Keeping The Dream Alive

Janet Craig first began to follow her passion in 1997. After years spent working in public relations for the South Australian government and later as national advertising manager for Elders Limited, she decided to start working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. Craig says: "I was fascinated by the beautiful Aboriginal spirit and culture and wanted this to be the next step in my career."

She began working for an Aboriginal community-controlled health service - Nunkuwarrin Yunti of SA Inc - and also with the Aboriginal Sobriety Group Inc and the South Australian Aboriginal Sport and Recreation Association Inc. While she was at Nunkuwarrin Yunti, Craig was approached to do work for other Aboriginal organisations and decided to establish a consultancy called imageit. Craig says: "I specialised in culturally appropriate communications for Aboriginal organisations."

Working at Nunkuwarrin Yunti was an especially important time in Craig's life. She says: "I asked a lot of questions. My colleagues were understanding and told me their stories about growing up on missions and being forced to leave their settlements." Craig chokes back tears as she talks of one colleague: "A lovely lady taught me so much; she was stolen from her mother when she was a baby and sent to an island."

In 2001, Craig took on the full-time position as public relations manager for the state peak body, the Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia Inc - and the consultancy had to go. Craig says: "I had been working on my consultancy two days a week but could no longer do that."

But the passion to run her own Aboriginal-focused communications business had taken hold. After eight months in her new role, Craig took a call from a friend and former colleague Kay Goodman-Dodd of SA Link-Up. Goodman-Dodd said the industry was missing Craig's consultancy services and suggested that she start her own business. Craig says: "It was an exciting opportunity; I started Dreamtime Public Relations within the week. I started the company on a whim, a prayer and $500."

All Craig's previous employers in the Aboriginal sector became Dreamtime clients. Craig says: "I wanted to employ and mentor Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to do the work I do and to provide a culturally appropriate visual communications service to more clients."

The Challenge

Sustaining a vision.

The Solution

Craig started Dreamtime in 2002 with welcome support from the Aboriginal community. But outside that community she was met with ignorance and prejudice. She says: "The first question people asked was, ‘Why would you want to do that?' People didn't understand my passion or think that culturally appropriate communications was important."

Craig had long recognised the need for Aboriginal design by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people. She says: "So many non-Indigenous people have masqueraded their designs as Aboriginal, which contradicts all Aboriginal history, culture and lore. Did they know any different? Probably not."

Craig believes in the philosophy that public relations is about creating mutual understanding between people and organisations. She says: "I take that literally: you have to meet the needs of the communicator and the recipients. To do that you need an in-depth understanding of both client and target audience." At Dreamtime, that has meant using her experience and the wisdom of her Aboriginal employees to craft communication materials for specific target audiences.

Craig says: "The needs of regional, rural and remote Aboriginal audiences vary substantially and from state to state. To ensure our communications are culturally appropriate for the particular audience, our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander designers choose symbols for specific illustrations to create the designs and use larger fonts to ensure that Aboriginal people will want to pick up our materials and read them. Often, we also bring in or seek feedback from senior members of the Aboriginal community to assist our designers in developing the illustrations and to culturally validate our work."

Dreamtime has never been only about profits. Craig was keen to mentor Aboriginal youth but ended up employing more people than she had work for. She says: "I was ignorant too - about business. We had too many overheads, too many employees and not enough work; something had to change."

In 2004, Craig's partner, Bryan Smith, left his engineering job and came to work unpaid for Dreamtime to assist Craig. She says: "I had no processes or systems in place; Bryan established all of that for Dreamtime." Contractors' hours were cut back but to keep the money coming in Craig began to service a broader market.

She and Bryan set up a web-development business, WebeZ, and a communications business, 7C Communications, to cater for non-Indigenous clients. She says: "People kept suggesting I should change my focus and finally I succumbed. But my passion was always with Dreamtime."

In early 2008 Craig had an epiphany. She says: "I realised I'd started this business to mentor and employ Aboriginal people but I was spending too much time servicing the different brands I was managing. I finally realised that my passion was more important than what other people say."

Bryan Smith took over WebeZ and Craig shifted her focus back to Dreamtime. She says: "I drove Dreamtime through award nominations, media releases and really built the brand up. Since Prime Minister Rudd gave the Apology there has been more acceptance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their history as the first descendants of this land, although my decision to shift focus was made well before this happened."

The Result

Since Craig refocused on building and promoting Dreamtime turnover has climbed from $350,000 to $500,000 in the past financial year. Craig says: "We are aiming for a $1 million turnover for the next financial year so we can employ more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people."

Craig has also noticed a change in public reaction to her work. She says: "People now find what we do interesting; you can see it in their eyes. There is at least a willingness to listen and more companies are realising that communications must be culturally appropriate, culturally validated and that Aboriginal design should be done by Aboriginal people. There is more demand for our services now."

In 2008 a Dreamtime employee, Toby Dodd, won the National Drug and Alcohol Design Award for best logo. In the same year Dreamtime Public Relations was the South Australian winner for the Small Business Champion Awards (Business). In 2003, Dreamtime won the National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) Business of the Year Award, which Craig cherishes because this award is recognition from the Aboriginal community.

Craig says: "Our achievements have been reported widely in Aboriginal media and we rank highly in Google searches because of this. We're getting lots of enquiries through our website plus plenty of referrals from happy clients."

Since it started Dreamtime has provided training and work opportunities to 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people including Toby Dodd and ABC radio journalist Naomi Carolin.

Dreamtime is now receiving strong enquiries from non-Indigenous organisations to culturally validate their Indigenous printed and online communications. Craig says: "There's not enough education in Australia's schools about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the importance of their many thousands of years of history, which we could all learn a thing or two from. I know I have."

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