The Sydney Festival has launched an ambitious plan to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through the arts.
The festival has become one of the first cultural groups to instigate a Reconciliation Action Plan, which will include recruiting Indigenous interns for the festival, new presentation opportunities for artists and efforts to build better cultural awareness among audiences.
Karen Mundine from Reconciliation Australia says the Sydney Festival plays an important role in putting Indigenous issues on the cultural agenda.
"Arts are about challenging people to think about walking in somebody else's shoes," she said.
"It's about showing another side of Aboriginal people and making people care, and when people care then they're motivated to do something.
"If they're motivated to do something they'll get involved in better health care programs or support policies that will make change."
Festival Director Lieven Bertels says the Sydney Festival has a long tradition of presenting Indigenous work and artists.
"Proactively producing new work and work of scale and I think Sydney Festival has shown to have a leading role there," he said.
"We have to acknowledge that there is major ignorance out there and people shrugging their shoulders and saying it's not my business.
"So for us to put Aboriginal issues on the cultural agenda is a very important role we have and that actively contributes to closing the gap."
The Sydney Festival attracts around half a million people to its free and ticketed events each January.
Mr Bertels says including Indigenous works goes a long way towards reconciliation.
"We have 60,000 people in the Domain and we do a very meaningful Welcome to Country, or a smoking ceremony, or we invite someone from the Aboriginal community to speak," he said.
"That's a great opportunity that we can provide to spread that message."
But he says there is also much more the arts sector can do.
"I think with the arts we can actually do more to create training opportunities, to create employment opportunities and to create artistic opportunities for the Aboriginal community," Mr Bertels said.
Next year's festival will showcase a production called Black Diggers, which tells the story of more than 1,000 Indigenous Australians who enlisted to fight in World War I.
Karen Mundine says the work is about reminding Australians that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians have a shared history.
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been here, we've been here for 60,000 years plus," she said.
"It's not all about ancient history though. We've participated in defending this country just like other Australians, so we're part of this story together and let's write new chapters of that story."
Mr Bertels says the festival hopes to have the resources to keep producing large scale works like Black Diggers and last year's production, I Am Eora, every two to three years.
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