Meet Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation project officer Shannen Mennen as a part of The Courier's 40 under 40 series. Video by Lachlan Bence and Adam Spencer.
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00:00 [Music]
00:08 So I was born here, I grew up here and I have a very strong family connection
00:12 with my family being Wurrung in particular, there's that aspect of connection too.
00:16 The biggest thing that I love about living here is the multiculturalism,
00:20 that we have people from all over the world living here and the value that they bring to
00:25 our community. So yeah and the others as well like all different genders, sexualities, you have people
00:31 of different diversities, different abilities, so we're a really inclusive community I like to think.
00:37 So I'd love to see some more work done around accessibility given particularly that we have
00:43 quite a lot of old buildings within our CBD. I would love to see something that values our
00:49 First Nations culture as well, so some more art, some more design maybe. I think there's so much
00:54 potential for Ballarat in a lot of different ways, particularly in the creative arts space
00:57 and food as well. I think we're already seeing quite an emerging food trend across Ballarat,
01:02 so I'm really excited to see what comes out of that. I think growing up there was a bit of a
01:08 narrative in Ballarat of the old gold and cold as we say, so it was all about the gold rush and I'm
01:14 very excited to see that that's sort of starting to change. We're looking at all different perspectives
01:18 not just the typical European colonist narrative, so we're looking at you know what happened with
01:24 the Chinese who came over during the gold rush, what happened to the Irish, what happened to the
01:28 First Nations inhabitants, you know Wadawurrung people, others who were brought here during the
01:32 Stolen Generation. There's so much history in this town and I think we've only just scratched
01:37 the surface, so I'm really excited to see what else comes out of it.