Inspired by Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Australia’s Humanitarian Design Summit, the Local Design Summit seeks to highlight the role of First Nations Peoples here in Australia, addressing the importance of local community engagement and designing on country. 

 Through an immersive learning experience, it offers participants the opportunity to develop their skills in humanitarian engineering, appropriate technology best-practice, teamwork, and cross-cultural engagement. Unlike the overseas Humanitarian Design Summit, the Local Design Summit will be held over several days on local country under a central theme motivated by the land of which it is held.  

 In the second week of February in 2022, the first ever Local Design Summit will be held on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country on the theme of Indigenous Agriculture and Land Regeneration. This Local Design Summit will partner with research at the Australian National University (ANU), and will be generously hosted by Nguurruu farm, located just 40 minutes north of Canberra City. Central to the theme is the Native Grains project, focused on re-establishing traditional food growing and country management processes for the economic benefit of Indigenous people and country. 

 Whilst the Local Design Summit is targeted towards later year engineering students or professionals, it is open to anyone interested in learning about First Nations Knowledges and developing their ability to collaborate with First Nations Peoples in designing our future systems and technology.  

 Expressions of Interest (EOI) are now open until the 12^th December - 5pm AEST and can be found on the event website’s Sign-Up page.

As we don’t believe that costs should be a barrier and thanks to generous sponsorships, there are a range of program fee discounts available to support you depending on your circumstance, ranging up to 100% of the program cost. For students, the anticipated out-of-pocket cost is expected to be $50 or less depending on personal circumstance.

For more information about the Local Design Summit, learn more about the event’s theme, and to submit an EOI, please visit: https://localdesignsummit.org/.  

Deadline: 12^th December - 5pm AEST