our good fortune with others.
[Troy Casey] - It's hard, because at the end of the day, the more money you make or the more money your enterprise generates, (generally) the more impact you create. This also means the more money your subcontractors, consultants or other community members you've engaged in the project also make. There is this tension between being successful and generating lots of revenue and income, but if you push that aside, what you're actually doing is just generating more impact. That's the critical part of the conversation that I think sometimes people forget is your rise to success also means your rise of impact.
What advice, would you be giving to other social entrepreneurs who are working hard to create this positive social impact?
[Troy Casey] -
It's about keeping your head down and bum up.
Amanda said this earlier; understand and realise that hard work will pay off into positive outcomes for whatever reason your social enterprise exists. If people forget about the short term struggle it often feels like, particularly in start-up land, you can think about what your actual vision and mission is, and that hard work will pay off in positive social returns to the community your enterprise is in the end established for the betterment of.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you both come across recently that are creating some great positive social change?
[Amanda Hayman] - The next Magpie Goose collection is with a town camp in Alice Springs. They're a community, very close to the town there and they've been known for screen printing onto tea towels and making that kind of merchandise.
We've had the opportunity to go and run some workshops out of [Tanejira Art Centre] and create new designs. The launch of that collection will be midyear, so that's what we've been working on at Magpie Goose.
[Troy Casey] - Obviously our mates at Clothing The Gaps are kicking goals as well. They just recently did a cool collaboration with HoMie, which is another fashion brand that supports people who are homeless, and so that was a really interesting collaboration. I think that's exciting to see, social enterprises collaborating as well. The community is so supportive of each other in social enterprise circles and that was a really nice collaboration to see recently. We are super keen to see more of those collaborations.
[Amanda Hayman] - Also, whenever we go to Melbourne, we do pop-ups at Clothing The Gaps. We also collaborate with Second Stitch, it's a social enterprise helping new migrants with employment through sewing and making accessories.
To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?
[Troy Casey] - I really love The First Knowledges series, there are a few insights there around Aboriginal knowledge, traditional knowledges and systems. The First Knowledges series is about design, country, song lines, plants and astronomy. I highly recommend those to people who want to gain a better understanding and baseline of Indigenous knowledges particularly focused on those key topics. Super great reads, and certainly something I think lots of people would take away great understandings from.
[Amanda Hayman] - Sadly, I don't have any recommended readings, because I don't get time to read anymore! But hopefully in the future after our three year old gets a little bit older, I will get the chance to read again!
[Troy Casey] - There was also another interesting TEDx talk I watched the other day, about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander professionals, cultural load and burnout. It was a really interesting conversation about how we as Aboriginal people run businesses, have these conversations on the side, have responsibilities to community and work in community organisations. There are so many different parts to what we do that's not just business as usual, and it again gives a broader understanding of what those responsibilities are for us.
