Led by Johnny Bridges, a highly experienced team extends Arcadia’s work in Connecting and Designing with Country.
Arcadia’s First Nations Design Collective is expanding its capability and capacity in Connecting and Designing with Country with key appointments to the team.
Having joined Arcadia in June, Bridges now leads a team of five, with proud Aboriginal woman Yarraka Bayles joining as First Nations Lead and proud Koori woman Zoe Sims as Lead Facilitator Connecting with Country, supported by Stefenie Lai, Design and Engagement Coordinator, and Emma O’Reilly, Senior Content Specialist, to form a highly experienced and driven team.
“Our aim is for Arcadia to lead by example in how a non-Indigenous business operates in the built environment: with a dedicated First Nations business unit, reciprocity in everything we do and a real understanding of what it means to be an ally,” says Johnny Bridges, National First Nations Design Director.
Our measure of success is genuine outcomes, both tangible and intangible, for everyone who collaborates with us. Designing with Country is not a style, nor is it a layer added at the end. It is a way of working that starts with relationships, respects cultural authority and stays accountable as a project moves from idea to place. With this expanded team in place, we can take that intent all the way into the built form.”
Country leads the process
The team’s work is framed by ENRICH, Arcadia’s Country-led delivery pathway. ENRICH carries cultural intent through four stages: Connecting, Designing, Delivering and Caring. Rather than treating Country as a separate workstream or a design overlay, it links cultural intent to practical decisions at every stage, so that intent stays visible, actionable and accountable as project teams and decisions change.
Indigenous knowledge enters this process through appropriate relationships with Traditional Custodians, communities and Knowledge Holders. Arcadia’s role is to translate and carry that knowledge with integrity, not to claim or replace cultural authority.
“Country has always shaped how we approach a project, and Johnny’s leadership allows us to go further. As a non-Indigenous practice, we have a responsibility to do this properly and to be accountable for it. That means investing in First Nations leadership, working on the basis of mutual benefit, and letting our actions show our intent,” says Alex Longley, Managing Director.
Clients and communities are asking for deeper ways of working with Country. This expanded team gives us the leadership, the depth and the process to deliver, from the first Walk on Country through to long-term care, with clear benefit for every collaborator and opportunity that flows to First Nations communities as well as to our clients.”
Growing in Queensland
After a decade spent refining its Country-led approach to design, led from the Sydney studio, Arcadia will take an important step in extending the practice’s reach into Queensland, with Yarraka working from the Brisbane studio. She will bring more than 25 years’ experience in community engagement and cultural development to provide strategic advice on embedding First Nations perspectives into planning, design, engagement and placemaking projects. Yarraka’s expertise in cultural governance, relationship building, storytelling and community-led outcomes, will enable the delivery of culturally informed projects that strengthen connections between Country, community, culture and place.
Drawing on deep community connections and a distinguished career in advocacy and public engagement, Yarraka will help shape projects that create positive social impact, strengthen cultural identity, and deliver enduring value for communities, Traditional Owners and project partners alike.
“I feel deeply blessed and humbled to join Arcadia’s award-winning team and contribute to a practice whose values closely align with my lifelong commitment to honouring Country, cultural integrity, and meaningful collaboration based on mutual respect and reciprocity,” says Yarraka Bayles, First Nations Lead.
From my first conversations with the team, I was inspired by Arcadia’s authenticity, vision, and dedication to creating places that connect people with Country while drawing on knowledge systems of the world’s oldest continuing cultures.
As a proud and passionate Aboriginal woman who has spent a lifetime living, learning, and working within Aboriginal communities, I look forward to contributing my lived experience and cultural knowledge to embed Aboriginal Terms of Reference and Country-centred approaches across our projects, creating lasting social, cultural, environmental, and economic outcomes for future generations.”
The First Nations Design Collective: building on a long-standing commitment
The Collective brings together cultural leadership, facilitation, engagement and design, working alongside Arcadia’s Landscape Architecture and Urban Design project teams.
Based in Arcadia’s Sydney studio, highly respected facilitator Zoe Sims leads Connecting with Country facilitation.
“I am thrilled to be working alongside Yarraka to maximise opportunities for mob across the built environment. .It is our obligation to implement best practice principles within Arcadia to ensure First Nations peoples, cultures, and knowledges are respected and thoughtfully embedded within our work,” says Zoe Sims, Lead Facilitator Connecting with Country, Arcadia.
My goal is to act as a conduit between client and community to build trusted relationships that enrich the project and all people involved.”
The expanded Collective builds on work Arcadia has led for years, including Australia’s first Indigenous Landscape Architecture Scholarship, announced in 2017, the launch of its Indigenous Strategy in 2020, and Country-led projects such as the award-winning Wadanggari Park, Barangaroo Station Park and Susan Wakil Health Precinct. At Barangaroo Station Park, research and collaboration with First Nations Knowledge Holders shaped a 50-metre feature seat that references the shell fishhooks used by Aboriginal fisherwomen, carried through to precast concrete seeded with oyster shells.
Pictured above are Emma O’Reilly, Stefenie Lai, Alex Longley, Yarraka Bayles, Johnny Bridges and Zoe Sims.
