The Namatjira Project is an Australian community cultural development project, launched in 2009, conducted by arts and social change company Big hART. It is based in the Aboriginal communities of Hermannsburg (NT) and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. Its focus is the life and work of the late Albert Namatjira, an Arrernte watercolour landscape artist. The project undertakes community work and has developed an award-winning touring theatre show, Namatjira, which depicts "the commercial appropriation of Aboriginal experience".

The main inspiration for the Namatjira Project was drawn from Big hART's Ngapartji Ngapartji project. In this, Elton Wirri, kinship grandson of Albert Namatjira, was a cast member in the namesake theatre show, creating an extensive painting on the backdrop of the set.^[1] The reaction of audience members to the name "Namatjira" and the potential of the story to engage with contemporary Australian social issues prompted writer Scott Rankin, actor Trevor Jamieson and creative producer Sophia Marinos to research the story further. This brought them into contact with the extended Western Aranda Namatjira family.^[2] The project in its form and structure was then instigated with the consent of Namatjira family representatives^[3] as a way to strengthen the passing on and sharing of culture and artistic family tradition as begun by Albert Namatjira and his watercolour and landscape painting style.^[4]

The Namatjira Project (2009-) is a community cultural development project conducted by arts and social change company Big hART in conjunction with the descendants of the late Australian Indigenous watercolour landscape artist Albert Namatjira. Based in the Aboriginal communities of Hermannsburg (NT) and Alice Springs, the project aims to strengthen intergenerational ties, to invigorate and preserve the legacy of Albert Namatjira's style of painting^[5] and to invite the general public to reflect on Namatjira's story as a prism through which to explore Australia's past, present and future in terms of intercultural social relations and national reconciliation with Indigenous people.^[6] The project is structured around the two pillars of community work and a touring theatre show. To help strengthen sustainable income for the next generation of Namatjira artists, Big hART partners with Ngurratjuta Many Hands Art Centre (Alice Springs) to host exhibitions of contemporary Namatjira paintings alongside the performances.^[7] The project also features a digital multimedia component, with an iPhone application developed to promote the Namatjira painting style,^[8] film-based workshops with the Hermannsburg School, the development of a documentary and live webcasts generated by the community and streamed from Hermannsburg (NT) as part of an exchange between the Ntaria school and Wynyard High School in Tasmania.^[9]

As part of this large-scale, layered, long-term engagement with the Namatjira family and their famous ancestor's legacy, the project runs painting and digital arts workshops in the isolated Hermannsburg community, organises intergenerational plein-air painting trips on country, works with the local choir and collaborates with family members to raise awareness of Albert's story.^[10][11] On the one hand, this is done by addressing issues surrounding the copyright of Namatijra's work;^[12] on the other hand, Big hART devised a professional theatre show on Albert's life in close consultation and collaboration with the family.^[13]

As theatre critic John McCallum writes, the stage production Namatjira tells "a story about the commercial appropriation of Aboriginal experience, told in a performance that is a reappropriation of Namatjira's story by his family and descendants, who have worked with Big hART, and the company's director and writer Scott Rankin, to reclaim it".^[14] In addition to help shape the story told, family members toured with the company throughout Australia as artists and performers, conducting watercolour painting workshops and creating large chalk drawings of their home country live on stage,^[15][16] while two professional actors transition between various roles^[17] to relate the story of their grandfather.

The play employs both Anglo- and Indigenous theatrical conventions by combining direct address monologues with re-enactment, musical interpretation, symbolism, the use of historical source material and tight choreography.^[18] The play is infused with a musical score which alternates between wind and string instruments, gospel songs in Aranda and popular music to strengthen the emotive layer of the show.^[19] To parallel the portraiture of Albert Namatjira through words and stage action and to underline the centrality of the visual arts metaphor as a frame for this story, a painter creates a portrait in oil of the leading actor while the show is being performed.^{[citation needed]}

• Namatjira Project on Flickr