Munarra is a world-class education, sporting, and public gathering space led entirely by First Peoples. There are two parts: an upgraded Rumbalara Football and Netball Club to the north and a new community and academic building to the south. One of the most interesting things about it is what ARM facilitated for the design to take form.

The centre was conceived through Yorta Yorta self-determination on a politically charged site, with a complex group of stakeholders, strong but diverse community voices, and competing briefing requirements. Our job was to work through all of that and produce a building that the community recognised as its own. Delivered by an Indigenous-owned contractor, twelve news jobs were created in the process.

From above – Sky Country – the building unfurls like a flag: the tricolours of the Aboriginal flag rendered in built form, a banner of identity draped across the Shepparton Sports Precinct. Internal spaces pinwheel off a central circular courtyard, with teaching, working and cultural spaces oriented to Country, landscape and sky according to nuanced community requirements. A learning veranda, firepit, and the Nanyak Wall (a photographic record of community history that extends into the landscape) communicate the building's civic and cultural ambitions from every angle. To the north, a new canopy and upgraded facilities tie the Rumbalara Football and Netball Club with the new building across a blue bridge, turning two sites into one place.

Munarra Limited, an all-First Peoples board, oversaw the project and now manages the centre’s operations (which is at it should be, although not yet commonplace).