Talking Property | Lobby Series: Creating Conscious Cities through Digital Storytelling

Hello, and welcome to this special edition of Talking Property with CBRE. The Lobby Series is a collection of intimate talks with industry experts that uncover how we can maximise the human experience in the spaces we frequent every day. Each episode takes place in the lobby of some of Sydney's most iconic buildings and brings together our very own in-house experts with market leaders who are shaping our future cities. We hope you enjoy these insightful conversations. 

NM:
Thank you so much for joining us today here, Brett, in Brookfield Place. To start us off, can you give our listeners some insight into your background and your mission to build a time machine through 3D technology? 

BL:
Well, my name's Brett Leavy. I'm from Western Queensland and it's very important to say that. My traditional country is sort of that around Bollon is the centre of it, and our people go all the way down to the New South Wales border out towards Cunnamulla and back to St. George, all the way up to Mitchell. I'm proud of that. I get told about that all the time by my mother. She always tells me to reflect on where I'm from. My passion is blending culture and technology. I want people to travel back in time and respect the land that is the custodial lands of First Nations people. I want them to be there and meet the custodians, see what they did, see how they lived, see how they sustained themselves in country. That's my mission. 

NM:
And make it real for people. Fantastic. What role do you think the past plays in building an equitable and inclusive city of the future? 

BL:
I think it's vital, isn't it? I mean, that's what we're dealing with here. We're talking with trying to settle our differences, I suppose with First Nations as we speak. My hat says it. It's Uluru statement from the heart. It's the voice of First Nations people as they want to have and be heard in Parliament. We're trying to look at that question about dealing with our past injustices to First Nations people. I'm reminded that every First Nations person you know and meet are a descendant of the frontier wars; we're the survivors of that moment. When I talk about going back to country, my traditional lens as a native title, we are dealing with that as we speak. And that native title is our country and we connect to that. And everywhere First Nations people are, there's a connection to country. People tend to want to think of us as way out west in Arnhem Land or Uluru, you know, the heart of Australia. But to be honest, there's a spiritual heart in every capital city and regional town. 

NM:
And tell us a little bit more about the Songlines Project that you're working on at the moment. 

BL:
The Songlines Project is a, I think you would best call it, a software development toolkit for mapping the connection of First Nations people to the land. We're basically building a virtual heritage time machine, as I call it, and it is laid up. It's from the landscape. We take satellite data to get the topography right. We then embed in it soil maps that gives us the idea what the bioherms were. So we get historical soil maps and that's how we grow up the vegetation around the sites that we want. We then take and model every animal that might be there. That's all the native fauna. And we have them all animated to actually respond to a climate system that we've got in it as well. We're trying to be a digital twin, but a digital cultural twin. Most people do digital twins for construction industry, but I'm saying underpinning that is a digital environment. So if we tie this back to the construction industry, they do an environmental impact statement and they do that as a report. Well, we do that report on steroids and visualise it. So every aspect of that environmental impact report is in our work, and that's what we show. And in there it's all that goes in it is a rendition of what the land looks like before the first settlers. 

NM:
A digital twin of cultural and heritage. I love it. 

BL:
And something that's sexy at the moment is the Metaverse. We're building an 'Indigiverse'. 

NM:
Tell us about the 'Indigiverse'. 

BL:
Well, the ‘Indigiverse’ is a perpetually, always-on, virtual rendition in a temporal spatial environment. That's the time of machine concept. And I can show that, where in a sense, taking the work that you might see in Google Earth, but creating in our own cultural Earth - our own rendition of it. People say I should partner with Google or why can't we be Google? 

NM:
How would you like to see your form of digital storytelling contribute to how we manage the environment, particularly in a changing climate? 

BL:
Well, my work is a co-design with First Nations communities always. So when I do the work, I ask First Nations people to participate with me. I find a community champion and I say, "Come along for the ride". It takes a little bit more time, takes a bit more understanding. And then in that regard, we talk about what is those sites of significance, what is the work we do in a connection report for their identity and culture in that, in that world. Where were the bush food gathering sites? Where was the bush medicine gathering sites? Where were the hunting grounds? Where were the camps? And look at those locations and reconstruct that, and that's connection to country. And then in that you go into all the different aspects of where will somebody's great great grandmother born? Where were those women from? Where did they go together? What was their broad communities? And that's what I'm trying to produce. My work is real. It's artwork, it's technology, but it's blending a new technology for an ancient culture. 
 
NM:
And how can the property industry help you tell your story? 

BL:
I think they could be the sponsors of it, you know, just a small investment gives them a social license to operate. Straight up. And, and when they do their screen spaces and they just put a wonderful little shot of whatever, why can't they do the shot of that connection to a country for where they belong or where they're operating? Where they're building? And I think that is real practical reconciliation. That's a real enduring legacy. And in that whole process of doing that work, you know, when they're taking their 12 months or 18 months to construct that building, they could be engaged with First Nations people the entire time as that story is unfolding. And that's where we can come together as a small community on a journey together in that storytelling. 

NM:
Create an authentic connection to place. 

BL:
Exactly. Placemaking all along. Wonderful. Again, that's my passion. 
 
NM:
Thanks for listening to Talking Property with CBRE. If you like the show and want to check out more, visit cbre.com.au/talking property or subscribe through Spotify and Apple Podcast. Until next time.