EOF Group was proud to sponsor the Learning Environments Australasia NSW Chapter event — “Learning with Country” — held in Newcastle. Here’s what we took away from a conversation that should change how every designer, builder and furniture maker approaches their work.
There’s a moment in every project where the brief lands on the desk, the floor plan gets drawn up, and the team starts solving. Materials get specified. Timelines get locked. Products get selected. But what if the most important part of the process happens before any of that? What if it starts with listening — not to the client, not to the architect, but to the Country itself?
That was the central provocation at the recent LEA NSW “Learning with Country” workshop in Newcastle, and it’s a question that sat with us long after the evening wrapped up.
The Event
Learning Environments Australasia brought together a panel of First Nations educators, designers and knowledge holders for a conversation about what it really means to create culturally safe learning spaces. The discussion covered relational teaching practices, Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing, and the role that Country plays — not as backdrop, but as teacher.
The panel
David Newham, Shellie Smith and Courtney Rubie, facilitated by Heather Kember and Kristine Piggford — brought together voices from education, architecture, design and community practice, each with a different lens on the same truth: that the spaces we create matter, but the relationships and intent behind them matter more.
EOF Group was there as a proud sponsor, not just to introduce our refreshed brand to the LEA community, but because the themes of this event sit at the heart of how we believe furniture design and manufacturing should work.
Country as Teacher
One of the most powerful threads of the discussion was the idea that Country speaks — through seasons, through fauna, through the behaviour of wind and water — and that learning to read those signs is the foundation of everything that follows.
A project example shared by one of the panellists made this vivid. Working on a master plan in the Northern Rivers, the team arrived with a successful methodology from a previous project in the Hunter region. That earlier project had been shaped by stories from animals and plants. But when they listened to the new community and the new Country, the message was different. It was the seasons that were guiding the design, not the fauna.
Had they dropped in their previous template without listening, they would have got it wrong. Instead, they listened, adapted, and the community response was overwhelmingly positive. The lesson for anyone working in the built environment is direct: no two places are the same. No two communities are the same. And the only way to get it right is to listen before you build.
Relational Teaching and What It Means for Design
The educators on the panel spoke about relational teaching — a practice grounded in Aboriginal knowledge systems where connection comes first. Before any content is taught, before any curriculum is delivered, the starting questions are simple and profound: Who are you? Where are you from?
One panellist described how those questions, asked at the beginning of a university course and then again at the end, drew completely different responses from students. After twelve weeks of learning, the students understood that the questions weren’t about geography.
They were about identity, connection, story and place. This reframing extends directly into how we think about learning spaces. The panel challenged the audience to move past the idea that cultural safety is about how a space looks — the artwork on the wall, the sandstone blocks in a circle — and toward understanding that it’s about how a space feels and functions.
A yarning circle, one panellist pointed out, is not a piece of infrastructure. It’s the opportunity for everyone to participate in a conversation on equal footing. When everyone can see each other, when no one sits at the head, hierarchy dissolves and genuine exchange begins.
That’s a design principle with implications far beyond education.
Listening as a Skill — Not a Default
A recurring theme throughout the evening was how rare genuine listening has become. One speaker put it plainly, recalling advice from an elder: “You’ve got two ears and one mouth. Start using them in that ratio.” In project work — whether it’s a school fitout, a commercial office, a community space — there’s enormous pressure to move quickly, to solve, to deliver. The people leading projects are often expected to do most of the talking. But the panel argued that the best outcomes come from inverting that expectation. Let the community speak. Let Country speak. Then respond.
This isn’t a slower process. It’s a smarter one. The projects that fail are the ones where someone assumed they already had the answer. Cultural Practice, Not Just Creative Practice One of the most striking reframes from the day came from a panellist who described how she no longer calls her work “creative practice” — she calls it “cultural practice.” The distinction matters. Creative practice centres the maker. Cultural practice centres the relationships, the knowledge systems, the responsibility and the intent. It shifts the question from “What does this look like?” to “What do we want this to achieve — and who are we achieving it for?”
When working with First Nations designers, communities or knowledge holders, the panel urged attendees to lead with intent. Not “how should this space look?” but “what do we want people to feel, learn and carry with them when they leave?”
That question should sit at the front of every design brief, every product specification and every project kickoff — regardless of the space or the sector.
Why EOF Group Sponsored This Event
EOF Group is a Newcastle-based commercial furniture manufacturer. We make things. Tables, desks, workstations, storage, collaborative furniture — designed and built at our facility in Lambton.
We sponsored the LEA “Learning with Country” workshop because the values discussed on that stage are the values we bring to every project we work on. When a designer or architect comes to us with a vision for a learning environment, our job is not to hand them a catalogue and walk away. Our job is to listen — to understand the intent behind the design, the people who will use the space, and the outcomes the project is trying to achieve. Then we work collaboratively to bring that design to life.
That’s what manufacturing capability based in Newcastle gives us. We’re not importing containers and hoping for the best. We’re in the room. We’re part of the conversation. We can adapt, iterate and respond — because we’re making it here, with the people who designed it and the communities who’ll use it.
The panel spoke about the importance of working collaboratively with fabricators and procurement teams, building relationships across the entire project, and ensuring everyone involved understands the deeper intent. That’s not just how we’d like to work. It’s how we do work.
The Takeaway
If we had to distil the evening into two lines, it would be this: Listen first. The land and the people have been here for over 80,000 years. Build relationships before you build anything else. Every space tells a story. The best spaces tell the right story — one shaped by genuine connection to Country, community and purpose. EOF Group is committed to being a partner in that process, not just a supplier.
We’re grateful to Learning Environments Australasia for hosting a conversation that challenged everyone in the room to do better. And we’re proud to be part of a Newcastle community that takes these conversations seriously.
EOF Group is a Newcastle-based commercial furniture manufacturer specialising in Australian-made products for education, workplace and community environments. To learn more get in touch with the team.
