Northern Exposure

From fashion to festivals, Nina Fitzgerald (2013) is shining a national spotlight on the Northern Territory – sharing the stories, creativity and landscapes of First Nations cultures through her work as a curator, creative director and storyteller of the Top End.

Sunday 13 March 2022 • 5 minute read

Nina Fitzgerald (2013) is a creative who is driven to tell the stories of First Nations fashion, cultures, events and landscapes from the Northern Territory.In an unexpected way, it was leaving Darwin to come to Ormond that helped Nina find her passion for sharing the stories of the Top End. The diverse group of people she met at College enhanced her appreciation of how special her own heritage was:“Hearing people’s stories and telling my own made me reflect on how distinctive and remarkable our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage is, and how much non-Indigenous Australians still had to learn about First Nations cultures.”

A desire to help bridge this gap prompted Nina’s return to Darwin after eight years in Melbourne. Seeking a more creative career focussed on telling the stories of the Top End, Nina landed a role at the National Indigenous Fashion Awards, of which she soon became Creative Director. Work in this space continues to feed her passion for the clothing, textiles and jewellery in which First Nations artists tell the powerful stories that have always connected them to the land and seas:“First Nations people have always been makers and creatives, producing everything from ornate woven baskets and dilly bags to cultural adornment rich with ancient lore. More recently, Indigenous artists have expanded into screen printing, batik and digital work” she said.Fulfilling as this role was, other opportunities beckoned and Nina turned freelance, taking on a range of avenues to tell the stories of the Northern Territory. One of the first was co-founding Going North, a marketing agency dedicated to sharing the unique cultures of the Top End with the rest of Australia.

Marketing, she reflects, is another way of telling a good story. Focussed on the fascinating landscapes and people of the Top End, the agency has shared the stories of everyone from a music festival in eastern Arnhem Land to a Darwin street art festival. They have also worked with major brands from down south – from Mecca to Sherrin - looking for a different place to stage a campaign. The NT, Nina reflects, is a ‘treasure’ that is still relatively unknown to the rest of Australia:“The Northern Territory is something of an undiscovered gem, and my agency works to share with the rest of Australia the stories of fantastic events, brands, cultures, landscapes and people in the NT.”But having turned freelance to be open to a range of projects, Nina is not limiting herself to work with her agency. Projects as a fashion and textiles curator, gallery operator and festival director have also given her a platform to tell the stories of the Territory.This portfolio career is partly inspired by her Ormond days, where students were encouraged to try new things and be interested in a range of fields. All her roles are however driven by the one aim: to share the stories of Northern Territory Indigenous cultures with a wider Australian audience.

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