Sydney Opera House has many existing relationships with important Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partners and stakeholders which we hope to build on with the development of our RAP.
Sydney Opera House partners and stakeholders include: Bangarra Dance Theatre; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community associations; Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Lands Council; NAISDA Dance College; the NSW Government; the Commonwealth Government; Communities NSW; Department of Trade and Investment, Regional Infrastructure and Services; Tourism NSW; Tourism Australia; and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderBoard at the Australia Council for the Arts.
As of 30 June 2010, Sydney Opera House had employed 730 staff, 306 permanent staff and 424 non-permanent staff. Of the total staff employed 0.5% were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Employment will receive a strong focus in the RAP so that we can achieve our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment target of 2%.
The Message Sticks Festival (Message Sticks) is a successful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts festival that Sydney Opera House has presented since 2000. During its lifetime, Message Sticks has evolved continually and has in some instances been a fully-fledged arts festival with talks, debates, performing arts in addition to the film festival. More recently the program has consisted solely of the film festival and has included an education strand, with selected film screenings promoted to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools students.
In 2011, Sydney Opera House received funding to expand and revitalise Message Sticks to include talks, debates and live performances in addition to film. As part of this initiative, and to further consolidate Indigenous programming, we are also appointing an experienced Indigenous Arts producer to develop a strategy for incorporating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander work into our programs more broadly.
The Sydney Opera House Indigenous Work Placement Program celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2010. The program has created an avenue for young Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people to enter the arts industry via a 12 month traineeship in the theatre technical fields of lighting, staging or sound. It has since evolved into a three month placement program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates in any business field offered.