A long-term community listening, strategy and human-centred design program on the Tiwi Islands.
Tiwi College sits on Bathurst Island, more than eighty kilometres north of Darwin. It is the only residential college serving senior Tiwi students — young people whose families and communities have invested in a future built on both Tiwi culture and the opportunities that a strong education creates.
Tank has been engaged as lead consultancy in a consortium program that includes our partners Think Impact and Zalt Group to work alongside the college as it shapes that future. The program runs through to 2027 and is one of the most substantial and deeply relational programs of work we have undertaken.
The workstreams are named in Tiwi language. Pupuwi — Good People — addresses workforce and the employment value proposition. Kunawuni — Financial Matters — examines the college's partnership development and future business model. Safe Kakirijuwi focuses on what students need: curriculum, cultural safety, and pathways to life and work. Alawuruwi — Leaders — addresses vision, leadership capability, and succession. Ngawa — Our Tiwi College — brings in the voices of families, alumni, and the broader community to act as foundations for the College's brand, strategic planning and theory of change.
In May, our team returned to the Tiwi Islands, and spent time on-Country and at the college. Structured as a listening and sense-making visit, the conversations centred the principal, faculty, board members, and above all, students. Time in classrooms. Attendance at the weekly community dinner. Early morning walking conversations. Student-led tours of their favourite places around the college grounds. Swims and exploration of the beautiful Country that is Tiwi.
We learn different things when we walk rather than sit at our desks. When we eat together rather than present or facilitate.
What we brought back was a deeper understanding of what the college is and already knows about itself and the future it aspires to create.
What comes next
We return to the Tiwi Islands in August. This visit will transition into participatory co-design: working directly with students, staff, and the board to build on what has been heard and to develop the frameworks and strategies that will carry the college forward.
A central focus of the August visit is the Tiwi College Youth Leadership Forum — a vision of the Board Chair to bring together Tiwi schools, students, and community in a celebration of culture, leadership, and future possibility. It is Tiwi-led and community-owned. Our role is to help the college build the conditions for it to happen and walk alongside them as the students bring it to life.
The program is actively developing a family, community, and alumni engagement strategy; a Strategic Plan and Story of Change; an Impact Evaluation Framework grounded in Tiwi ways of knowing; a Promise of Value for students, staff, and house parents; and a brand communications strategy to help the college tell its story on its own terms.
Cultural integrity first
The principle throughout is that Tiwi-led ideas and community-generated direction drive this work. Our role is not to arrive with answers but to build the conditions, capability and capacity for Tiwi College to own and execute its future independently.
This is the only measure of success that matters.
